1. 14:55 26th Jan 2012

    Notes: 5

    Tags: tech

    We have a dialectical relationship with our machines: We create systems and they recreate us. We create computers first as complements to ourselves, to do the tasks we’re not particularly good at, things involving precision: long calculations, for example, and simple, repetitive tasks. All this is fine when we are using, say, a calculator. But as computers become ubiquitous, we find ourselves surrounded with these things based on precision. So more and more of the things we need to accomplish are tasks defined by computers more rigidly than we as humans would define them for ourselves. We are forced to become more precise in our actions to satisfy the needs of our own systems, which we built initially as helpers and which eventually gain a kind of power over us.
    — 

    Ellen Ullman interview - Close to the Machine

    This is one of the most interesting statements in this interview with programmer Ellen Ullman, in issue 15 of Stay Free magazine. Link via Maud Newton.

     
    1. mulberryroad posted this