We have journeyed a long way together. What has been
accomplished? The central message that I have tried to show in this
book is that the computer concisely expresses many of the concepts
central to civilization. Let's go over them:
The first concept is the importance of clarity of expression
(Chapter Two). With the computer, you quickly learn to get your
statements precisely correct or suffer the syntax error. We see the
same concept throughout many fields: law, which has developed the
precise interpretation of English to a high art; science, which has
developed its own language (mathematics) for precise expression of
its concepts; even advertising, which has learned how to twist
language masterfully to create impression without substance. Throughout
our civilization you can find people sweating over the
precise expression of an idea.
The science and art of decision-making (Chapter Four) is the
second great achievement of civilization. The formal study of
reason, the enjoyment of carefully constructed disputation, the
willingness to analyze a problem endlessly &emdash; these are
hallmarks of our civilization. Perhaps nowhere else is it better
expressed than in the American political and legal system, which
expends vast efforts on achieving a correct decision-making process.
What other civilization would set free an admitted criminal solely
because the process used to establish guilt was flawed? Or consider
the fact that the American constitution sets no policies of the
government whatever; it concerns itself solely with the process by
which political decisions will be made. And the computer reduces the
decision-making process to its absolute essence, allowing us to
clearly see the central components of decision-making.
Repetition (Chapter Five) is the next great triumph of
civilization. Despite our romantic attachment to the individualized,
the hand-made, we owe our wealth and comfort to the economies of
scale associated with highly repetitious production. With each
passing decade, we have pushed the scale higher and higher, building
larger and more efficient tools that allow us to create more and more
wealth faster and faster. Sometimes our productivity has outrun our
wisdom, and we have created unanticipated problems of excess
&emdash;
smog, traffic congestion, and technostress &emdash; but these are
problems that the peasant of two centuries ago would have dearly
loved to suffer. The essential nature of repetition, the economy of
scale associated with repetitive work, is perfectly captured in the
loop of a computer program.
The fourth great achievement of civilization is the development of
the bureaucracy (Chapter Six) as a means of controlling so complex a
phenomenon as a civilization. We love to hate bureaucracies, but we
all know that we simply cannot live without them. And a computer
program with subroutines is a microcosm of a complex bureacracy. It
is created for the same reasons, faces the same problems, and solves
them in the same way.
The taming and harnessing of numbers is the fifth great hallmark
of civilization embodied in the computer (Chapter Seven). We have
developed mathematics and applied it to a huge variety of problems.
Lord Berkeley caught the spirit of it when he wrote, "To measure is
to know." The trick was not in the manipulation of numbers per se,
but rather in the ability to relate numbers to the real world. We
translate real-world phenomena into the cyber-world of numbers, make
the numbers dance, and translate the results of their dance back into
real-world results. It matters not whether we are sawing lumber,
irrigating crops, or navigating a ship; the numbers obediently dance
to our tune. The computer is the perfect tool to choreograph and
observe the waltz of the numbers.
The parallels between the computer and the central structures of
our civilization are no accident; the computer is, after all, the
child of the civilization that created it. The only surprising thing
is that it manages to capture so much of the essence of our
civilization. Perhaps this is because a civilization is not a
collection of artifacts or even people, but rather a logical
structure for controlling processes, and a computer is, at heart, the
same thing. A civilization is, of course, an immensely richer and
more complex structure than a computer, but the computer does seem to
be a convincing homonculus to civilization. To understand the logic
of a computer, then, is to gain a glimpse into the heart of our
culture.
But we must not overrate our understanding, especially when we
deal with the computer. The clarity and precision of computer-style
thinking gives a false sense of certainty to the small-minded. That
certainty has been the source of more pig-headedness and nonsense
than any anti-rationalist mysticism to sweep our society. It's not
that computers are small-minded, or that computer programmers are
small-minded, but rather that small-minded people who learn the
computer can do a lot of damage.
Consider the bureaucrat who inflexibly sticks to the rules even
when it is to the obvious detriment of the bureaucracy as a whole.
Rules are rules, you know; we can't go bending the rules just because
it might make things go more smoothly this time. Of course, we
didn't need to invent computers to create such people. But how much
better armed they are to enforce their puny view of the universe when
they can say, "I'm sorry, the computer can't take it any other way."
A variation on this is the number-happy manager. He's got his
computer printouts, loaded with a zillion numbers about every aspect
of the company's business. He's just got to slow down every
discussion with endless quotations of data. The best retort to this
fellow is an acronym: GIGO. It means "Garbage in, garbage out". The
quality of the numbers that come out of a computer is only as good as
the quality of the numbers you put in. And most of the numbers that
go into such a program are garbage.
There is also the danger of taking the lessons of the computer too
seriously. The lessons of the computer impart a kind of intellectual
power to their users, and power always corrupts in proportion to
weakness of character. Thus, we see a corps of overconfident
technophiles who bring too much certainty to all aspects of their
thinking. They know the answer to every question of politics, sex,
and religion. The black-and-white world of the computer does not
admit subtle shades of gray. The goal of this book is to teach you
this style of thinking, that you may apply it to real-world problems,
but don't overdo it!
The greatest victim of the computer, though, is the high school
kid who falls in love with the computer. It starts out innocently
enough. Johnny is curious about this computer stuff and shows some
aptitude for it. His parents give him a computer to encourage him. As
he plunges into it, he learns many of the same lessons that this
book has presented. But there is more. He learns power, something
he hasn't had before. The power to make things happen inside the
computer. His curiousity is always rewarded with discovery, and
there is no more addictive drug than learning, especially learning
that comes so easily. But most important, and most insidious, is the
cheerful willingness of the computer to be a companion, a friend with
whom the kid can talk. The real world has parents with unreasonable
demands, with whom communication is difficult. The real world has
girls with whom all interaction is invariably embarassing. The real
world is unresponsive; the real world treats him like a dumb kid. But
the computer responds to every communication in a fair and
understandable manner. The computer obeys his every command. Faced
with the real world or the computer in your bedroom, which would you
choose?
And so our tragic hero renounces parents, school, and girls, and
pledges himself to the computer. He stays up late, working on his
programs. His parents and teachers, not seeing the trap, encourage
him in this, the first activity to which he has truly applied
himself. Deeper and deeper he sinks, learning subroutines and stacks
when he should be making a fool of himself with girls. Society
toasts him as a "Whiz Kid", and he retreats further into his soulless
world, mastering every intricacy of the technology. He skips
college, forswearing beer busts and other crucial instructive
foolishness for the foolishness of a job earning more money than his
father. For five, maybe ten years, he is treated like a budding
genius, catered to and pampered. Then something goes wrong and he is
discarded like an old sweater.
Numerous excuses are given for the failure of whiz kids at an
early age. Some call it burnout, the natural result of a too-intense
workstyle. Some point out that whiz kids don't get along well with
co-workers. Others point to the need for career development,
something unavailable to a person without a college degree. But
whatever the symptom, the underlying reason for failure is that whiz
kids are not fully developed human beings. They are emotionally and
educationally stunted, unable to cope with anything other than the
computer. The day inevitably comes when the boss demands more than
simple code-hacking, and the whiz kid cannot satisfy the demand.
I have known many such whiz kids. Not one has beaten the curse. It is a
tragic waste of talent. It is the highest price we pay for
the computer revolution, the human pollution of our high-tech
industry.
Even the computer has its dark side. This should come as no
surprise; every tool we make, from needle to A-bomb, has potential
for positive or negative uses. Those who bemoan the dehumanizing
influence of the computer have forgotten their heritage. The
computer does not introduce any new dehumanizing elements into our
society. It is the latest and most refined expression of forces that
have been at work in our civilization for hundreds of years. These
forces were not foisted on us by some malicious demon &emdash; they
are the expression of the desires and efforts of millions of people
over scores of generations. The computer is a single point in the
cannonball trajectory of civilization, connected to all other points
and existing because of them.
We must not blame our tools, nor deify them. We must learn to use them wisely. And here I must stop, for wisdom is outside the scope of this book.