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Computers are
no longer
machines:
the mental leap
into the Info Age
Guest editor professor rik maes discusses how technology’s transition from tools to machines
to apparatus alters human users from workers and high priests to information gatherers and
game-playing customers.
or an extremely long period in mankind’s
history, “technology” was equivalent to “tools”:
F from the very first axe to the more sophisticated
hammer of a 21st century carpenter, tools were (and
are) extensions and, to a certain degree, simulations of
human organs.
A hammer, for example, simulates the human fist. In
principle, each user has his/her own tools: human
beings are the constant factor, tools the ephemeral one.
This whole situation changed with the Industrial
Revolution: tools grasped hold of scientific theories and,
as a result, they became stronger, bigger and – of
necessity – more expensive.
They became, in fact, “machines”. Their owner, and
no longer their user, is important: this is what
capitalism causes. The relationship of machines to
human beings is the opposite of that of tools: machines
are becoming the constant factor.
One machine is attended to by different “servants”,
often working in shifts in order to fully exploit the
expensive machine.
If there is an absolute mismatch between the
machine and its servants, the former one is not
abandoned, yet the latter ones are fired. Originally,
computers were conceived as machines: big
mainframes, operated by different shifts of high priests
trained in keeping the machine working.
The very fact that the first computers were big
mainframes facilitated – and, to a certain extent,
provoked – the introduction of bureaucracies:
organisations built around the computer as a machine.
How different would these organisations have been
in the case where we first invented the PC and only later
the mainframe as its more powerful extension!
More important is that the metaphor of the computer
as a machine was passed on to information systems.
ERP systems, for example, originated from bill of
material (BoM) applications, and then became
successively material requirements planning (MRP)
systems, manufacture resource planning (MRP-II)
systems and, finally, enterprise resource planning
(ERP) systems.
Their inherent world view is still that of control of
materials, and hence of machine thinking: the system is
predominant, surrounded by its servants. The
organisation has to be adapted to the full exploitation of
its ERP system: work and meanings have to be
standardised. No wonder that a huge amount of the
effort and money associated with the introduction of
ERP-systems is spent on the training of people.

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That’s the way of the ERP world: the system has
parameters to be adjusted, a prerogative employees are
missing entirely.
The significance of machine thinking even reached
our very perception of information: data is considered
as objective representations of the real world, and
nobody is questioning the original bias built in by the
designers of the system. The world of information
production is built up of standardised concepts,
whereas the world of the use of information is
intrinsically interpretative: information is in essence a
social construct.
A further consequence of the machine vision is that
work can not only be standardised, but also centralised
and concentrated: after the centralisation of regular
business operations, automation itself is next. Shared
service centres and (out)sourcing/offshoring of IT
centres are the logical consequences of this
development. Automation can (finally) be managed as a
regular resource, ie, as a support function that can be
reduced in costs.
One can ask: “What’s next?” Is outsourcing/
offshoring the final triumph of machine thinking and
hence the ultimate solution for IT-related problems?
1
I doubt it! Vilém Flusser , a little-known
Czech/Brazilian/French philosopher, introduced
“apparatus” as the third global stage in the
development of technologies. Apparatus are, as
opposed to machines, small and inexpensive. Above all,
they are, like tools, personal – yet they do not change
the world, as tools and machines do, but the meaning of
the world. Mobile phones are perfect examples.
People using apparatus no longer use their hands,
but their fingertips – in fact not to produce work, but to
manipulate information. People no longer serve
technologies, yet they play with them: an apparatus is
basically a plaything.
Homo faber is transformed into Homo ludens.
Human beings are neither the constant, nor the
variable, factors in their relationship with apparatus:
both merge into a unity and the users become what
Flusser calls “functionaries” (they both play with the
apparatus and act as functions of the apparatus).
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In apparatus it is not the hardware but the software
that is all-important. Hardware is becoming smaller and
smaller (as well as cheaper and cheaper). The focus,
while using apparatus, is on exploring the possibilities
of the apparatus; as soon as these possibilities, built
into the software and hence extensible, are no longer
attractive, the apparatus is replaced by a more
powerful (playful) one.
Users, apparatus and their producers are bound in
a continuous effort of reprogramming, from the level of
People no longer serve technologies –
they play with them: an apparatus is
basically a plaything
the apparatus itself (enabling it to function) over the
level of the user (enabling him or her to play), to the
level of the industrial complex producing the apparatus
(enabling them to manipulate the users and hence the
sales figures).
The whole question of ownership or exploitation of
the apparatus, predominant in the machine era, is
totally irrelevant: the real issue is who develops the
programmes at the different levels mentioned.
My basic conclusion is very straightforward: the
world has already moved from the era of machine
thinking into the era of apparatus thinking. Our
children don’t want to live in a world of machines, but of
the Internet, mobile phones, cameras, etc.
However, organisations all over the world, and due
to the quasi-irresistible call for immediate results, are
more and more absorbed in standardisation,
streamlining, efficiency enhancements, shared services,
outsourcing, etc. They are stuck in machine thinking
and don’t see the fact that their (future) customers are
far beyond them in apparatus thinking.
Who said the customers are the raison d’être of
organisations? Do organisations hear me?
Reference:
1. Flusser, Vilém. Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Reaktion Books, 2000
(original in German: Für Eine Philosophie der Fotografie, 1983).
vol 6 no 2