The Solution to Automation

I just finished reading Nicolas Carr's The Glass Cage. This is Carr's most recent book in his series of books dealing with the influence of technology on society. In this book, Carr discusses automation with a thesis that automation removes us from the processes, dulls our skills and knowledge, and reduces our role in our work. Carr argues that, through automation, humans are relegating to monitoring processes and stepping in to handle exceptions; both of which we are not very good at doing.

Throughout the book Carr makes compelling argument for the need to understand the downside of automation. While we often focus on the benefits of efficiency, accuracy, and cost savings of automation, we tend to ignore or downplay the role automation has on changing the nature of work and our role in work. He offers plenty of examples of automation changing the nature of work and makes a particularly strong case for airline pilots.

Carr provided many insightful reflections on automation but offered little in terms of specific solutions. The approach of human-centered automation rather than technology-centered automation was suggested and the author pointed to video games as a better model for automation. In this approach, technology is used to enhance our skills and help us accomplish our goals rather than taking over the process and having us step aside and monitor the work.

In a brief section of the book Carr described his experience with the game Red Dead Redemption and how he, as the user, was coached by the software to perform a task, provided with feedback (death of his video game character) and allowed to reattempt the task until it was mastered. This example helped illuminate the human-centered design but I would have liked to see him apply this concept to examples of automation of work. Although I appreciate this example (and Carr's admission of playing Red Dead Redemption which helps me justify my affinity for Assassins Creed) I would have liked to see more of the book dedicated to applying this human-centered model.

If human-centered design is the solution to better apply automation to our work, we must develop a better vision of what this looks like and strategies for how we can apply this to our work. This is not an easy task since technology-centered automation promotes efficiency, accuracy, and cost savings while human cannot make these same claims. Do we offer enough value to work for organizations to abandon the benefits of technology-centered automation? We must first answer this value proposition before we can hope for change.