Nicholas Carr

Examines the psychological and neurological impact of spending so much time at work and at play with computers and technology, and discusses the effect it has on happiness and satisfaction.

Automation and Us

The Glass Cage

Beau

Carr's previous book, The Shallows, challenged and subsequently shaped some of my fundamental views on the very concept of technology - led alone the Internet and it's cognitive affects on human beings. In The Glass Cage I found myself critiquing and thinking deeply about my digital world once more. Automation is a seemingly invisible beast in 2015 - ubiquitous and unnoticed. However Carr, as he does best, breaks down a multitude of seemingly obvious misconceptions about machines replacing the human work force and the ideas around humans extracting value out of simply working (and what happens to us when we're reduced to observers) to present us with a challenge: "Technology has always challenged people to think about what's important in their lives, to ask themselves...what human being means...we can allow ourselves to be carried along by the technological current, wherever it may be taking us, or we can push against it. To resist invention isn't to reject invention. It's to humble invention, to bring progress down down to earth" Once again, I find myself looking at our current world and wondering whether or not we still have dominion over our machines, our social networks - even over our digitally-induced relationships. If you find yourself in a similar situation, then this book is for you.

Nelson Zagalo

I’ve really enjoyed previous book from Carr, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains“, however I can’t say the same of this one. The principal idea behind the book is much less convincing, not as well researched, neither argued. Carr fails in pursuing an impartial perspective, biasing interpretations, weakening conclusions.

The central argument follows the same idea of his previous book, synthesised in this phrase by George Dyson, “What if the cost of machines that think is people who don’t?”, only that now his concerns moved from the internet to automation. Carr spends the entire book discussing cases that support the vision: the more we automate the world, the less alive we’ll feel and be.

Even if I can agree with some of his speculations, the main problem is that Carr never discusses, neither present any contra-argumentation. Carr picks a subject and follows the dissection through a tunnel approach. As an example, Carr spends and entire chapter speculating about the effects of GPS in our abilities to map the world, to gain sense of the environment, but he never brings into discussion the inmate differences between people that are good at mapping, and people who aren’t.

My overall impression, even if I see Carr as a good thinker, the lack of background in psychology and AI weakens his interpretations. Saying that computers can never think, is not really understanding what we’re made of.

This can be an interesting book to introduce people to current technologies of automation, however I would advise caution, otherwise people will feel that should avoid, resist as Carr even puts it, automation.

At once a celebration of technology and a warning about its misuse, The Glass Cage will change the way you think about the tools you use every day.

How Our Computers Are Changing Us

Luke Kanies

Like Rise of Robots, this book is a polemic against automation. It does, periodically, indicate that maybe, once in a while, some piece of technology has actually helped people, but only ever as a lead in to pointing out some other, much worse way in which it has hurt.

The primary flaw in this book is that it really only considers the harms of automation, and never really how it helps. It lambastes the downsides of automated farm equipment, but never mentions the fact that they’re the only way we can feed 7 billion people. It never mentions the benefits of no longer wearing burlap because we have better weaving and sewing tools, or of our ability to stay closely connected to people all over the world because of transportation and computers. So, all it can reasonably do is provide a lot of warnings, but bring your perspective because it has none.

It’s hard to know what to make of this book. It is not as badly written as Rise of Robots, which really just means its strident opinion is a bit more tolerable. It could comfortably have been half as long, which I know because I skipped quite a few pages and was still stultified with the repetition and reiteration.

I think its most damning criticism is, I don’t know why this book exists.

Are we meant to be afraid? Retreat to the woods?

Who is it for? People who make automation? But there’s no advice for them, other than possibly to slit their throats to save mankind.

For users of automation? This book gives no hope to them. They are screwed.

I think it implies there is some faceless power that intentionally creates automation, but if so, no protection is offered here.

The Glass Cage Automation and Us

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