The Glass Cage: Automation and Us

We reached a state of continuous technological progress for technology's sake instead of society's sake. Our tools and machines may have started out being adapted to our needs, but now it us who gets sculpted around technology. Aas machines more and more take over not only our physical but also our mental tasks, we end up de-skilled, disengaged and unhappy. The utopian vision of a work-free society falls apart with our inborn need to occupy ourselves, our bodies, our brains, with meaningful tasks.

Carr goes through different industries and demonstrates their growing dependence on computers and automation: the dangers of relying on auto-pilots (flight and cars), the trust in expert systems in medicine, reliance on GPS navigation, etc. And already the progress of automation opens up morality questions once machines will be able to drive, hurt, kill by simply following algorithms.

Obviously there is no solution in the book besides a wider uptake of the “adaptive automation” principle. Trying to position the tasks left to humanity on the upper ridge of the Yerkes–Dodson slope, bridging cognitive underload and cognitive overload. To keep us alert, to keep us occupied, to keep us happy.

The book leaves you with the message that next time you pick up a new tool or a new gadget, you should consider and evaluate what skills of yours it'll supplement and what skills it'll diminish.