Technology and the future: automation

Technological change can have mixed social and environmental impacts, some good, some bad, and some uncertain. Over the past few decades, social and political movements have emerged seeking to redirect technological development and steer it toward more environmentally and socially beneficial paths, challenging the technological status quo. In the energy field, some progress has been made in that regard, with renewables now winning battles. But there are many other fields where progress has been more uncertain. One of them concerns the development of new production technologies based on automatic systems and cybernetic controls- automation.

Some see automation in ‘liberatory’ terms, freeing mankind from the curse of backbreaking, mindless work. Other see it as destroying the technical skills, economic remuneration and social satisfactions associated with productive work. Both camps often allude to an arguably mythical golden past, when life was fuller and work was less alienated by technology. The anti-automation camp says that this happy state will finally be lost for ever, as technology runs out of control and humanity becomes its servant, while the pro-automation camp says that technology can release us to explore a work-free utopia.

It is certainly true that we have lost much that was valuable as industrialisation has spread, and there is much nostalgia for the bucolic past. Equally there was very little that was romantic about the hard-graft drudgery that most people faced. Technology has lessened that, or at least changed it into new forms of drudgery.  What will automation do? More of the same or something new?

A newly published Spokesman book ‘Delinquent Genius’ by Mike Cooley argues that we can in fact, and indeed must, make sure the new technology is human centred. We can’t stop it, but we can direct it so that automation enhances skills rather than replaces them- creating meaningful and creative work. The artisan culture beloved of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement in the UK only involved a small minority. Cooley seems to be arguing that human centred technology can expand that, so that all can participate.

He starts off with a damning critique of modern industrial society, an inhumane human creation of clever but careless ‘delinquent geniuses’ which seems hell bent on destroying the planet without thought. However, he goes beyond lamentation to offer an alternative path. His approach is based, in part, on the work he has done on machining. Modern semi automated lathe tools and the like are run using pre-programed instructions, based on designs created using computers. Computer Aided Design (CAD) may give designers some freedom to create new ideas, but the whole subsequent production system squeezes out the tacit knowledge of materials and how to work with them that typifies craft work.  What the system wants is speed and reliability, so as to reduce costs. So it goes for increasingly standardised products made in standardised ways with little opportunity for originality or diversity. Cooley, by contrast, want us to re-connect with imagination, intuition and creativity. So his Human Centred machines allow the machinist to take back control.

He sees this approach as generalisable. Rather than trying to extract expertise, skills and tacit knowledge from expert practitioners and codify them in so called ‘expert systems’, with central computer systems then being used by non experts, he wants to spread expertise and offer opportunities for all to participate, inputting their own ideas too. Put baldly like that, it may seem Utopian.  But Cooley points to the burst of creative ideas that emerged from ‘ordinary people’ when given the chance to contribute to the development of the 1970’s Lucas workers’ alternative plan for socially useful products.

Cooley was a leader in that initiative and in the subsequent community engagement work of the GLCs Technology Networks. Though they have gone, there are signs of similar approaches re-emerging, as in so-called ‘Fablabs’ and ‘make spaces’ - centres for people to explore new tech ideas. 3D printing offers one interesting new tool for inventive ‘bespoke production’. More generally, there is also interest in developing new alternative plans. It’s some way to go to being an approach that will sweep the world, but a start has been made, and Cooley’s wide-ranging new book will help underpin it.

What though is the final aim in terms of automation? At one point Cooley talks of ‘minimising that part of work that was backbreaking or soul destroying’, and most people would be in favour of that. Certainly most standard mass production can and should be 100% automated, but will more creative and inventive jobs be available for those made redundant? A small elite apart, that’s not what we’ve got now: for most, all that’s on offer is just retail, warehouse and low grade service jobs, with technology adding more pressure, until those jobs also disappear. Breaking out of this and working in local co-ops or community  organisations is an option for some, and the Labour Party has talked of expanding that sector, but what sort of work will be available there?  Just the stuff that can’t be automated but needs doing and is worth doing. That too usually has a range of tacit human skills- though even in the personal service sector, robots are being proposed. So the battle continues…

Is there a way out? Labour’s old Clause 4 talked of aiming ‘to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service’.

That is still arguably a good aim! But it is interesting that it starts off with a distinction between workers by hand and by brain, implying there is a fixed and permanent separation. Cooley’s argument, taken to its logical conclusion, is that there should not be, and that the artificial distinction between ‘brain’ and ‘manual’ work ignores the valuable tacit knowledge and skills associated with what is called manual work.  Recognising that, and also the social value of non-commercially orientated work, could go some way to creating a society in which the social benefits of automation (less dull work, more time for living, caring, and engaging in society) would outweigh its social costs in terms of job losses. 

That reordering of social and economic values would probably require a radical political transformation, something Cooley avoids exploring directly in this book.  His previous book, ‘Architect or Bee?’ is more didactically inclined. This one is more a thoughtful philosophical exploration, covering a very wide range of ideas, issues and experiences, but welding them into a timely and challenging treatise on what he sees as our odd relationship with technology and scientific reductionism.  At base what he is saying that it has allowed us to become too detached from the world: we are spectators rather than participants - trying to be objective when we also need to be subjective, intellectual when we also need be tactile.  With all of that impacting on how we view and value work, and also on how we live. https://spokesmanbookshop.com/Delinquent-Genius