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Automation Impact on American Culture and Lifestyles

Introduction

Automation and closely related information systems are, naturally, innate and integrated ingredients of all kinds of objects, systems, and social relations of the present reality. This is the reason why this chapter treats the phenomena and problems of this automated/information society in a historical and structural framework much broader than any chapter on technology details.

This process transforms traditional human work, offers freedom from burdensome physical and mental constraints and freedom for individuals and previously subjugated social layers, and creates new gaps and tensions. After detailed documentation of these phenomena, problems of education and culture are treated as main vehicles to adaptation. Legal aspects related to privacy, security, copyright, and patents are referred to, and then social philosophy, impacts of globalization, and new characteristics of information technology-society relations provide a conclusion of future prospects(Cichocki, 67).

Discussion

Regarding the social effects of automation, a review of concepts is needed in the context of the purpose of this chapter. Automation, in general, and especially in our times, means all kinds of activity perfected by machines and not by the intervention of direct human control. This definition involves the use of some energy resources operating without human or livestock physical effort and with some kind of information system communicating the purpose of automated activity desired by humans and the automatic execution of the activity, i.e., its control.

This definition entails a widely extended view of automation, its relation to information, knowledge control systems, as well as the knowledge and practice of the related human factor. The human factor involves, practically, all areas of science and practice with respect to human beings: education, health, physical and mental abilities, instruments and virtues of cooperation (i.e., language and sociability), environmental conditions, short- and long-range ways of thinking, ethics, legal systems, various aspects of private life, and entertainment.

One of the major theses of this definitional and relational philosophy is the man-machine paradox: the human role in all kinds of automation is a continuously emerging constituent of man-machine symbiosis, with feedback to the same.

From this perspective, the inclusion of a discussion of early historical developments is not surprising. This evolution is of twin importance. First, due to the contradictory speeds of human and machine evolution, despite the fascinating results of machine technology, in most applications the very slow progress of the user is critical. Incredibly sophisticated instruments are, and will be, used by creatures not too different from their ancestors of 1000?years ago. This contradiction appears not only in the significant abuse of automated equipment against other people but also in human user reasoning, which is sometimes hysterical and confused in its thinking.

The second significance of this paradox is in our perception of various changes: its reflection in problem solving, and in understanding the relevance of continuity and change, which is sometimes exaggerated, while other times it remains unrecognized in terms of its further effects. These are the reasons why this chapter treats automation in a context that is wider and somehow deeper ...