20. Sergey Brin, “Why Google Glass?,” speech at TED2013, Long Beach, Calif., February 27, 2013, youtube.com/watch?v=rie-hPVJ7Sw.
21. Ibid.
22. See Christopher D. Wickens and Amy L. Alexander, “Attentional Tunneling and Task Management in Synthetic Vision Displays,” International Journal of Aviation Psychology 19, no. 2 (2009): 182–199.
23. Richard F. Haines, “A Breakdown in Simultaneous Information Processing,” in Gerard Obrecht and Lawrence W. Stark, eds., Presbyopia Research: From Molecular Biology to Visual Adaptation (New York: Plenum Press, 1991), 171–176.
24. Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chambris, “Is Google Glass Dangerous?,” New York Times, May 26, 2013.
25. “Amanda Rosenberg: Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin’s New Girlfriend?,” Guardian, August 30, 2013, theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2013/aug/30/amanda-rosenberg-google-sergey-brin-girlfriend.
26. Weiser, “Computer for the 21st Century.”
27. Interview with Charlie Rose, Charlie Rose, April 24, 2012, charlierose.com/watch/60065884.
28. David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 10.
29. Josh Constine, “Google Unites Gmail and G+ Chat into ‘Hangouts’ Cross-Platform Text and Group Video Messaging App,” TechCrunch, May 15, 2013, techcrunch.com/2013/05/15/google-hangouts-messaging-app/.
30. Larry Greenemeier, “Chipmaker Races to Save Stephen Hawking’s Speech as His Condition Deteriorates,” Scientific American, January 18, 2013, www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=intel-helps-hawking-communicate.
31. Nick Bilton, “Disruptions: Next Step for Technology Is Becoming the Background,” New York Times, July 1, 2012, bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/google’s-project-glass-lets-technology-slip-into-the-background/.
32. Bruno Latour, “Morality and Technology: The End of the Means,” Theory, Culture and Society 19 (2002): 247–260. The emphasis is Latour’s.
33. Bernhard Seefeld, “Meet the New Google Maps: A Map for Every Person and Place,” Google Lat Long (blog), May 15, 2013, google-latlong.blogspot.com/2013/05/meet-new-google-maps-map-for-every.html.
34. Evgeny Morozov, “My Map or Yours?,” Slate, May 28, 2013, slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/05/google_maps_personalization_will_hurt_public_space_and_engagement.html.
35. Kirkpatrick, Facebook Effect, 199.
36. Sebastian Thrun, “Google’s Driverless Car,” speech at TED2011, March 2011, ted.com/talks/sebastian_thrun_google_s_driverless_car.html.
37. National Safety Council, “Annual Estimate of Cell Phone Crashes 2012,” white paper, 2014.
38. See Sigfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), 628–712.
39. Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977), 285.
Chapter Nine: THE LOVE THAT LAYS THE SWALE IN ROWS
1. Quoted in Richard Poirier, Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), 30. Details about Frost’s life are drawn from Poirier’s book; William H. Pritchard, Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); and Jay Parini, Robert Frost: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1999).
2. Quoted in Poirier, Robert Frost, 30.
3. Robert Frost, “Mowing,” in A Boy’s Will (New York: Henry Holt, 1915), 36.
4. Robert Frost, “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” in A Further Range (New York: Henry Holt, 1936), 16–18.
5. Poirier, Robert Frost, 278.
6. Robert Frost, “Some Science Fiction,” in In the Clearing (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1962), 89–90.
7. Poirier, Robert Frost, 301.
8. Robert Frost, “Kitty Hawk,” in In the Clearing, 41–58.
9. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 2012), 147. My reading of Merleau-Ponty draws on Hubert L. Dreyfus’s commentary “The Current Relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Embodiment,” Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 4 (Spring 1996), ejap.louisiana.edu/ejap/1996.spring/dreyfus.1996.spring.html.
10. Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics (London: Penguin, 1996), 44.
11. John Edward Huth, “Losing Our Way in the World,” New York Times, July 21, 2013. See also Huth’s enlightening book The Lost Art of Finding Our Way (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013).
12. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 148.
13. Ibid., 261.
14. See Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010).
15. Pascal Ravassard et al., “Multisensory Control of Hippocampal Spatiotemporal Selectivity,” Science 340, no. 6138 (2013): 1342–1346.
16. Anonymous, “Living in The Matrix Requires Less Brain Power,” Science Now, May 2, 2013, news.sciencemag.org/physics/2013/05/living-matrix-requires-less-brain-power.
17. Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, 5th ed. (New York: Institute of General Semantics, 1994), 58.
18. John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Perigee Books, 1980), 59.
19. Medco, “America’s State of Mind,” 2011, apps.who.int/medicinedocs/documents/s19032en/s19032en.pdf.
20. Erin M. Sullivan et al., “Suicide among Adults Aged 35–64 Years—United States, 1999–2010,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, May 3, 2013.
21. Alan Schwarz and Sarah Cohen, “A.D.H.D. Seen in 11% of U.S. Children as Diagnoses Rise,” New York Times, April 1, 2013.
22. Robert Frost, “The Tuft of Flowers,” in A Boy’s Will, 47–49.
23. See Anonymous, “Fields of Automation,” Economist, December 10, 2009; and Ian Berry, “Teaching Drones to Farm,” Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2011.
24. Charles A. Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis (New York: Scribner, 2003), 486. The emphasis is Lindbergh’s.
25. J. C. R. Licklider, “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics 1 (March 1960): 4–11.
26. Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977), 20–21.
27. Aristotle, The Politics, in Mitchell Cohen and Nicole Fermon, eds., Princeton Readings in Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 110–111.
28. Evgeny Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013), 323.
29. Kevin Kelly, “Better than Human: Why Robots Will—and Must—Take Our Jobs,” Wired, January 2013.
30. Kevin Drum, “Welcome, Robot Overloads. Please Don’t Fire Us?,” Mother Jones, May/June 2013.
31. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: Verso, 1998), 43.
32. Anonymous, “Slaves to the Smartphone,” Economist, March 10, 2012.
33. Kevin Kelly, “What Technology Wants,” Cool Tools, October 18, 2010, kk.org/cooltools/archives/4749.
34. George Packer, “No Death, No Taxes,” New Yorker, November 28, 2011.
35. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 4–5.
36. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper, 1991), 80.
37. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” in Essays and Lectures (New York: Library of America, 1983), 57.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The epigraph to this book is the concluding stanza of William Carlos Williams’s poem “To Elsie,” which appeared in the 1923 volume Spring and All.
I am deeply grateful to those who, as interviewees, reviewers, or correspondents, provided me with insight and assistance: Claudio Aporta, Henry Beer, Véronique Bohbot, George Dyson, Gerhard Fischer, Mark Gross, Katherine Hayles, Charles Jacobs, Joan Lowy, E. J. Meade, Raja Parasuraman, Lawrence Port, Jeff Robbins, Jeffrey Rowe, Ari Schulman, Evan Selinger, Betsy Sparrow, Tim Swan, Ben Tranel, and Christof van Nim
wegen.
The Glass Cage is the third of my books to have been guided by the editorial hand of Brendan Curry at W. W. Norton. I thank Brendan and his colleagues for their work on my behalf. I am indebted as well to my agent, John Brockman, and his associates at Brockman Inc. for their wise counsel and support.
Some passages in this book appeared earlier, in different forms, in the Atlantic, the Washington Post, MIT Technology Review, and my blog, Rough Type.
INDEX
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
Abbott, Kathy, 55
accidents:
automotive, 7, 70, 91, 153, 154–55, 207, 208
plane, 43–45, 54, 55, 154, 169–70
accountants, accounting firms, 76–77
action, human, 85, 132, 147–51, 160, 210, 213–14, 215, 217, 218
hierarchy of, 65–66
Adams, Thomas, 191
adaptive automation, 165
Addiction by Design (Schüll), 179n
agriculture, 218, 222
Airbus A320 passenger jet, 50–52, 154
Airbus Industrie, 50–52, 168, 169–70
Air Force, U.S., 173
Air France Airbus A330, 45, 54, 169–70
airlines, 1, 43–46, 53–55, 59, 168–70, 172–73
air-traffic control, 170
Albaugh, James, 59
alert fatigue, 104
algorithms, 116–22
ethics and, 183–84, 186–87
predictive, 116–17, 123, 198
Amazon, 118, 195
American Health Information Community, 94
American Machinist, 34, 174
Andreessen, Marc, 40
Android, 153, 199
animals:
body-object blending in, 150–51
killing of, 183–84, 185
animal studies, 87–92, 133, 219
antiaircraft guns, 35–36, 37, 41
anxiety, 14, 16, 19, 59, 220
Aporta, Claudio, 126–27
Apple, 41, 118, 136, 203
apprenticeship, 109, 113, 147
apps, 12, 13, 17, 33, 40, 91, 133, 202
gamification and, 179n
see also specific apps
architects, architecture, 12, 69, 137–48, 167
“Are Human Beings Necessary?” (Russell), 39
Arendt, Hannah, 108, 227–28
Aristotle, 144, 224, 226
Army Air Forces, U.S., 49
Aronowitz, Stanley, 27–28
Arthur, W. Brian, 196–97
Arthur D. Little, 37
artificial intelligence, 111, 113, 118–20, 187
artistic skills, 10, 85
Asimov, Isaac, 184, 189, 257n
Asimov’s Rules of Robotics, 184, 257n
assembly lines, 34, 38, 39, 195
Associated Press, 29, 58
attention, 200, 219
attentional capacity, 90–91
attentional tunneling, 200–201, 202
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, 220
automaticity, 81–85, 105–6
automatic transmission, 4, 5–6, 13–14
automation, 1–21, 30, 32–40, 59
attempts to rein in, 170–72
elements that characterize, 36
faith in, 65–66
fallacy about, 67
flight, 43–63, 100
in health care, 93–106
hierarchy of, 110–11
human- vs. technology-centered view of, 153–75
important and unsettling direction of, 193–99
invention and definition of word, 34–35, 237n
limits of, 10–11
tool-user bond weakened by, 223
Yerkes-Dodson law and, 90–91
see also specific topics
Automation (Illingworth cartoon), 19, 33
Automation and Management (Bright), 111–12
automation bias, 67–72, 122
automation complacency, 67–69, 71, 72, 74
Automation: Friend or Foe? (Macmillan), 19–20
automation paradox, 91
Automation Specialties, 174
“Automation Surprises” (Sarter, Woods, and Billings), 162
autonomy, 38, 61, 106, 108, 128, 131
autopilot, 43–63, 153, 154
Autor, David, 32
aviation, 43–63, 91, 100, 137–38, 215, 223
technology- vs. human-centered automation in, 165–66, 168–70, 172–73
see also autopilot
Bainbridge, Lisanne, 157, 160
banks, banking, 115, 170–71
Baxter, Gordon, 77
behavior, changes in, 67, 97–100
being, 131, 133
Berardi, Franco, 118
Bhana, Hemant, 53
Bhidé, Amar, 77
bicycles, 51, 61
big data, 114
Big Data (Cukier and Myer-Schonberger), 122
Billings, Charles, 162
Bilton, Nick, 204
body, 11, 63, 132, 159, 162, 165, 213–14, 215–20, 222–23, 224
mind vs., 148–51, 215, 216
sketching and, 142–43
transport and, 132
Boeing, 27, 168–69, 170
Boeing 737, 56
Bombardier Q400 turboprop, 43–44
bombsight technology, 49
Bonin, Pierre-Cédric, 45, 168–70
boredom, 5, 14, 16
Boy’s Will, A (Frost), 212, 221
brain, 9–12, 20, 79–84, 148–51, 165, 169, 219
