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Published on 09/15/1999 All articles from this issue

Beware dependency on the computer

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By David L. Grey

Media Watch

Y2K may reflect more than just one mega-millennium iceberg. What happens shortly before and soon after 11:59:59 p.m. on Dec. 31 could actually provide opportunities for some overdue wake-up calls about how our global and smaller universes have become so dependent on the computer.

We might see lots - if we pay attention - from the bigger views offered atop our multiple local decks and national observation towers.

Pros/cons about computers as communication and learning devices cannot be adequately balanced here, especially as applied to existing and evolving information industries and media.

But there is one theme worth at least as much attention as any possible banking or electric power failures or glitches: human shortcuts and laziness, or "mind replacement."

In essence: letting computers do much of the thinking for us.

Several recent summer examples - including two personal, one local - can perhaps illustrate what has been creeping into many of our lives.

A few case studies are too limiting to draw conclusions, but they can help revitalize insights and reinforce humorous-to-mighty-serious messages.

The first involved a local major car rental company. In most condensed form, two days after returning a rental, this columnist received a call from the branch manager inquiring how much longer the vehicle might be in use.

The "cause" explained later for this mistake: the computers had gone down for several days. In reality, there was no backup system and apparently no one, when questioned, considered even going to pen/pencil-paper records.

Nor could apparently any of the eager but stumped employees figure out or articulate what should have been done or what to do next time.

Except they immediately "corrected" the now-restored computer files, and then they offered an apology, along with a future free weekend rental.

The second incident surfaced in a telephone conversation with the Internal Revenue Service. Seems, according to the IRS representative, there was no way to "verify" on a tax return that Social Security benefits had been signed up for and started - even though documents to that effect had been filed with the questioned return and supposedly someone could have checked.

What the IRS really meant was the computer could not "verify" the Social Security status. Indeed, computers were again an excuse for any problems. Definition of verification had been altered by the agency to mean "machine ahead of human," instead of relying on both.

These were isolated, little-harm-done stories, which, however, can be joined with other collective head-shakings.

Kind of minor league versions of Monica Lewinsky's father getting a computer-generated mailed solicitation from President Clinton's legal defense fund.

All apparently unchecked by human hands and minds. Dumb. And dumber even in impressions left and disturbing societal implications raised.

David L. Grey, Ph.D, of Mountain View, is professor emeritus of journalism at San Jose State University , where he taught and researched media law and ethics. He can be reached at: greyline@pacbell.net