Is Society Over-Computerized, or Stupidly Computerized?

[Marat]

At the university where I work there is a complex form that has to be filled out for internal bureaucratic purposes. Fifteen years ago it took about 10 minutes to fill it out with a pen, and because the categories and options on the form were always oversimplified with respect to their expectations of how complex and varied reality would be, it was always necessary to write notations outside the boxes provided to make clear to the bureaucrats all the special cases that existed.

 

Now the entire form -- which remains substantively the same -- has been computerized, along with everything else at the university. While it used to be self-evident to all how to fill out the form correctly, now a 20-minute instructional video is required to explain to new users how it is to be filled out on a computer. In addition, because of some pesky password-creation, downloading issues, pop-ups, and other subtleties, the form now takes about 20 minutes to fill out rather than 10. On top of that, since there is no way that a computer form can accept all the special case annotations, countless errors, misimplications, and confusions are created in the bureaucracy. Finally, instead of there being nothing but the form, the person filling it out, and the bureaucrat who accepts the form, there is now in addition several workers in the information technology office to help people with all the computer use problems that arise in trying to fill out the form.

 

While I don't doubt that there is some gain to the bureaucracy down the line, at a level I don't see, from having all these forms computerized rather than on paper, I am not sure anyone has ever bothered to check to see whether the waste of time by hundreds of staff members using the new computer-based form is really outweighed by any gains in efficiency in the inner workings of the bureaucracy. I think instead the whole system was computerized because that is the style now, somewhat the way the fascination with x-ray technology in the 1950s induced shoe stores to measure the fit of children's shoes by x-raying their feet at who knows what price in excess cancer deaths.

 

But it seems not just that there is over-computerization, such as toothbrushes now that can tell you with a microchip whether you are brushing too hard, but also stupid computerization, such as on-line merchants refusing ever to sell anything to you or your address again unless you can give them your computer password. If I just walk down to the real version of that same store they don't seem to require me to remember anything to buy and re-buy things from them, but the virtual store for some reason insists on playing their 'remember the number' game with me before they want to accept my money. CBS 60 Minutes once showed how counter-intuitively some calculator keyboards were designed, and now my university finds itself running several parallel computer systems, each with its own, totally unique access rituals, which practically ensures that no one outside the IT faculty will be able to access everything.

 

Are things just being over-computerized, computerized too fast for intuitive software to be used, or computerized in a way that seems natural only to people with a Ph.D. in computer programming?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I think a lot of things are computerized without concern for how they will actually be used. Back when I was applying to universities, there was the Common Application, a computerized college application that let you apply to several universities at once. How'd they go about it? Well, it's just a computerized version of the form -- once you type in your essay responses and fill in the boxes, it inserts those responses into the blanks on the paper form and prints them out so they can be sent to the colleges.

 

The problem, of course, was that people wrote responses that were slightly too large for the boxes on the physical sheets of paper, so their answers were cut off.

 

Had the Common Application been designed for how it's used, displaying applications on a screen instead of just filling in the same old forms, it'd have worked well. Instead they made it more difficult to use by requiring people to Print Preview their applications to make sure they fit in the old paper forms.

[lemur]

I think computerization would result in a lot more efficiency if people were actually interested in increasing rationality and efficiency. The problem, imo, is that people have lots of other interests that outweigh rationality and efficiency, and they use computing power to its maximum to achieve those interests. So if a bureaucracy is interested in fairness or better information, etc., it will use computing power to enhance the parts of its forms that it believes facilitates these values. The problem with bureaucrats, though, is that they rarely recognize that bureaucracy is an abstraction of reality that merely intervenes in reality in semi-effective ways. I would like to say that the problem could be cured by just re-focussing on concrete reality, but it seems like most people have developed an approach to reality that relies on manipulating bureaucratic rules and regulations. So the only real cure might be to subject people to incessant re-education brainwashing using films like the Matrix and old speeches by Timothy Leary.