“I’m sort of a computer groupie,” said Art Buchwald, the syndicated humor columnist. He was caught up in the new pornography of the era: those luscious, ad-packed micro magazines crammed with the vital statistics of IBMs and Apples. “It used to be that when Playboy arrived at the house, my wife would say, ‘Your Playboy’s here,’” Buchwald told an advertising magazine. “Now she says, ‘Your InfoWorld’s here.’ I’m not sure which she prefers. I have a feeling that Playboy, at least, she could discuss with me.”
It was like radio during the 1920s, this micro craze.
Time had proclaimed the computer “Machine of the Year” in 1982, and I recalled a song that a friend of my parents, an old woman, had written years ago. “Marconi, Marconi,” the lyrics went, “the world is at your feet.” How long until the novelty of microcomputers seems just as quaint as that of radio? The parallels could be there. Two San Francisco[Francisco]-area authors, Andrew Fluegelman and Jeremy Joan Hewes, in Writing in the Computer Age, urged readers to “become full-fledged computer citizens—as writers, poets, artists, musicians, programmers, number-crunchers, networkers....” The Fluegelman-Hewes book was useful and well done. But “computer citizens”? The phrase grated. I was a user at the keyboard, a “citizen” in the voting booth.
Still, I could understand why Fluegelman and Hewes called themselves “computer evangelists.” I felt the same way. After having brought us Muzak and junk food, technology for once was making life better.
I say this with reservations. Educators correctly warned of the computer literacy gap between Harlem and Scarsdale—of the dearth of machines in the slums and the bounty in some suburbs. Rich and poor clashed at school-board meetings. In my own county, Fairfax County, Virginia, a well-off PTA reportedly saved up for micros, then withheld purchases until it learned whether the school board would spend tax money helping other schools catch up. And what about unemployment as automation cost more jobs? Or U.S. firms using computer-satellite hookups to pipe in the work of $3-an-hour clerks? The People’s Republic of China was even preparing to sell programming skills to the rest of the world. A billion programmers, maybe? So much for high tech as a refuge for the American jobless.
How could you make computerization a joy to all? That was one answer you’d never find in a computer store.
You could, however, set up the right retraining program for valued employees to see them through automation. You could fight the Hal Syndrome. You could work to end boring tasks. In short, you could do your best to make your computers benefit both your employees and your company’s earnings.