There\u2019s a line of verse I\u2019m always coming back to, and it\u2019s been on my mind more than usual these last few months:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s the second to last line of one of Robert Frost\u2019s\nearliest and best poems, a sonnet called \u201cMowing.\u201d He wrote it just after the\nturn of the twentieth century, when he was a young man, in his twenties, with a\nyoung family. He was working as a farmer, raising chickens and tending a few\napple trees on a small plot of land his grandfather had bought for him in\nDerry, New Hampshire. It was a difficult time in his life. He had little money\nand few prospects. He had dropped out of two colleges, Dartmouth and Harvard,\nwithout earning a degree. He had been unsuccessful in a succession of petty\njobs. He was sickly. He had nightmares. His firstborn child, a son, had died of\ncholera at the age of three. His marriage was troubled. \u201cLife was peremptory,\u201d\nFrost would later recall, \u201cand threw me into confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it was during those lonely years in Derry that he came into his own as a writer and an artist. Something about farming\u2014the long, repetitive days, the solitary work, the closeness to nature\u2019s beauty and carelessness\u2014inspired him. The burden of labor eased the burden of life. \u201cIf I feel timeless and immortal it is from having lost track of time for five or six years there,\u201d he would write of his stay in Derry. \u201cWe gave up winding clocks. Our ideas got untimely from not taking newspapers for a long period. It couldn\u2019t have been more perfect if we had planned it or foreseen what we were getting into.\u201d In the breaks between chores on the farm, Frost somehow managed to write most of the poems for his first book, A Boy\u2019s Will<\/em>; about half the poems for his second book, North of Boston<\/em>; and a good number of other poems that would find their way into subsequent volumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMowing,\u201d from A Boy\u2019s Will<\/em>, was the greatest of his Derry lyrics. It was the poem\nin which he found his distinctive voice: plainspoken and conversational, but\nalso sly and dissembling. (To really understand Frost\u2014to really understand\nanything, including yourself\u2014requires as much mistrust as trust.) As with many\nof his best works, \u201cMowing\u201d has an enigmatic, almost hallucinatory quality that\nbelies the simple and homely picture it paints\u2014in this case of a man cutting a\nfield of grass for hay. The more you read the poem, the deeper and stranger it\nbecomes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound\u2014
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nWe rarely look to poetry for\ninstruction anymore, but here we see how a poet\u2019s scrutiny of the world can be\nmore subtle and discerning than a scientist\u2019s. Frost understood the meaning of the\nmental state we now call \u201cflow\u201d long before psychologists and neurobiologists\ndelivered the empirical evidence. His mower is not an airbrushed peasant, a rustic\ncaricature. He\u2019s a farmer, a man doing a hard job on a still, hot summer day.\nHe\u2019s not dreaming of \u201cidle hours\u201d or \u201ceasy gold.\u201d His mind is on his work\u2014the\nbodily rhythm of the cutting, the weight of the tool in his hands, the stalks\npiling up around him. He\u2019s not seeking some greater truth beyond the work. The\nwork is the truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
There are mysteries in that line.\nIts power lies in its refusal to mean anything more or less than what it says.\nBut it seems clear that what Frost is getting at, in the line and in the poem,\nis the centrality of action to both living and knowing. Only through work that\nbrings us into the world do we approach a true understanding of existence, of\n\u201cthe fact.\u201d It\u2019s not an understanding that can be put into words. It can\u2019t be\nmade explicit. It\u2019s nothing more than a whisper. To hear it, you need to get\nvery near its source. Labor, whether of the body or the mind, is more than a\nway of getting things done. It\u2019s a form of contemplation, a way of seeing the\nworld face-to-face rather than through a glass. Action un-mediates perception,\ngets us close to the thing itself. It binds us to the earth, Frost implies, as\nlove binds us to one another. The antithesis of transcendence, work puts us in\nour place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Frost is a poet of labor. He\u2019s always coming back to those revelatory moments when the active self blurs into the surrounding world\u2014when, as he would write in another poem, \u201cthe work is play for mortal stakes.\u201d Richard Poirier, in his book Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing<\/em>, described with great sensitivity the poet\u2019s view of the essence and essentialness of hard work: \u201cAny intense labor enacted in his poetry, like mowing or apple-picking, can penetrate to the visions, dreams, myths that are at the heart of reality, constituting its articulate form for those who can read it with a requisite lack of certainty and an indifference to merely practical possessiveness.\u201d The knowledge gained through such efforts may be as shadowy and elusive as a dream, but \u201cin its mythic propensities, the knowledge is less ephemeral than are the apparently more practical results of labor, like food or money.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we embark on a task, with our bodies or our minds, on our own or alongside others, we usually have a practical goal in sight. Our eyes are looking ahead to the product of our work\u2014a store of hay for feeding livestock, perhaps. But it\u2019s through the work itself that we come to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our situation. The mowing, not the hay, is what matters most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* * *<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Frost is not romanticizing some distant, pre-technological past. Although he was dismayed by those who allowed themselves to become \u201cbigoted in reliance \/ On the gospel of modern science,\u201d he felt a kinship with scientists and inventors. As a poet, he shared with them a common spirit and pursuit. They were all explorers of the mysteries of earthly life, excavators of meaning from matter. They were all engaged in work that, as Poirier described it, \u201ccan extend the capability of human dreaming.\u201d For Frost, the greatest value of \u201cthe fact\u201d\u2014whether apprehended in the world or expressed in a work of art or made manifest in a tool or other invention\u2014lay in its ability to expand the scope of individual knowing and hence open new avenues of perception, action, and imagination. In the long poem \u201cKitty Hawk,\u201d written near the end of his life, he celebrated the Wright brothers\u2019 flight \u201cInto the unknown, \/ Into the sublime.\u201d In making their own \u201cpass \/ At the infinite,\u201d the brothers also made the experience of flight, and the sense of unboundedness it provides, possible for all of us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Technology is as crucial to the\nwork of knowing as it is to the work of production. The human body, in its\nnative, unadorned state, is a feeble thing. It\u2019s constrained in its strength,\nits dexterity, its sensory range, its calculative prowess, its memory. It\nquickly reaches the limits of what it can do. But the body encompasses a mind\nthat can imagine, desire, and plan for achievements the body alone can\u2019t\nfulfill. This tension between what the body can accomplish and what the mind\ncan envision is what gave rise to and continues to propel and shape technology.\nIt\u2019s the spur for humankind\u2019s extension of itself and elaboration of nature.\nTechnology isn\u2019t what makes us \u201cposthuman\u201d or \u201ctranshuman,\u201d as some writers and\nscholars these days suggest. It\u2019s what makes us human. Technology is in our\nnature. Through our tools we give our dreams form. We bring them into the\nworld. The practicality of technology may distinguish it from art, but both\nspring from a similar, distinctly human yearning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the many jobs the human body\nis unsuited to is cutting grass. (Try it if you don\u2019t believe me.) What allows\nthe mower to do his work, what allows him to be a mower, is the tool he wields,\nhis scythe. The mower is, and has to be, technologically enhanced. The tool\nmakes the mower, and the mower\u2019s skill in using the tool remakes the world for\nhim. The world becomes a place in which he can act as a mower, in which he can\nlay the swale in rows. This idea, which on the surface may sound trivial or\neven tautological, points to something elemental about life and the formation\nof the self. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe body is our general means of\nhaving a world,\u201d wrote the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his 1945\nmasterwork Phenomenology of Perception<\/em>.\nOur physical makeup\u2014the fact that we walk upright on two legs at a certain\nheight, that we have a pair of hands with opposable thumbs, that we have eyes which\nsee in a particular way, that we have a certain tolerance for heat and cold\u2014determines\nour perception of the world in a way that precedes, and then molds, our\nconscious thoughts about the world. We see mountains as lofty not because\nmountains are lofty but because our perception of their form and height is\nshaped by our own stature. We see a stone as, among other things, a weapon\nbecause the particular construction of our hand and arm enables us to pick it\nup and throw it. Perception, like cognition, is embodied. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It follows that whenever we gain a new talent, we not only change our bodily capacities, we change the world. The ocean extends an invitation to the swimmer that it withholds from the person who has never learned to swim. With every skill we master, the world reshapes itself to reveal greater possibilities. It becomes more interesting, and being in it becomes more rewarding. This may be what Baruch Spinoza, the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher who rebelled against Ren\u00e9 Descartes\u2019 division of mind and body, was getting at when he wrote, \u201cThe human mind is capable of perceiving a great many things, and is the more capable, the more its body can be disposed in a great many ways.\u201d John Edward Huth, a physics professor at Harvard, testifies to the regeneration that attends the mastery of a skill. A decade ago, inspired by Inuit hunters and other experts in natural wayfinding, he undertook \u201ca self-imposed program to learn navigation through environmental clues.\u201d Through months of rigorous outdoor observation and practice, he taught himself how to read the nighttime and daytime skies, interpret the movements of clouds and waves, decipher the shadows cast by trees. \u201cAfter a year of this endeavor,\u201d he recalled in a recent essay, \u201csomething dawned on me: the way I viewed the world had palpably changed. The sun looked different, as did the stars.\u201d Huth\u2019s enriched perception of the environment, gained through a kind of \u201cprimal empiricism,\u201d struck him as being \u201cakin to what people describe as spiritual awakenings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Technology, by enabling us to act\nin ways that go beyond our bodily limits, also alters our perception of the\nworld and what the world signifies to us. Technology\u2019s transformative power is\nmost apparent in tools of discovery, from the microscope and the particle\naccelerator of the scientist to the canoe and the spaceship of the explorer,\nbut the power is there in all tools, including the ones we use in our everyday\nlives. Whenever an instrument allows us to cultivate a new talent, the world\nbecomes a different and more intriguing place, a setting of even greater\nopportunity. To the possibilities of nature are added the possibilities of\nculture. \u201cSometimes,\u201d wrote Merleau-Ponty, \u201cthe signification aimed at cannot\nbe reached by the natural means of the body. We must, then, construct an\ninstrument, and the body projects a cultural world around itself.\u201d The value of\na well-made and well-used tool lies not only in what it produces for us but\nwhat it produces in us. At its best, technology opens fresh ground. It gives us\na world that is at once more understandable to our senses and better suited to\nour intentions\u2014a world in which we\u2019re more at home. Used thoughtfully and with\nskill, a tool becomes much more than a means of production or consumption. It\nbecomes a means of experience. It gives us more ways to lead rich and engaged lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Look more closely at the scythe.\nIt\u2019s a simple tool, but an ingenious one. Invented around 500 BC, by the Romans\nor the Gauls, it consists of a curved blade, forged of iron or steel, attached\nto the end of a long wooden pole, or snath. The snath typically has, about\nhalfway down its length, a small wooden grip, or nib, that makes it possible to\ngrasp and swing the implement with two hands. The scythe is a variation on the\nmuch older sickle, a similar but short-handled cutting tool that was invented\nin the Stone Age and came to play an essential role in the early development of\nagriculture and, in turn, of civilization. What made the scythe a momentous\ninnovation in its own right is that its long snath allowed a farmer or other\nlaborer to cut grass at ground level while standing upright. Hay or grain could\nbe harvested, or a pasture cleared, more quickly than before. Agriculture\nleaped forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scythe enhanced the\nproductivity of the worker in the field, but its benefit went beyond what could\nbe measured in yield. The scythe was a congenial tool, far better suited to the\nbodily work of mowing than the sickle had been. Rather than stooping or\nsquatting, the farmer could walk with a natural gait and use both his hands, as\nwell as the full strength of his torso, in his job. The scythe served as both\nan aid and an invitation to the skilled work it enabled. We see in its form a\nmodel for technology on a human scale, for tools that extend the productive\ncapabilities of society without circumscribing the individual\u2019s scope of action\nand perception. Indeed, as Frost makes clear in \u201cMowing,\u201d the scythe\nintensifies its user\u2019s involvement with and apprehension of the world. The\nmower swinging a scythe does more, but he also knows more. Despite outward\nappearances, the scythe is a tool of the mind as well as the body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not all tools are so congenial. Some deter us from skilled action. The technologies of computerization and automation that hold such sway over us today rarely invite us into the world or encourage us to develop new talents that enlarge our perceptions and expand our possibilities. They mostly have the opposite effect. They\u2019re designed to be disinviting. They pull us away from the world. That\u2019s a consequence not only of prevailing design practices, which place ease and efficiency above