X-Envelope-to: ETHICS-L@UGA.BITNET
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ethics-l
Date:         Mon, 6 Apr 1992 18:09:00 -0400
From:         "Valdemar W. Setzer" <vwsetzer@IME.USP.BR>
Subject: Re: Software: progress, quality, and professionalism

Dear Michael, you write

>Just remember, we control the machine.

My point is that we generally do not! Furthermore, there are machines that
force us to exercise control over them and others which, on the contrary,
force us not to control them. In the latter case you find TV sets (as
communication mass-media) and computers. As the TV set induces a hypnotical
state (already proved by neurophysiological research - I kwow a paper
in this direction by Krugman, "Brain wave measurements of media involvement",
Journal of Advertisement Research, Feb. 1971, pp. 3-9; does anyone
knows any other reference?)
the viewer is in general not in possession of his full consciousness - so
he cannot "control" the machine; for instance, he is not able to criticize
what is being transmitted (try to do it, try to stay fully conscious while
watching a program and see how you will get exhausted after some minutes...).
Only people that have already done extensive programming know that they have
to exercise an enormous self-discipline to use a program development
technique and produce a well-documented program. You write

> It gives us guidelines to work with
>our work, but we ultimately control what we do.

Not in the case of computers! They give you absolutely no guideline, because
what you are doing is using your thinking ability; the only constraints
are the syntax of the programming language and the algorithmic logics involved
in a program. They give us the ultimate perfection in trial-and-error. Now,
try to write a program and have it run, getting a wrong result. You will enter
what J.Weizenbaum called the "compulsive programmer" state: it will be very
difficult to stop trying this and that correction (without much thinking...)
until you get exhausted. You know beforehand that you will be able to find the
mistake and have it corrected. It is a pure intellectual battle between you
and the computer, which refuses to obey the master's orders... This may explain
why we get, in your words,
> generations of students who have been
>placed into conditions where they have survived numerous nights of 3 AM
>coding, JUST TO GET IT RIGHT!!!

They were "getting it right" only in the sense of obtaining correct results,
and not good programs. For instance, I doubt that they would be able to
understand what they did some days later. No, worse than that, they probably
do not know why their programs work (because in general programmers do not
make just one single correction, but a bunch of them at a time).

I would have to write much more to clarify my worries, but unfortunately,
e-mail systems have turned us into telegraph operators (see the extraordinary
book by Neil Postman, "Amusing ourselves to death - public discourse
in the age of show business", Penguin, for an interesting analysis of the
terrible consequences of the introduction of the telegraph - and also of TV).

Keep well, your Val.

PS:  JIM DOWNEY writes

>And technology is absent of "good" consequences?

Can anyone give me a good consequence of TVs on viewers? I have already given
about 60 public lectures against TV and nobody could give me a "good
consequence" of it. Well, apart from one case: Dr.Michaela Gloeckler
has told in a lecture that in a German hospital people that have undertaken
eye surgery are encouraged to watch TV: it produces such a static physical
state, even in the eyes, that the latter get healed faster...
May I repeat that I am not against tachnology. What do yoy think I am doing
right now??? Using it! For instance, I am a Ham operator (PY2EH) - anyone
willing to have a nice QSO  on computer ethics please find any PY2
station on the air and have him call me by phone (from Brazil, 011-247-4723),
and I will come to the frequency. Val.
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