computer compared with, 119, 151
concentration and, 200
knowledge and, 9–10
navigation and, 129–33
of pilot, 57
technological, 36, 237n
Braverman, Harry, 109–10
Bright, James, 110–12, 115, 237n
Brillhart, Jacob, 147
Brin, Sergey, 199–201
Brooks, David, 128, 132
Brynjolfsson, Erik, 28–29, 30
Buffalo crash, 43–45, 154
Bush, George W., 93–94
business, 18, 28, 29, 30, 37, 38, 76, 112, 117, 168, 174–75, 196, 228
Buzsáki, György, 134–35
C-54 Skymaster transport plane, 49, 50
Cachin, Emil, 46–47, 232
California Polytechnic State University, 189
Campbell, Donald T., 122
cancer, 70–71
capital investments, 18, 28, 30, 31
capitalism, 21–22, 24, 28, 31, 109, 116, 160
Carlsen, Magnus, 82
cars and driving, 3–18, 34, 46
accidents, 7, 70, 91, 153, 154–55, 207, 208
author’s experience with, 3–6, 13–14, 80, 81
automation bias and, 69–70
GPS in, 128, 130, 136–37
luxury, 8
manual vs. automatic transmission in, 3–6
paper maps and, 130
self-driving, 6–8, 10, 12, 13, 120, 153–56, 183–87, 193, 204, 207, 208
while sleepy, 71–72
Cartesian dualism, 148–49
Cartlidge, John, 77
cartoons, 19, 33
Caruthers, Felix P., 174
cascading failures, 155
Centers for Disease Control, 220
Cerner Corporation, 96
Chabris, Christopher, 201
Chapanis, Alphonse, 158
Checklist Manifesto, The (Gawande), 104
Cheng, Britte Haugan, 73
chess playing, 12, 121
China, 31, 167
Churchill, Winston, 139
CIA, 120
Cisco, 195
City University London, 70
Clark, Andy, 149–51
Clarke, Arthur C., 197–98
cloud computing, 195, 202, 209
cognition, cognit
ive skills, 11–12, 56–58, 71–74, 81, 120, 121, 148–51, 165
of doctors, 105
embodied, 149–51, 213
cognitive map, 129–30, 135
cognitive psychologists, 72–76, 81, 129–30
Colgan Air, 45
communication, 36, 163, 198
doctor-patient, 103–6
Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels), 225
computer-aided design (CAD), 138–42, 144, 145, 167, 219, 229–30
computer games, 75, 177–80, 219
computer programmers, 161, 162, 168
computers, 1, 2, 17, 33, 37, 38, 40, 159
architecture and design and, 138–47
automation and, 36, 43, 50–58, 62, 66–67, 69, 90, 91, 202–3
aviation and, 43, 46, 50–52, 54, 55, 57, 62, 153, 168, 170, 172–73
avocations and, 12
benefits of transferring work to, 17–18
boundary between humans and, 10–12
brain compared with, 119, 151
capabilities of, 8–9
in cars, 7, 8–9
costs of transferring work to, 18, 28, 30, 66–67
dependency on, 12–13
effects on workload of, 90, 91
ergonomics and, 164–68
expectation of aid of, 193–95
health care and, 93–106
human compared with, 153
as media devices, 219
memory experiment and, 79
mental processes and, 74
monitoring of, 17
oracle machine, 119–20
satellite-linked, 125–37
speed of, 118–22, 139, 156, 164, 173, 219
vocations and, 12
wearable, 12, 201
white-collar, 93–106
computer scientists, 156
computer simulation models, 93, 97
concentration, 200
Concours de la Sécurité en Aéroplane, 46
consciousness, 83, 119n, 121, 148–49, 150, 187
Continental Connection, 43–45, 54, 154
corporate auditors, 115
Cowen, Tyler, 31
craft workers, 23, 106, 109
Crawford, Kate, 122–23
Crawford, Matthew, 147–48
creativity, 10, 12, 14, 143, 144, 167, 206, 229
Cross, Nigel, 143–44
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi, 14–16, 18, 85, 228–29
Cukier, Kenneth, 122
culture, 124, 131, 196, 198, 217, 220, 226
Curtiss C-2 biplane, 46–47
cutting grass, 215–16
Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Wiener), 38–39
cyborgs, 2