Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 02/87 - checked

February 1987

Every so often, I find myself sitting down and wondering about all these computer thingies. I'm not so concerned about the technology as such - which manufacturer is making the best use of the latest gizmo for example - rather its what the things are actually being used for.

The reason for this cranial exercise is founded, in the end, on the fact that I rather like people. I have to admit that I actually like them, with certain specific exceptions, a good bit more than most things material, such as computers. The trouble is, I get the distinct impression from reading history books and current newspapers that not many individuals feel the way that I do. They can't do, otherwise they wouldn't do unto others what they seem to enjoy doing so much.

What I am currently finding just a touch sad is that the computer is becoming the latest weapon in a long line of tools that one individual can use against another, either directly or, more commonly, in some subtle and indirect way. The outcome is variable, but at the same time usually not to our long term benefit.

Let me give you an example. I recently saw an item in an American magazine for a clever bit of kit for your average PC. At least, I thought it was clever at first, until I started to think about it a little. This bit of kit is called PC Type Right and it comes from that house of many clever things, Xerox.

The object of PC Type Right is to sit between the keyboard of a PC and the keyboard port. It is a little box that has a spelling dictionary built into it so that, as you actually type a word at the keyboard, it verifies the accuracy thereof. Get a word wrong and the machine will buzz, or blow a rasberry or something to draw your attention (and other people's in the same office) to your abject failure.

At first this struck me as a rather clever idea, after all, having the spelling checker on-line is more efficient than having to close a file, run the spell-check program, re-open the file and see what comes out. One or two `buts...' then occurred to me, however.

But what about the spelling checker, for example. We have all heard about those that come up with some very improper alternatives if you miss the middle `r' out of further. Strangely, the one alternative not normally suggested is...`further'. This may not matter when the check is an option made after writing something, but what if it is on-line: you're stuck with it. What if you mean to spell something wrong, just for effect or to add a bit of humour to a business communication. The thing won't let you.

There would seem to me great scope here to introduce a whole new level of computer-controlled conformity into life. Language is one of the things that shows we're alive and kicking. It is always changing and developing, with dictionaries acting as its history books. If the computer won't even let you past the keyboard unless you conform.....

Another example that popped onto my desk the other day was a press release from Selby MillSmith, a management psychology consultancy, whatever that is. Now, it has always struck me that an individual is either naturally good at management, or they're not. If the latter is the case, no amount of pychology or whatever will make them really better at it. If you try and make them compete in that way, many individuals will simply burn out.

This is, of course, what we find in much of industry these days, especially the computer industry where, if you are over forty you're a freak, or you've got something on the MD (or, of course, you ARE the MD). Most others have burned themselves out long before that time, which is why Selby MillSmith has introduced a `lifestyle management system' for computer-industry executives.

It seems that, these days, having a `lifestyle' and then being burned out by it are particularly important icons in the `career path' of the average `computer-industry executive', so I suppose it is sensible for them to have a computer program geared to monitoring their progress. Actually, it is supposed to help them cope with the stresses, but I can't help feeling it would be a lot more sensible to change the system that causes the stresses in the first place. Why is it humans insist on producing inadequate life-systems and then demand that we adapt to fit them?.

Perhaps the best example of this, and how the computer is used as a major weapon in the process, can now been seen in the City of London. Callow youths with Oxbridge degrees are being turned into the modern equivalent of the battery hen, all for the sake of Mammon.

It may take you a small effort of will to think of the City's Big Bang as the birth of a chicken farm, but that is how it strikes me. The computer and its synergistic partner, communications, allow money dealers to now deal in money all day, every day, everywhere. While this may seem to us a nice `facility', to Mammon it instantly becomes a `necessity', so much so that there is already talk of new office buildings to house the hen-people. They will include dormitories so the poor little chaps don't even get the chance to go home.

Not, of course, that they are that poor, as we might understand it. These young things with brains like IBM mainframes can earn £150,000 a year and drive company Porsches. They are also probably in desperate need of Selby MillSmith's lifestyle management package because if Mammon and its computers get their way, they aren't going to have much of one.

Imagine having a job where you slept where you worked, and you worked whenever there was a dealing floor anywhere in the world open for business, which essentially meant all the time. You were paid lots and lots but never got a chance to spend any of it, so it actually stayed in the bank, ie Mammon's back pocket. You had a Porsche but never got the chance to drive it. In fact it was fourth-hand at least but only had 35 miles on the clock and was now being re-valued upwards as an antique. Soon enough you died at your desk and Mammon promptly passed the Porsche on to the next and forgot you ever existed.

I can't help wondering if this is what computers are really for, or whether we will ever see the computer-equivalent of the free-range egg?

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