ABSTRACT
In our technologically replete world it is easy to be seduced by the novelty and excitement of the latest innovation. Advocates of ‘human-centred’ automation can easily become enraptured by the seditious attraction of viewing the machine as the ‘problem’ to be solved. Just as for the designer and engineer, the human can easily be envisioned as representing the critical problem or fundamental sticking point. Perspectives can be quickly narrowed to the immediate present and attitudes oriented toward addressing the downside of machines. Here, I want to redress that balance somewhat by considering an historical example of men without machines. To do this, I first want to distinguish tools from machines, since these individuals certainly did not exist without tools. Similarly, I want to later distinguish machines from Self-Intentioned Systems (SIS) which I believe represent their next stage of development and evolution. This latter distinction is important. While the topic of the present chapter concerns the explicit removal of machines but not tools, at the chapter’s end I want to consider the possibility of the explicit excision of selfintentioned systems while we try to retain machines. Perhaps the present story will give us some guide in this latter circumstance. From the bleak conditions of the story I describe, it is clear that machines render great human benefit and that there is no machine-free, natural Arcadia for future generations to aspire to. Therefore, when we point to the costs of machine failures, it is necessary to consider the antithesis in examining what conditions would be like in their absence. This enforced absence will also guide us to our future.
