The Non-Automatic Aspect of Automation

Automation, one of Manovich’s characteristics of new media, is very controversial nature. As he explains, “…human intentionality can be removed from the creative process, at least in part” (32). The very idea of having a machine do a human’s work is both liberating (freeing man from unnecessary work) and enslaving (forcing man’s dependence on machines). In either situation, the “thought processes” of man and machine become similar enough to the point that they can perform at least some functions in the same way, all of this leading to the thoughts that man is becoming mechanized and machines are approaching artificial intelligence. Is this increasingly blurred distinction problematic or a sign of commendable scientific progress? Manovich does not really delve into these implications, but we can look back to Vannevar Bush and Marshall McLuhan for such insights.

Vannevar Bush would argue favorably for media’s role in human development. He states, “[Man] has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not just merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory” (Bush 47). Bush is very much about using technology to help society utilize its resources to meet its potential, as evidenced in his conceptual development on the memex, the predecessor to computerized information retrieval (now done through the Internet). This goes along with Marshall McLuhan’s idea of media as “extensions of man,” which seems to posit media as just another tool.

On the reverse side, the same idea of McLuhan’s can be seen as a contamination of the natural state of human existence. Bush expresses, “Our present languages are not especially adapted to this sort of mechanization… . It is strange that the inventors of universal languages have not seized upon the idea of producing one which better fitted the technique for transmitting and recording speech” (Bush 40). Bush is oblivious to the disturbing concept behind his statement. He is wondering why mechanized communication is not more prominent than natural communication. With automation, we definitely establish a connection between ourselves and machines. The danger lies in the depth of this connection; do we use machines as discreet tools or do we graft them to ourselves?

Whatever the result, there is no questioning the progress being made in automation all of the time. We are moving from “ ‘low-level’ automation…in which the computer user modifies or creates from scratch a media object using templates or single algorithms” (such as with blogger.com), to “ ‘high-level’ automation…which requires a computer to understand, to a certain degree, the meanings embedded in the objects being generated” (i.e. artificial intelligence) (Manovich 32). The latter is being manifested primarily in video games, a seemingly harmless application, but it is the very innocuous nature of this application that may blind us to the insidious infiltration of artificial intelligence into the way we play and think and then perhaps live. The one non-automatic aspect of automation should be our acceptance of it. We always need to question how technology is forming us; we need to be aware (or beware) of the dangers as well as the perhaps more apparent benefits.

“She died a famous woman denying/ her wounds / denying / her wounds came from the same source as her power.” –Adrienne Rich, “Power”