Customer Reviews

Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation

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This remains one of the best books about the role of computers in our society, dealing with such topics as:

(1) How computers, by doing clerical work faster than human clerks, have enabled established bureaucratic structures to endure, and therefore the "computer revolution" has really been a powerful conservative/reactionary social process.

(2) How huge incomprehensible computer systems come to tyrannize people (both end users and maintenance programmers) into submitting to the systems' irrational behavior, because the known problems cannot be fixed without risk of making things even worse.

(3) The social responsibility of technical workers, who generally are myopically focused on "efficiently" doing whatever they do, without being concerned about *what* should be being done and whether what *they* are working on is something which should be done differently or not be done at all.

This book should be *must* reading for all computer programmers, computer "scientists", et al., to help them begin to think more about the social context of technology, and begin to aspire to *wisdom* and *responsibility* commensurate with the social impact of their work.

"Computer Power and Human Reason" is also well written to be understandable by lay persons. A wide range of readers should find it enjoyable, interesting and thought-provoking. Thus it can help "Everyman" understand better the role of computers in our lives.

This is perhaps the best book ever written on issues of computer technology and modern life, in the sense that it says a lot of really important things and is also very readable by both lay persons and technical persons. People like Jacques Ellul, Arnold Gehlen et al. have written very important texts in this area, but are much less "accessible". If the truth only counts when it is absorbed by persons, Weizenbaum's book stands out as being engrossing and a pleasure to read, as well as saying what needs to be said. It is very sad that the second edition which was supposed to be out a year or so ago has not appeared. But in no way has 20 years "dated" the present text. _Computer Power and Human Understanding_ explains why we have such problems as Y2K, etc.

I read parts of this book, thinking highly of it. I thought one particular passage from it, as quoted in Gates by Stepehen Manes and Paul Andrews, particulary stood amid the limelight: [t]he computer programmer . . . is a creator of universes for which alone is the lawgiver. . . .No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage of field a battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops.

Joe Weizenbaum taught my one and only course on computer software in 1964, covering 7094 assembler language and MAD (the Michigan Algorithm Decoder, similar to Fortran in its later variant, Watfor). It represented a substantial part of computer software knowledge generally available at the time and sufficed to start a career, so Joe evidently knew his stuff.

This was pre-ELIZA and long before the "Computer Power" book. I heard about but did not read the book when it appeared in the mid-1970s. It was said to be philosophical, while my interests in software had become wholly practical. Reading news of Joe's death led me to locate a copy. Amazon made it easy to find one. I was curious to see how much of the evolution of technology Joe had anticipated.

Alas, not much. Joe was greatly concerned by things he thought might go wrong but didn't seem to know much about things that actually go wrong. The book was written near the beginning of software engineering as a discipline: all about planning, documenting, testing. Instead of that wearisome muck, Joe was aroused by the Great Ideas of his age. He took it for granted that "artificial intelligence" would work. He was suspicious about its application: "we ought not now to give computers tasks that demand wisdom." The foot soldiers of AI were always worried whether their ideas would work and were right to worry. For the most part they didn't, and they remain a curiosity of endless demonstration projects and a handful of specialized uses.

Joe missed the trends: vast reductions in computer sizes and costs, communications networks as the emerging technology, the challenges of user interfaces, prediction of intrinsically chaotic systems and pattern recognition problems, and the critical problems of how to make software reliable. Joe's book is a diatribe: "instrumental reason in our time has brought...deligitimization of the very idea of nobility." Roll back the clock a century and a half, and Joe might have sympathized with "Ned Lud" and his band in Nottingham: "the framework knitters are empowered to break and destroy all frames and engines that fabricate articles in a fraudulent and deceitful manner..."

So Joe's book is mostly a period piece, recalling a lost time between the classic age of machines and the modern age of information. At the end of the book, Joe calls for "teachers of computer science" to teach "the validity and the legitimacy of softer knowledge." Joe's concern with the ethics of a profession remains the strong element of his book and life work.

After reading through the other reviews, it strikes me that most of them are by and for--and make the assumption that the book is by and for--those engaged actively in making and programming computers. But it's not.

Virtually every life on earth--and certainly every life in the "first world"--is now intimately bound up with computers and the services they provide and the challenges they offer. This book examines these as thoughtfully as any book on the topic. Yes, Weizenbaum got some things wrong, but he's still among the most prescient writers on the topic, 35 years later!, and the ethical basis of the book--the reason we all should read it, whether or not our livelihood depends on knowing anything about computers--is well nigh eternal.

More important, the book isn't just about computers, it's about the relationship of human beings to technology.

Here's one of my favorite passages: "The salvation of the world depends only on the individual whose world it is. At least, every individual must act as if the whole future of the world, of humanity itself, depends on him. Anything less is a shirking of responsibility and is itself a dehumanizing force, for anything less encourages the individual to look upon himself as a mere actor in a drama written by anonymous agents, as less than a whole person, and that is the beginning of passivity and aimlessness."

(Apologies, in your absence, Joe, for the dated, sexist language, but the point is clear.)

As I look around at the automotons in our midst (cradling their smart phones; lost in their worlds) it is clear that Weizenbaum was ahead of his time. I'm sure he was not endeared by his peers for having the backbone to warn of the danger of the rise of the machine.

An authority in the field of artificial intelligence and computer science in general, Joseph Weizenbaum provides insight in proceedings in that area but mainly warns about what these developments may lead to. It is very entertaining to read this book some 20 years after original publication and see how many of what we believe are recent developments were actually implemented back then already (on one or two priceless "super" computers).
Very dogmatic and patronizing at times, it still is a good read if only for the thought provoking ideas like: if electronic computers would have been used in the manhattan project, today we would assume that development of the atomic bomb would have been impossible without it.

This book is a basic philosophical treatment of computing. I think that it should be included as a basic part of any Computer Science / Computer Engineer curriculum in respectable universities, along with Roger Penrose book, The Emperor's new mind, it creats a better understanding of what is human and what is mechanic for all those who need to know it.

Should Computer Science / Engineering freshmen/women in universities know? My answer is YES, in their first year !