all other concerns, but also of the fact that, in our personal lives, the computer, particularly in the form of the smartphone, has become a media device, its software painstakingly programmed to grab and hold our attention. As most people know from experience, the computer screen is intensely compelling, not only for the conveniences it offers but also for the many diversions it provides. There\u2019s always something going on, and we can join in at any moment with the slightest of effort. Yet the screen, for all its enticements and stimulations, is an environment of sparseness\u2014fast-moving, efficient, clean, but revealing only a shadow of the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s true even of the most meticulously crafted simulations of space that we find in virtual-reality applications such as games, architectural models, three-dimensional maps, and the video-meeting tools used to mimic classrooms, conference rooms, and cocktail parties. Artificial renderings of space may provide stimulation to our eyes and to a lesser degree our ears, but they tend to starve our other senses\u2014touch, smell, taste\u2014and greatly restrict the movements of our bodies. A study of rodents, published in Science<\/em> in 2013, indicated that the brain cells used in navigation are much less active when animals make their way through computer-generated landscapes than when they traverse the real world. \u201cHalf of the neurons just shut up,\u201d reported one of the researchers, UCLA neurophysicist Mayank Mehta. He believes that the drop-off in mental activity likely stems from the lack of \u201cproximal cues\u201d\u2014environmental smells, sounds, and textures that provide clues to location\u2014in digital simulations of space. \u201cA map is not the territory it represents,\u201d the Polish philosopher Alfred Korzybski famously remarked, and a computer rendering is not the territory it represents either. When we enter the virtual world, we\u2019re required to shed much of our body. That doesn\u2019t free us; it emaciates us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The world in turn is made less\nmeaningful. As we adapt to our streamlined environment, we render ourselves\nincapable of perceiving what the world offers its most ardent inhabitants. We\ntravel blindfolded. The result is existential impoverishment, as nature and\nculture withdraw their invitations to act and to perceive. The self can only\nthrive, can only grow, when it encounters and overcomes \u201cresistance from\nsurroundings,\u201d wrote the American pragmatist John Dewey in Art as Experience<\/em>. \u201cAn environment that was always and everywhere\ncongenial to the straightaway execution of our impulsions would set a term to\ngrowth as sure as one always hostile would irritate and destroy. Impulsion\nforever boosted on its forward way would run its course thoughtless, and dead\nto emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ours may be a time of material comfort and technological wonder, but it\u2019s also a time of aimlessness and gloom. During the first decade of this century, the number of Americans taking prescription drugs to treat depression or anxiety rose by nearly a quarter. One in five adults now regularly takes such medications. Many also take sleep aids such as Ambien. The suicide rate among middle-age Americans increased by nearly 30 percent over the same ten years, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 10 percent of American schoolchildren, and nearly 20 percent of high school\u2013age boys, have been given a diagnosis of attention-deficit\/hyperactivity disorder, and two-thirds of that group take drugs like Ritalin and Adderall to treat the condition. The current pandemic has only exacerbated the discontent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reasons for our malaise are many and only dimly understood. But one of them may be that through the pursuit of a frictionless existence, we\u2019ve succeeded in turning the landscape of our lives into a barren place. Drugs that numb the nervous system provide a way to rein in our vital, animal sensorium, to shrink our being to a size that better suits our constricted environs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Frost\u2019s sonnet also contains, as one of its many whispers, a warning about technology\u2019s ethical hazards. There\u2019s a brutality to the mower\u2019s scythe. It indiscriminately cuts down flowers\u2014those tender, pale orchises\u2014along with the stalks of grass. It frightens innocent animals, like the bright green snake. If technology embodies our dreams, it also embodies other, less benign qualities in our makeup, such as our will to power and the arrogance and insensitivity that accompany it. Frost returns to this theme a little later in A Boy\u2019s Will<\/em>, in a second lyric about cutting hay, \u201cThe Tuft of Flowers.\u201d The poem\u2019s narrator comes upon a freshly mown field and, while following the flight of a passing butterfly with his eyes, discovers in the midst of the cut grass a small cluster of flowers, \u201ca leaping tongue of bloom\u201d that \u201cthe scythe had spared\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,
Nor yet to draw one thought of us to him,
But from sheer morning gladness to the brim.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nWorking with a tool is never just a practical matter, Frost is telling us, with characteristic delicacy. It always entails moral choices and has moral consequences. It\u2019s up to us, as users and makers of tools, to humanize technology, to aim its cold blade wisely. That requires vigilance and care. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scythe is still employed in\nsubsistence farming in many parts of the world. But it has no place on the\nmodern farm, the development of which, like the development of the modern\nfactory, office, and home, has required ever-more complex and efficient\nequipment. The threshing machine was invented in the 1780s, the mechanical\nreaper appeared around 1835, the baler came a few years after that, and the\ncombine harvester began to be produced commercially toward the end of the\nnineteenth century. The pace of technological advance has only accelerated in\nthe decades since, and today the trend is reaching its logical conclusion with\nthe computerization of agriculture. The working of the soil, which Thomas\nJefferson saw as the most vigorous and virtuous of occupations, is being off-loaded\nalmost entirely to machines. Farmhands are being replaced by \u201cdrone tractors\u201d\nand other robotic systems that, using sensors, satellite signals, and software,\nplant seeds, fertilize and weed fields, harvest and package crops, and milk\ncows and tend other livestock. In development are robo-shepherds that guide\nflocks through pastures. Even if scythes still whispered in the fields of the\nindustrial farm, no one would be around to hear them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The congeniality of hand tools\nencourages us to take responsibility for their use. Because we sense the tools\nas extensions of our bodies, parts of ourselves, we have little choice but to\nbe intimately involved in the ethical choices they present. The scythe doesn\u2019t\nchoose to slash or spare the flowers; the mower does. As we become more expert\nin the use of a tool, our sense of responsibility for it naturally strengthens.\nTo the novice mower, a scythe may feel like a foreign object in the hands; to\nthe accomplished mower, hands and scythe become one thing. Talent tightens the\nbond between an instrument and its user. This feeling of physical and ethical\nentanglement doesn\u2019t have to go away as technologies become more complex. In\nreporting on his historic solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Charles\nLindbergh spoke of his plane and himself as if they were a single being: \u201cWe<\/em> have made this flight across the\nocean, not I<\/em> or it<\/em>.\u201d The airplane was a complicated system encompassing many\ncomponents, but to a skilled pilot it still had the intimate quality of a hand\ntool. The love that lays the swale in rows is also the love that parts the\nclouds for the stick-and-rudder man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Automation weakens the bond between\ntool and user not because computer-controlled systems are complex but because\nthey ask so little of us. They hide their workings in secret code. They resist\nany involvement of the operator beyond the bare minimum. They discourage the\ndevelopment of skillfulness in their use. Automation ends up having an\nanesthetizing effect. We no longer feel our tools as parts of ourselves. In a renowned\n1960 paper, \u201cMan-Computer Symbiosis,\u201d the psychologist and engineer J. C. R.\nLicklider described the shift in our relation to technology well. \u201cIn the\nman-machine systems of the past,\u201d he wrote, \u201cthe human operator supplied the\ninitiative, the direction, the integration, and the criterion. The mechanical\nparts of the systems were mere extensions, first of the human arm, then of the\nhuman eye.\u201d The introduction of the computer changed all that. \u201c\u2018Mechanical\nextension\u2019 has given way to replacement of men, to automation, and the men who\nremain are there more to help than to be helped.\u201d The more automated everything\ngets, the easier it becomes to see technology as a kind of implacable, alien\nforce that lies beyond our control and influence. Attempting to alter the path\nof its development seems futile. We press the on switch and follow the\nprogrammed routine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To adopt such a submissive posture, however understandable it may be, is to shirk our responsibility for managing progress. A robotic harvesting machine may have no one in the driver\u2019s seat, but it is every bit as much a product of conscious human thought as a humble scythe is. We may not incorporate the machine into our brain maps, as we do the hand tool, but on an ethical level the machine still operates as an extension of our will. Its intentions are our intentions. If a robot scares a bright green snake (or worse), we\u2019re still to blame. We shirk a deeper responsibility as well: that of overseeing the conditions for the construction of the self. As computer systems and software applications come to play an ever-larger role in shaping our lives and the world, we have an obligation to be more, not less, involved in decisions about their design and use\u2014before progress forecloses our options. We should be careful about what we make. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If that sounds naive or hopeless,\nit\u2019s because we have been misled by a metaphor. We\u2019ve defined our relation with\ntechnology not as that of body and limb or even that of sibling and sibling but\nas that of master and slave. The idea goes way back. It took hold at the dawn\nof Western philosophical thought, emerging first with the ancient Athenians.\nAristotle, in discussing the operation of households at the beginning of his Politics<\/em>, argued that slaves and tools\nare essentially equivalent, the former acting as \u201canimate instruments\u201d and the\nlatter as \u201cinanimate instruments\u201d in the service of the master of the house. If\ntools could somehow become animate, Aristotle posited, they would be able to\nsubstitute directly for the labor of slaves. \u201cThere is only one condition on\nwhich we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing\nslaves,\u201d he mused, anticipating the arrival of computer automation and even\nmachine learning. \u201cThis condition would be that each [inanimate] instrument\ncould do its own work, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation.\u201d\nIt would be \u201cas if a shuttle should weave itself, and a plectrum should do its\nown harp-playing.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The conception of tools as slaves\nhas colored our thinking ever since. It informs society\u2019s recurring dream of\nemancipation from toil. \u201cAll unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull\nlabour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant\nconditions, must be done by machinery,\u201d wrote Oscar Wilde in 1891. \u201cOn\nmechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world\ndepends.\u201d John Maynard Keynes, in a 1930 essay, predicted that mechanical\nslaves would free humankind from \u201cthe\nstruggle for subsistence\u201d and propel us to \u201cour destination of economic bliss.\u201d\nIn 2013, Mother Jones<\/em>\ncolumnist Kevin Drum declared that \u201ca robotic paradise of leisure and\ncontemplation eventually awaits us.\u201d By 2040, he forecast, our computer\nslaves\u2014\u201cthey never get tired, they\u2019re never ill-tempered, they never make\nmistakes\u201d\u2014will have rescued us from labor and delivered us into a new Eden.\n\u201cOur days are spent however we please, perhaps in study, perhaps playing video\ngames. It\u2019s up to us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With its roles reversed, the\nmetaphor also informs society\u2019s nightmares about technology. As we become\ndependent on our technological slaves, the thinking goes, we turn into slaves\nourselves. From the eighteenth century on, social critics have routinely portrayed\nfactory machinery as forcing workers into bondage. \u201cMasses of labourers,\u201d wrote\nMarx and Engels in their Communist\nManifesto<\/em>, \u201care daily and hourly enslaved by the machine.\u201d Today, people\ncomplain all the time about feeling like slaves to their appliances and\ngadgets. \u201cSmart devices are sometimes empowering,\u201d observed The Economist<\/em> in \u201cSlaves to the\nSmartphone,\u201d an article published in 2012. \u201cBut for most people the servant has\nbecome the master.\u201d More dramatically still, the idea of a robot uprising, in\nwhich computers with artificial intelligence transform themselves from our\nslaves to our masters, has for a century been a central theme in dystopian\nfantasies about the future. The very word \u201crobot,\u201d coined by a science fiction\nwriter in 1920, comes from robota<\/em>, a\nCzech term for servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The master-slave metaphor, in\naddition to being morally fraught, distorts the way we look at technology. It\nreinforces the sense that our tools are separate from ourselves, that our\ninstruments have an agency independent of our own. We start to judge our\ntechnologies not on what they enable us to do but rather on their intrinsic\nqualities as products\u2014their cleverness, their efficiency, their novelty, their\nstyle. We choose a tool because it\u2019s new or it\u2019s cool or it\u2019s fast, not because\nit brings us more fully into the world and expands the ground of our\nexperiences and perceptions. We become mere consumers of technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The metaphor encourages society to\ntake a simplistic and fatalistic view of technology and progress. If we assume\nthat our tools act as slaves on our behalf, always working in our best\ninterest, then any attempt to place limits on technology becomes hard to\ndefend. Each advance grants us greater freedom and takes us a stride closer to,\nif not utopia, then at least the best of all possible worlds. Any misstep, we\ntell ourselves, will be quickly corrected by subsequent innovations. If we just\nlet progress do its thing, it will find remedies for the problems it creates.\n\u201cTechnology is not neutral but serves as an overwhelming positive force in\nhuman culture,\u201d writes one pundit, expressing the self-serving Silicon Valley\nideology that in recent years has gained wide currency. \u201cWe have a moral\nobligation to increase technology because it increases opportunities.\u201d The\nsense of moral obligation strengthens with the advance of automation, which,\nafter all, provides us with the most animate of instruments, the slaves that,\nas Aristotle anticipated, are most capable of releasing us from our labors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The belief in technology as a benevolent, self-healing, autonomous force is seductive. It allows us to feel optimistic about the future while relieving us of responsibility for that future. It particularly suits the interests of those who have become extraordinarily wealthy through the labor-saving, profit-concentrating effects of automated systems and the computers that control them. It provides our new plutocrats with a heroic narrative in which they play starring roles: job losses may be unfortunate, but they\u2019re a necessary evil on the path to the human race\u2019s eventual emancipation by the computerized slaves that our benevolent enterprises are creating. Peter Thiel, a successful entrepreneur and investor who has become one of Silicon Valley\u2019s most prominent thinkers, grants that \u201ca robotics revolution would basically have the effect of people losing their jobs.\u201d But, he hastens to add, \u201cit would have the benefit of freeing people up to do many other things.\u201d Being freed up sounds a lot more pleasant than being fired. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a callousness to such\ngrandiose futurism. As history reminds us, high-flown rhetoric about using\ntechnology to liberate workers often masks a contempt for labor. It strains\ncredulity to imagine today\u2019s technology moguls, with their libertarian leanings\nand impatience with government, agreeing to the kind of vast\nwealth-redistribution scheme that would be necessary to fund the\nself-actualizing leisure-time pursuits of the jobless multitudes. Even if\nsociety were to come up with some magic spell, or magic algorithm, for\nequitably parceling out the spoils of automation, there\u2019s good reason to doubt\nwhether anything resembling the \u201ceconomic bliss\u201d imagined by Keynes would\nensue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a prescient passage in The Human Condition<\/em>, Hannah Arendt\nobserved that if automation\u2019s utopian promise were actually to pan out, the\nresult would probably feel less like paradise than like a cruel practical joke.\nThe whole of modern society, she wrote, has been organized as \u201ca laboring\nsociety,\u201d where working for pay, and then spending that pay, is the way people\ndefine themselves and measure their worth. Most of the \u201chigher and more\nmeaningful activities\u201d revered in the distant past have been pushed to the\nmargin or forgotten, and \u201conly solitary individuals are left who consider what\nthey are doing in terms of work and not in terms of making a living.\u201d For\ntechnology to fulfill humankind\u2019s abiding \u201cwish to be liberated from labor\u2019s\n\u2018toil and trouble\u2019 \u201d at this point would be perverse. It would cast us deeper\ninto a purgatory of malaise. What automation confronts us with, Arendt\nconcluded, \u201cis the prospect of a society of laborers without labor, that is,\nwithout the only activity left to them. Surely, nothing could be worse.\u201d\nUtopianism, she understood, is a form of self-delusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* * *<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
A while back, I had a chance meeting on the campus of a small, liberal arts college with a freelance photographer who was working on an assignment for the school. He was standing under a tree, waiting for some uncooperative clouds to get out of the way of the sun. I noticed he had a large-format film camera set up on a bulky tripod\u2014it was hard to miss, as it looked almost absurdly old-fashioned\u2014and I asked him why he was still using film. He told me that he had eagerly embraced digital photography a few years earlier. He had replaced his film cameras and his darkroom with digital cameras and a computer running the latest image-processing software. But after a few months, he switched back. It wasn\u2019t that he was dissatisfied with the operation of the equipment or the resolution or accuracy of the images. It was that the way he went about his work had changed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The constraints inherent in taking\nand developing pictures on film\u2014the expense, the toil, the uncertainty\u2014had\nencouraged him to work slowly when he was on a shoot, with deliberation,\nthoughtfulness, and a deep, physical sense of presence. Before he took a\npicture, he would compose the shot in his mind, attending to the scene\u2019s light,\ncolor, framing, and form. He would wait patiently for the right moment to\nrelease the shutter. With a digital camera, he could work faster. He could take\na slew of images, one after the other, and then use his computer to sort\nthrough them and crop and tweak the most promising ones. The act of composition\ntook place after a photo was taken. The change felt intoxicating at first. But\nhe found himself disappointed with the results. The images left him cold. Film,\nhe realized, imposed a discipline of perception, of seeing, which led to\nricher, more artful, more moving photographs. Film demanded more of him. And so\nhe went back to the older technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The photographer wasn\u2019t the least bit antagonistic toward computers. He wasn\u2019t beset by any abstract concerns about a loss of agency or autonomy. He wasn\u2019t a crusader. He just wanted the best tool for the job\u2014the tool that would encourage and enable him to do his finest, most fulfilling work. What he came to realize is that the newest, most automated, most expedient tool is not always the best choice. Although I\u2019m sure he would bristle at being likened to the Luddites of the early nineteenth century, his decision to forgo the latest technology, at least in some stages of his work, was an act of rebellion resembling that of the old English machine-breakers, if without the fury. Like the Luddites, he understood that decisions about technology are also decisions about ways of working and ways of living\u2014and he took control of those decisions rather than ceding them to others or giving way to the momentum of progress. He stepped back and thought critically about technology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a society, we\u2019ve become\nsuspicious of such acts. Out of ignorance or laziness or timidity, we\u2019ve turned\nthe Luddites into cartoon characters, emblems of backwardness. We assume that\nanyone who rejects a new tool in favor of an older one is guilty of nostalgia,\nof making choices sentimentally rather than rationally. But the real\nsentimental fallacy is the assumption that the new thing is always better\nsuited to our purposes and intentions than the old thing. That\u2019s the view of a\nchild, naive and pliable. What makes one tool superior to another has nothing\nto do with how new it is. What matters is how it enlarges us or diminishes us,\nhow it shapes our experience of nature and culture and one another. To cede\nchoices about the texture of our daily lives to a grand abstraction called\nprogress is folly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Technology is a pillar and a glory of civilization. But it is also a test that we set for ourselves. It challenges us to think about what\u2019s important in our lives, to ask ourselves what human being<\/em> means. Computerization, as it extends its reach into the most intimate spheres of our existence, raises the stakes of the test. We can allow ourselves to be carried along by the technological current, wherever it may be taking us, or we can push against it. To resist invention is not to reject invention. It\u2019s to humble invention, to bring progress down to earth. \u201cResistance is futile,\u201d goes the glib Star Trek clich\u00e9 beloved by techies. But that\u2019s the opposite of the truth. Resistance is never futile. If the source of our vitality is, as Emerson taught us, \u201cthe active soul,\u201d then our highest obligation is to resist any force, whether institutional or commercial or technological, that would enfeeble or enervate the active soul. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the most remarkable things about us is also one of the easiest to overlook: each time we collide with the real, we deepen our understanding of the world and become more fully a part of it. While we\u2019re wrestling with a challenge, we may be motivated by an anticipation of the ends of our labor, but, as Frost saw, it\u2019s the work\u2014the means\u2014that makes us who we are. Automation severs ends from means. It makes getting what we want easier, but it distances us from the work of knowing. As we transform ourselves into creatures of the screen, we face an existential question: Does our essence still lie in what we know, or are we now content to be defined by what we want?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nThis essay is adapted from the book <\/em>The Glass Cage<\/a>, published by W. W. Norton & Company<\/a>. Copyright by Nicholas Carr.<\/em>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a line of verse I\u2019m always coming back to, and it\u2019s been on my mind more than usual these last few months: The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. It\u2019s the second to last line of one of Robert Frost\u2019s earliest and best poems, a sonnet called \u201cMowing.\u201d He wrote it just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8783"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8794,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8783\/revisions\/8794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}