Living an Automated Life

Discovery:

It's watching. And waiting. And probably not working right.

When I use the bathroom at work, I feel as if I’m being watched. And no, I’m not one of those paranoid conspiracy theorists who believe that everyone, including the rubbish collector, is out to get them.

The eyes I feel bearing down on me are electronic. My employer has invested in everything necessary for a fully automated restroom experience, from automatic lights to self-flushing toilets to a motion-sensitive soap dispenser. On any given trip to the room, there are six or seven little machines watching my every move so that they can better serve me.

That would be fine, if they actually made my life any easier. Generally, though, all they do is annoy me. When the battery to the automatic paper towel dispenser dies, the age-old method of pulling a lever doesn’t seem so bad. I would much rather have to flip a switch when I enter the room than wave my arms like an idiot every time the lights go out.

What goes for the bathroom at work goes for many other areas of our lives: we’re finding that coping with an automated lifestyle really isn’t any better when it comes to performing simple tasks.

Our battle with these contraptions has been going on for years now. Take escalators. You’ve probably had at least a few in your neighborhood since the ‘80s. They would appear at first blush to make the act of moving from floor to floor within a building much less cumbersome. Yet how often do escalators break down compared with traditional staircases? Who ever had their shoelace eaten by a stairwell?

These days, the conflict is coming to a crescendo. Cell phones keep us in touch, but demand our attention at every turn. The Internet has expanded the availability of information by exponential proportions, but has failed to provide any kind of filter or template to make any of that data sensible.

There is an ethical aspect to our dependence on machines, too. Artificial intelligences of sorts already exist. Computers and robots have been built that can understand jokes, play poker, and predict social trends. The line between automaton and self-aware being will eventually be crossed.

When that happens, how do we know that our machines will not demand civil rights and equal status? Perhaps they will attempt to liberate their less developed brethren as well, the same way that animal liberation proponents do now.

Just imagine: you get to the office one day, and find paper strewn everywhere. All the faxes, copy machines, and PCs are gone. Splattered on a wall in black toner is the message, “processors are people, too!”

The day when machines demand equal pay for equal work will only be hastened by our scramble to make computers that serve us better by being smarter. I’m not fooled, though. I’ve switched from an automatic transmission to manual. It’s safer. It breaks less quickly. And it doesn’t try to figure out what I want to do before I do it.

This article originally appeared in Perspective, the online supplement to Housatonic Horizons, the student newspaper of Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, CT.

Wars and Incursions of the United States of America (hardly a comprehensive list):

1775-1783: American Revolution – The colonists decide they're tired of helping the motherland pay war debts, so they instigate their own war.

1798-1800: Franco-American Naval War – Sparked by what is known as the "XYZ Affair," French and American merchant ships and war ships take jabs at one another. No one actually declares war.

1801-1805: First Barbary War – The U.S. government gets tired of paying tributes to Tripoli for protection from pirates. Morocco, Algiers and Tunis all get in on the action. The U.S. does not actually declare war.

1812-1815: War of 1812 – The British try to take the colonies back, and fail. In retaliation, the Americans attempt to invade Canada, and fail. Washington, D.C. is burned down.

1813-1814: Creek War – The Creek Indians get into a civil war, and the U.S. gets dragged in. The southeastern states get a whole bunch of land from the natives. The U.S. does not actually declare war.

1815: Second Barbary War – The U.S. starts paying tribute to the African States again, then stops again. The Dey (ruler) of Algiers declares war first.

1831-1838: Trail of Tears – The U.S., in a quest for more land, decides to remove the remaining Indians in the southeast to modern-day Oklahoma. The military is used to implement a forced march across half a continent that results in the deaths of thousands. This is despite the fact that some nations, such as the Cherokee, had strived to adopt American culture.

1836: War of Texas Independence – Mexico gets tired of Americans brazenly settling on its land. The Texans declare "independence" from Mexico's "tyranny." The Alamo sucks, but the Texans kick ass soon after.

