As we transform ourselves into creatures of the screen, we face an existential question: Does our essence still lie in what we know, or are we now content to be defined by what we want?
Here is an excellent article in The Atlantic on the risk of putting our knowledge in the hands of machines.
“Most of us want to believe that automation frees us to spend our time on higher pursuits but doesn’t otherwise alter the way we behave or think. That view is a fallacy—an expression of what scholars of automation call the “substitution myth.” A labor-saving device doesn’t just provide a substitute for some isolated component of a job or other activity. It alters the character of the entire task, including the roles, attitudes, and skills of the people taking part.”
As the late Raja Parasuraman and a colleague explained in a 2010 journal article:
Automation does not simply supplant human activity but rather changes it, often in ways unintended and unanticipated by the designers of automation.
Source: All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines
