IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 5

EDITORIAL

Katina Michael

When Uber Cars
Become Driverless:
"They Won't Need
No Driver"

have long pondered
the issue of dehumanization through
automation. I think
the old adage: "no
one is irreplaceable" now comes with
an added twist. Don Proudfoot, my
former director at Nortel Networks,
used to remind me that even scarce
human resources could be "replaced"
by other talent. But what of the prospect of highly skilled human resources being replaced by a machine [1]?

I

My mother has often described the
challenge of sowing seeds with a
hand-held plow on almost rockhard soil. She remembers a time
when all the digging and toiling to
turn over the soil and cut furrows
in preparation for the planting of
seeds was done entirely by hand
(i.e., with makeshift tools resembling picks and hoes). Mum is
always in wonderment to see how
far farming has come today, especially when she watches scenes of
huge engine-powered plows motoring through large parcels of arable
land. She marvels at the innovations that have taken place, and we
concur on the mass benefits of
these technological advancements.
Still, mother has continued
to convey "wisdoms" from her

first-hand experience of plowing
the fields in her remote village in
Greece when she was a child. In
truth, I don't exactly know what it
is like to have to plow by hand for 6
hours straight, day after day. Many
of us do not even know what it is
like to grow and eat our own fruit
and vegetables. Something is definitely lost in the transmission of the
story given the way that agricultural
practices have changed. I think it
is empathy. We can imagine what
it is to plow, but only if we've had
to perform the same act would we
actually comprehend the meaning
of "plowing" in the traditional sense.
My earliest memory of "automation" was seeing the factory floor of
the ACI (formerly Australian Glass
Manufacturers) in Waterloo, NSW.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2016.2554444
Date of publication: 2 June 2016

june 2016

∕

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

It looked as if it was straight out of
a Roald Dahl "Willy Wonka" scene!
My father was a leading hand at
ACI. Like most other migrants of
the 1960s, he did not speak a word
of English. Although a self-taught
craftsman, his main task for over 25
years of his life was to look for pieces of broken glass, ill-formed bottles
of various types (Coke, nail polish,
medical), and troubleshoot issues
in processing and quality control as
they arose. Daily, he would intently
look at thousands of bottles as they
came down the conveyor belt, ready
to be packed onto huge pallets, and
packaged for distribution.
My recollections are of a ginormous winding snake-like conveyor
belt that almost touched the very
highest of ceilings, the deafening
sound of bottles hitting up against

5



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016

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