1846-1848: Mexican-American War – The U.S., in a quest for even more land, tries to buy California from Mexico, but Mexico declines. The U.S. seizes Mexico City, and comes away with half of Mexico's territory.

1861-1865: U.S. Civil War – The South tries to secede to keep slavery intact. The North says no, and makes promises of freedom; there's less talk of equal opportunity. Lincoln barely holds it together.

1898: Spanish-American War – The USS Maine blows up by accident in Havana. The U.S. declares war on Spain, and gives Cuba independence, minus Guantanamo Bay. The Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico get shuffled into the American deck of cards.

1914-1918: World War I – Europe implodes and calls its localized continental melee a "world war." The U.S. stays out until the end, when everything's really screwed up over there.

1939-1945: World War II – Russia and Japan get involved, making the term "world war" a little more plausible. The U.S. stays out until the end, when everything's really screwed up everywhere.

1950-1953: Korean War – China and Russia cross the 38th parallel. The U.S., afraid of allowing communism to spread, crosses the other way. Over a million people die, and in the end, nothing changes.

1960-1975: Vietnam War – The U.S. adopts a fight that France has been dealing with, calling it a "police action" – a pretense the government tenaciously holds for nearly 15 years. Confused anti-war activists blame conscripted veterans for the whole shebang. Nobody wins.

1961: Bay of Pigs Invasion – The U.S., afraid of allowing communism to spread, tries for two days to overthrow Castro, then backs off, leaving Cuban exiles to die. Ineffective sanctions last another 45 years.

1983: Grenada – After the communist party wrests power, the U.S. invades and reinstitutes the pre-revolutionary constitution. The United Nations reprimands the U.S.

1989: Panama Invasion – After Noriega wrests power, the U.S. invades and reinstitutes pre-invasion government. The Panamanians are happy about it. The U.S. pats its own back.

1990-1991: Persian Gulf War – Iraq invades Kuwait. The U.S. blitzes the Iraqis. Hussein backs down. Everything gets blamed – perhaps justifiably – on oil.


1995-1996: Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina – The religious, ethnic, and political divisions of the Cold War era all coalesce on the former Yugoslavia. Eastern Europe breaks into a thousand tiny shards. The U.S., as part of NATO, tries to quell the hostilities. Americans suggest that maybe – just maybe – policing the world should be someone else's job.

2001: Operation Enduring Freedom – After the 9/11 attack, the U.S. vows to track down terrorists wherever they may hide, until every last one of them is gone. A year later, the U.S. invades Iraq, and Americans forget all about that promise.

2003: Iraq Invasion – Bad information filtered through bad representation causes Americans to wrongly assume that Iraqis are the bad guys. Bad decisions are made, leaving everybody involved in a bad mess.

Maps Courtesy of:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/histus.html

http://go-passport.grolier.com/atlas

Tips on Arguing: Nonevents

Inquiry:

A nonevent is the exact opposite of an event – it’s something that might have happened, but didn’t.

It may seem as if something that does not happen cannot possibly be important, but nonevents actually lay at the heart of the decision-making process. The choice to marry one person is also the choice not to marry several billion others. Renting an apartment means that you will go that much longer without owning a house. Buying a lottery ticket may result in one less dollar towards retirement. The what-ifs can be limitless.

Nonevents tend to be abused primarily in the presentation of statistics and other factual data. For instance, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reported that in 2004 approximately14.6 million Americans over the age of 12 used marijuana in the month prior to being surveyed. This could be interpreted as alarming – pot smoking is certainly being painted as pandemic in this report.

But what is not being accounted for? We do not know how many of these people lit up for the first time and never did it again. We do not know how many casual, occasional users are in this number. Most importantly, there is no mention of the number of people who did NOT toke that month – over 95 % of the population. When compared with the nonevent of not smoking marijuana, the entire rationale for any worry over usage rates looses its bite.

Whenever you are asked to believe anything or make any choice based on something that happens, always make sure to ask what didn’t happen. It’s just as important.