IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2015 - 7

The Glass Cage: Automation and
Us [2].
Unfortunately, the two choices,
affirmative or negative to the proposition, left out what for me is the
reality of our ongoing affair with
technology. That is, that technology is the proverbial double-edged
sword, both liberating and enslaving. Or to give it an oxymoronic
Shakespearean twist - "Feather
of lead, bright smoke, cold fire."
Technology is liberating enslavement - however with the liberation
increasingly concentrated in the few
and fewer, as McGibbon illuminated
in his closing remarks.
My only disappointment was
that after the debate the audience swung to the side of liberation, though marginally (49 to 46
percent). I suspect that the prestige
of Peter Singer, his getting in the
last word, along with his sweeping
aside of having to deal with questions of addictive harm - allowing
fence straddlers to carry on clicking, flicking, sweeping, swiping,
and scrolling, a.k.a., business as
usual, sans guilt - might have had
something to do with the swing.
Peter Singer's case was, for
me, shallow, almost clichéd, from
a technolog y-a s -liberator perspective. His view that, so what
if we as a species are eventually replaced, is kind of flippant.
I could be wrong, but the feeling that comes across is that he
really didn't devote much time to
his presentation, or to taking the
debate seriously. I think, interestingly, he appeared surprised by
the number of people who raised
their hands when he asked whether they had consulted their smartphones. He said they were in the
minority, but not very convincingly. Regarding his and Antony
Loewenstein's hard rock case for
techno-liberation, the eradication
of smallpox - maybe not so fast.
MARCH 2015

(See "Resurrecting Smallpox? Easway back in 1810. While Wilson disier than You Think"[3].)
avows any lessons to be learned
Had I been there I think I could
from ant slavery for our own spehave made a good case for we
cies regarding the institution of
being in control, we having choice,
human slavery, we might do well
as a comforting, self-serving (for
not to dismiss the enfeebling of ant
those selling the stuff) illusion.
masters that have become depenRegarding Antony Loewenstein's
dent on their captive slave ants
arguing that we all have a choice,
doing the work.
we don't have to accept the corThe particular species of ant
porate cool-aid, with Asher Wolf
Wilson was studying was not an
seconding the motion: yes, that's
advanced slave maker. When their
true. Some will make the effort to
slaves were taken away, the master
engage Daniel Kahneman's "sysants still retained a latent capactem 2," to use our critical thinkity for work that was reactivated,
ing brain, rather than knee-jerk
"rapidly taking over most of the
responding to every next new shiny
tasks formerly carried out by the
and new that tantalizes our
reptilian brain coming down
the corporate pike. But as
Alastair McGibbon pointed
out, most will take the path
The ratchet of parasitic
of most convenience, comfortably falling into the trap
dependence in ants has
of dissipative harm.
a message for us.
Re enslavement, we view
technology as slave owners
once viewed their slaves,
but the enslaved, by rendering the masters increasingly helpslaves...[This] latent capacity for
less, enslave the masters. Offload
working [is]," Wilson continues, "a
the work onto hard and soft robot
capacity that is totally lacking in
slaves that will do so that we don't
more advanced species of slave
have to do. But, as the power in
making ants."
robot hardware n apps does more
But there is a caveat. "The [masand more, what will happen to our
ter] workers that had lost their
brains and bodies when the need
slaves did not, however, perform
to pay attention, when the need to
their tasks well. [Most significantremember, when the need to move
ly,] the slaveless ants lacked one
is swept away by technology that
behavior pattern that is essential
does the attending, the rememberfor the survival of the colony: foring, the moving?
aging for dead insects and other
A possible answer can be found
solid food. They even ignored food
far afield in the world of slave makplaced in their path. When the coling ants, the only other species
ony began to display signs of starthat enslaves its own kind. The
vation and deterioration, [Wilson]
famed biologist/myrmecologist/
returned to them some slaves...The
prolific author, Edward O. Wilson,
bustling slave workers soon put the
conducted experiments on master/
nest back in good order, and the
slave ant species adding weight to
the observations based on experi(continued on page 9)
ments conducted by Peter Huber
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