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Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Thu, 23 Jul 1992 07:22:33 EDT
              <GIS-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From:         Duane F Marble <dmarble@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject:      Value of Advanced Technology (a reposting)

The following is reposted from the RISKS forum for two reasons. First,
the topic is one which should be of considerable interest to GIS types.
Second, the Paris taxi example is clearly one involving spatial data
handling technology.

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Date: Sun, 19 Jul 92 18:30:08 PDT
From: bertrand@eiffel.com (Bertrand Meyer, Interactive Software Engineering)
Subject: The role of expertise in technological advances

This note is a call for argued opinions about the effect of technological
advances on the value of people's expertise and qualifications.  In particular
it would be interesting to hear views about the relative merits of the
following two opposite conjectures:

  A. The introduction of a new technology gives the highest advantage to people
  who are already the most advanced experts, as they are in the best position
  to understand the new developments, and thus will benefit the most from them.
  The advances will in face increase the lead that the best people already had
  over the others.

  B. Introducing a new technology makes it possible for many people to do what
  was previously the exclusive specialty of a few experts.  So it levels off
  the field, putting everyone at the same position.

I can see serious arguments and examples supporting both conjectures.  To keep
this note short, I have selected just two widely different examples, one for
each. Only the second is computer-related. (My personal interest in this
discussion is with respect to advances in software engineering, but the problem
is more general.)

A. In his book ``Tristes Tropiques'', the ethnologist Claude Levi-Strauss
recounts how he visited a South American tribe that didn't know writing. He
introduced it to them; writing was immediately put to good use by the tribe's
chief, who could see how the ability to record and retrieve his decisions would
increase his power.

B. It used to be quite hard to get a taxi in Paris. The situation has
considerably improved thanks to the installation by the biggest taxi company of
a computer-based system. This might at first seem to be an argument for A since
this system has (at least temporarily) given the company a big lead over its
competitors, but here is the other side. In a recent stay in Paris in which I
frequently needed taxis to pick me up, I was able almost every time to obtain
one in about five minutes.  I once complimented a driver on this efficiency. He
responded by heaping tons of abuse on the system. After a period of
astonishment, I understood the reason for his anger. He has been in the
business for twenty years or so, and knows every street and lane in the city;
he also knows the best itineraries, and where he should and should not be at
each time of day and year to get good business (go to the Gare d'Austerlitz at
certain times, to the airports at certain others and so on).  But now the new
system puts every upstart driver, who has just passed his exam and paid for his
license, at the same level as him! You just key in a certain code to indicate
where you are, and get queued for customers' requests in that area. Then when
your turn comes you get the next customer. The computer system apparently also
indicates where the hottest areas are at any time of day. Very little advantage
remains for an experienced professional driver. He was looking with even more
horror to a future (apparently promised) extension of the system, whereby ``the
computer'' would show recommended itineraries!

Please note that the discussion is not about people whose job is simply made
obsolete by the new advances (as craftsmen at the time of the industrial
revolution, or draughtsmen at the time of the introduction of computer-aided
design). Assuming people are experts in a field, and remain in that field, is
new technology a way to increase their lead or should they fear losing their
advantage?


--
Duane F. Marble              E-mail: dmarble@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
Department of Geography
The Ohio State University    Telephone: (614) 292-2250
Columbus, Ohio 43210         Fax: (614) 292-6213
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU