It's all automatic
by Bob on May 29, 2007
Automatic. An interesting word. From the Greek meaning self-moving. One wonders about things which are automatic these days.
Self-moving doors, triggered by a sensor which sees our movement and opens the doors, are potentially trouble. If everyone and every place used them, it would at least prevent people from walking face-first into non-automatic doors, thinking inadvertently that all doors are automatic -- all of this behaviour out of habituation.
Automatic cameras have caused people to forget about how to actually take and make photographs. They are surely nice, in a pinch, but one should know something about how a picture is taken.
Automatic toilets without a manual over-ride handle are great until they stop working.
The deeper problem comes into play when human behaviour itself becomes automatic and not thought out. This is possibly a side effect of the deluge of things which are automatic.
Automatic record and CD changers, and the like, are great because people don't have to get up to change the record or CD. But what's wrong with getting up to change them ? Nothing, except a bit of convenience, and a little exercise.
Therein lies the rub. The more that things are automatic, the more sedentary the people in a society get.
The band Kraftwerk had a hit record in 1981 with a song called "Pocket Calculator" from their album "Computer World". One thinks it is relevant. And one might ask if we are indeed still the operator of our pocket calculator, or rather that we are operated by it.
Like when a person loses his cell phone and can no longer make any calls because he never had to remember people's telephone numbers and hence can't dial the numbers he doesn't know. All he know is the convenience of the names of people and the "dial" button.
One dare not get into the complications and implications of robots and automatons. Unless they play a good game of chess.
And we only can hope for a few things to remain non-automatic.
So it goes.