Literary Views & Reviews The Man Of The Automatic Era

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30562, 3 October 1964, Page 4

Literary Views & Reviews The Man Of The Automatic Era

I Reviewed by M.F.LI.PJ Automation And The Future Of Man. By S. Demczynkski, 238 pp. Allen and Unwin. The author of this thoughtprovoking book is an industrial consultant with a scientific and technological background and in this sense competent to deal with the issues of the machine age. He shows clearly the conditions created in the first industrial revolution when mechanical power was substituted for the human muscle and he goes on to describe in detail the situation in the second industrial revolution when machines of infinitely greater complexity are constructed and put to use. Increasingly, he says, the man of the automatic era will be freed from both physical toil and rou-tine-controlling tasks. He does not believe that automation will cause unemployment (in spite of the evidence which at present seems to prove the contrary in the United States) but, he argues, not only will man be much richer but he will be able to use his tremendous energies as be pleases. It is for him to choose whether he reaches new heights of thought and expands towards the stars or whether he sinks into leisure and inactivity and to degeneration of body and mind. So far so good. Every senaible person recognises that the large-scale application of

automation and automatic data processing holds enormously important consequences for the future of man. Everyone knows that the machine holds great potential for good or evil. But how will the choice—between stars or mud—be made? The author insists that we must gain a thorough understanding of the nature of the human being and of a machine, of the essential features of our bodies, brains and mind, of the structure of the societies in which we live and of the general laws applicable to the dynamics of large human groups. We have to find the aims and ways of living fit for human beings, state our targets clearly and design the means for their achievement.

Again, there will be a large measure of agreement The disagreement begins when the author proceeds to tell us that the immense problem of man’s future cannot be solved on the superficial plane of economics and our outdated ideology. Why the plane of economics should be referred to as “superficial” is difficult to understand when the author devotes an entire chapter to the need for planning, but it is the reference to the outdated ideology which will rouse many readers to dissent The author holds that the choice of belief is between the view that man possesses a certain extra-material element or that which states that man is

nothing but a very complex physico-chemical system. He himself plumps for the latter, but he is prepared to allow that anyone who has a deep faith in a revealed religion can be considered as privileged, because be has at least a firm anchor in life. On the whole, however, leaning heavily on Darwin, Marx and Freud (and to some extent on Bentham) he rides out the possibility of progress through revealed relgion because it “accepts certain unalterable dogmas concerning the basic problems of the universe and human life. Thus no progress on a basic level is possible because the framework is fixed and future discoveries must be accommodated within it.” The challenge is thus starkly presented.

The author goes on to assert that intellectual discoveries have brought man down from his exalted pedestal. "Man believing once that he was created in the likeness of God himself, that the whole world was made for his convenience, travelled a long way down. Inhabiting a tiny speck in the immense universe child of an ape and grandchild of bacteria, living in communities developing according to all-powerful, impersonal forces, even his own mind is not under his control.” The author does not agree that recourse to a dogmatic ideology exalting “the so-called human values” will save the day, and he states categorically that many of the fundamental issues of our time cannot be convincingly answered by the revealed religions. Science rather (him religion provides light. It may strike many readers that the author of this book is better at describing the current scene and the dilemma in which modern man finds himself than in providing a solution for his problems. The basic issues in any age, highly mechanised or not, are: What is the good life? Why does man search for it? Having answered these and it is difficult to believe that man as “a very complex physicochemical system” could do this, the third question of how it can be achieved comes up for settlement, and many may hold that revealed religion still has something to say. But the book does present a challenge which must be met by every intellectually honest person and for this, too, it has merit.