X-Envelope-to: ETHICS-L@UGA.BITNET
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ethics-l
Date:         Thu, 9 Apr 1992 14:52:45 -0400
From:         "Valdemar W. Setzer" <vwsetzer@IME.USP.BR>
Subject: Re: TV & computers again

I am very sorry for this long msg, but I feel compelled to answer the
questions with a minimum of detail.

Tim Weaver writes

> You speak of having no guidelines and constraints as if it were a bad
>thing.

No, I do not. I just wanted to justify the assertion that the computer
does not force discipline.

> If you structure everything and put
>guidelines and constraints on the medium, you also put constraints on the
>creativity.

One of my conjectures is that in the programming activity the computer
restricts so much the mental space (to that of algorithms and the
limited syntax of a programming language) that it ends up damaging
creativity in the broad sense. Designing new algorithms is a partial
mathematical creativity. Writing a program is perhaps more an activity
of producing mental associations. When do we say that a writer is
creative? When he or she is able to produce and describe new scenarios,
new plots, new "castles in the air" (translating a saying in Portuguese
- maybe it also exists in English...), completely unexpected and which
move us into a non-existant imaginative world (how about Tolkien?). To
be really imaginative, one should not face a well defined situation. For
instance, suppose someone has a big quarrel with his/her partner, and
he/she abandons the home. The situation is ill-defined (in formal
terms); there is no rule-of-thumb to make him/her come back. There you
need real creativity. Also on "real" arts (not those that have become
pure formal research - in this sense, computer art is in fact anti-art,
but this is another subject). In these respects, writing a program
requires an infinitesimal of creativity, because the problem is
mathematically well-defined. Let me give a bad analogy. Suppose you
do 8 hours a day of weight lifting. Can you imagine how strong you will
become after one year? Now take a programmer or a systanalist, and
make him think in a narrow, formal way 8 hours a day. Do you think this
activity will not produce consequences in his way of thinking? I may
conjecture that he will become a narrow-minded, inflexible, anti-social
(most of the time he deals with abstract machines, and not people...)
person. One of the antidotes I recommend to my
audiences of programmers and systems analysts is practising some
artistic activity. The one I think that is the best in this case is
painting with water-color on wet paper: there the boundaries are not
clear, exactly the opposite of the programming activity. Also, in this
case thinking is completely based upon feeling (esthetical sensations),
and not upon a dry, dead logic. Programmers have to become conscious
that from time to time they have to clean their thinking, which has
been tremendously polluted by those dead thoughts that can be fed into
a machine. In fact, the computer **forces** the programmer to reduce his
highest capacity, thinking, to machine-"thinking". We could say that the
programmer is being forced to act like a machine, but not a physical
one, no, much worse, an animical one. Are these exagerations? Maybe, but
what if they are not?

>The truth is that the machine doesn't have control over us until such
>time as we voluntarily give it up.

My argument is that in many cases, and depending on the machine, we **unconsciou
   sly**, that is, "involuntarily" give up. Why should we not
tell people to avoid such cases?

> The solution is always to stay awake, alive and critical  Think about
>what you are doing.

Exactly, but for that you need to have good knowledge of the problems
(mainly psychological) caused by machines. This is what I was trying to
explain. Isn't it evident that some machines may cause more problems than
others?

>I'm not saying that there aren't traps out there, tv is a good ele,
>by the same token so are books (try reading romance novels sometime),
>pornography (no flames please), music, drugs, anything that takes over
>for your imagination.

TVs do not, as I explain below.

> Rather that try to prevent these things from being addicting, teach
>people how not to become addicted, or better yet, teach people how to be
>awake and alive.

I am against prohibitions (attention: this applies only to responsible
adults, not to children!); I am not going to through your TV set into the
garbage can. I want to give you concepts that will eventually lead to your
own action in this direction - if you agree with me.  And if you don't agree,
I would like to know your reasons to perfect or change  mine.

>I vigorously object to the concept that the viewer is not able to criticize
>the television. ... I, for one, tend to remain very critical of what
>I watch.

If you really can do it, then you are a phenomenon, as I explain below. Maybe
you have not realized that in general you are not that critical when
viewing TV, or maybe your conception of "critical" is different than
mine...


