The groove before the machine @3QD

I’ve got a new article at 3 Quarks Daily: One thought for living in a high-tech world: The groove before the machine. It’s a strange one, for me, more aphoristic, metaphorical, and polemical, than actually argued. Not sure how I’d argue it. Not even sure what IT is.

Not what I started to write

I started to write an article explaining these three maxims:

1. The groove before the machine.

2. To drive a car, get in the driver’s seat.

3. The machine is useful in proportion to the user’s skill, knowledge, and experience.

As I started writing, my account of the first maxim took on a life of its own and I didn’t see how I could work the other two in. So, I took the article in a different direction:

We’re living in a mismatched world

This is where (I think) I was going:

Our basic institutions and norms are grounded in late Industrial Revolution social and political technology. That’s radically different from the technology that's been barreling in on us since the internet became the world-wide web. AI is just going to magnify that. What we’re now seeing in Silicon Valley and in Washington, DC., that’s what happens when 21st century high tech meets 19th century Gilded Age institutions. Not pretty.

Those mega-corporations now burning through billions investing in machine learning and preparing to dump 100s of billions into electrical infrastructure: 19th century. The school system, the institutional sector I know best: 19th century. The lock-step grade system in the primary schools was designed to send young adults into factories, standardized factories. The yawning gulf between the sciences and humanities in higher ed, that’s out of 19th century Germany. Chatbots make a hash out of that.

This mismatch is a disaster in the making.

I didn’t get there. Truth be told, I don’t quite know how. Instead a told a story about the hassle involved in trying to get a customized cover for a book I’d recently bought, Reid Hoffman’s Superagency: What Could Possibly Right with Our AI Future. They wanted me to upload a photo of myself but wouldn’t accept any of the photos I offered. It was frustrating, especially because I didn’t care all that much about the photo, so why should they make such a fuss about it? This reminded me of the hassle Facebook gave me and a bunch of other people about changing their interface, something I’ve blogged about under the heading, “Facebook or Freedom.”

Anyhow, getting back to Reid Hoffman’s customized book cover – the very idea of a customixed book is born out of 19th century standardizing culture. Who knows what will replace it.

And that, more or less, is where I left things. Kinda’ hanging, no?

Next time.