Computer, Individual, & the Inverted Turing Test of Culture

I've seen a few entries about machines and individuality or humanity. This is an issue that feels different today than it did in 1965 or 1980.

I strongly suspect that a lot of the assumption that computers would impose inhuman standards on humans comes from the broad dissatisfaction with the culture that came out of manufacturing. Manufacturing enforced uniformity and non-responsiveness to human rythms on many aspects of human life. Trains and corporations had to run on time. Information had to be stored and retrieved by varied people; therefore, filing systems had to be created that used least-common-denominator ways of organizing information -- last name first, alphabetic, for example, or by date.

This has less to do with computer use -- and less and less all the time as computers become more capable -- and much to do with a few arithmetic observations concerning profit margins. It costs less to manufacture uniform product. It costs less to manufacture with uniform components and uniform labor.

As workers, many of us had to keep our hands busy, but we felt we could dream. Many of us feared that computers would take the gestalt of Henry Ford and bring it into the realms of thought, poetry, music, and creativity.

I remember when my friends and I wondered whether digitalized sound might not be somehow less organic, and therefore damaging.