>As to the brainwave experiment, I'd be curious as to how these brainwave
>measurements compare to those of someone in deep meditation.  If they are
>comparable (and I really have no idea), then your argument has a problem
>because there is no machine controling them. ...

The results show a preponderance of low-frequency waves, exactly the
opposite to reading or states of attention, where there is a
preponderance of high-frequency waves. The first state is interpreted by
psychologists as a state of drowsiness or semi-hypnotical. When you
speak about meditation, you have to specify which type: emptying the
thinking contents, concentration on will processes (physiological
processes), active thinking, etc. (In my opinion, only active thinking
is adequate to our times, but this is another field of discussion...).
Anyhow, even if the braaves showed in the encephalogram are
"comparable", my argument has no problem, because their cause is
completely opposite: one is caused by external (unconscious), the other
by internal (conscious) stimuli. If the encephalogram would not show the
difference, that would be very bad for such an experiment; I am referring to
another experiment where the difference is absolutely clear.

>... Here again, I stress my point, machines do
>not force us to give up control, it is a voluntary action, perhaps done
>through ignorance, but it is still a choice.  Where people loose control
>over their actions to machines, the answer is not in the machine, but in
>the person.

I repeat my point: the programmer and TV viewer are not conscious of the
fact that they have "given up control". This is, in my opinion, a strong
ethical point.
------------------------
Is it so difficult to realize that when driving a car you have to be
attentive (and disciplined - and how much, in the US! It is delicious to
drive there, in comparison to our traffic). When watching TV, you don't
have to be attentive, on the contrary; as the apparatus is inducing a
hypnotical state, you have to make tremendous efforts to maintain your
attention. Now try to read a book. If you don't do it attentively, you
will get to the bottom of the page and realize that you have missed
everything. Contrary to the TV (I am not speaking here of video
recorders) you will be able to go back and re-read the whole part again,
forcing your attention. Where does the fundamental difference comes
from? Reading requires an inner activity: if the text describes
something, you have to mentally form the corresponding image
("Vorstellung"); if it describes concepts, you have to associate them to
other known concepts. TV does not leave space to any inner activity:
image and sound are complete, finished products, coming from the
outside. Moreover, the electron-beam scanning at the screen, blinking 30
times each second, your physical immobility and the fixed sound origin
produce a hypnotization scenario. That is why so many people - the
lucky ones - get asleep after watching TV for some minutes. And that is
why the camera director keeps moving the image - if it stays still,
almost every viewer will get asleep. In his book, which I mentioned in
another mail, Jerry Mander mentions an average of 12 camera movements
every minute. So you cannot absorb yourself in a certain theme or image
- one more reason for not being possible to keep attention and criticize
what is being transmited. Isn't this a big ethical problem? People are
using machines which prevent the user to be critical about what the
machine is doing... This also applies to some computer programs, for
instance Specialist Systems. If the system has hundreds of rules, the
user will not be able to understand why the machine has reached this or
that conclusion. This leads into another field: the impact of
misterious technology upon the user. And how misterious computers are
for laymen! But this is another discussion topic... with highly ethical
consequences.
----------------------------------
Stuart Milligan writes:

> If Mr. Setzer is a parent, I would
>be terribly surprised if he not once told his children to do or not do a
>particular thing.  To be consistent, if you do not like commandments, yea,
>especially the Ten Commandments, then you will also not issue commands.

I am sorry, I was not clear enough. I am against commandments or commands
in regard to responsible adults. I am a parent and have 4 children, the
oldest is 26 and the youngest 17 years old. If you do not issue commands
to your young children, then in my conception they will probably have
later some psychological problems, like being dependent or feeling insecure.
I am against the modism called "libertarian education" - at home or at
school. I don't recall the last time we gave a "command" to my youngest
daughter; it is not necessary, because we educated her to discuss with us
every important move she takes, and give value to and respect our opinions. To
reach that point, she had to receive lots of commands.

Valdemar W. Setzer
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Sao Paulo

======================================================================
Dear Ed, I did not forget your nice msg of last Friday. I have really
appreciated your support. Unfortunately, I found myself obliged to
comment on more urgent questions raised by other people.
It is so nice to know that one's ideas are not isolated ones, and may
fall sometimes on fertile ground!
Your, Val.
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