| As one of the greatest inventions of
the 20th century, computers have become something indispensable
to human beings. Naturally they have much influence on human
society. In this article, the author explores the social effects
of computers and related technologies. He also discusses the
problems arising from the use of computers and the growth
of information technologies.
Just as the tools people
invented transformed the societies in which they lived, so
the needs of these societies inspired inventions, of which
computers became a cornerstone（奠基石）in the 20th century. Throughout
the world, computers have become a source as well as a conduit（渠道）of
information. This article takes a discursive（推论的）look at computers,
related technological developments, and social issues affected
by the inclusion of computers in everyday life.
Effects of Computers on Society
The social effects of
the computers that surround us, seen and unseen, in our daily
lives are of two kinds: immediate effects on each individual
who uses a computer or encounters services delivered by a
computer, and aggregate（综合）effects on society as a whole.
Residents of the United States find the effects on individuals
most visible, since they have become immersed（融入）in a society
in which virtually every activity has become dependent on
the reliable functioning of information technology and the
people who manipulate（操作）it.
Perhaps the most dramatic evidence
for the extent of computer use is seen in the fact that by
the early 1990s over 20 million personal computers (PCs) were
installed in homes across the United States. The U.S. installed
base of PCs in business, government, and education (excluding
homes) is expected to continue to grow throughout the 1990s.
These projections do not encompass（包含） imbedded microprocessors,
which have been installed in the hundreds of millions in automobiles,
appliances, timepieces, television sets, videocassette recorders
(VCRs), telephones, and fax machines, and which have countless
other uses in business, agriculture, education, and the military.
Products that have their functions controlled by microprocessors
have often been referred to as smart products.1 Since they
are more energy efficient and responsive to users’ needs,
they have changed the way people live and work in many ways.
Perhaps the most pernicious（有害的）social
effect of the contribution information technology makes to
economic productivity is the economic disenfranchisement of
those who receive an inadequate（不充分的）education. Manual tools
can be learned by apprenticeship; information tools require
formal education. Increasingly, the tools of a modern economy
incorporate（合并） computer intelligence and require educated
users. Because they are more productive, their operators command
higher compensation（补偿）. This leaves the educationally deprived（没有机会受教育的人）even
more disadvantaged. Thus the poor state of some U.S. public
school systems in the last decade of the 20th century became
a serious threat to equal opportunity in the information age.
Generally, computers perform functions
long familiar to people in other forms. Why has the shift
from file cabinets, adding machines, and voice telephones
to digital computers, telecommunications, and software made
such a big difference in our lives? Digital information-handling
is fundamentally different from analog（模拟型）, or uncoded information,
in five crucial（极重要的）respects: retrieval（检索）, copying, storage,
and transmission of information, which once digitally encoded,
can be made completely error free. Computers can perform operations
with extraordinary speed and can inexpensively store incredibly
large amounts of information in a very small space. This facility
introduces great economies of scale and scope to information
applications and makes possible cross-comparison of enormous
databases for consistency（一致性）, activities that would be inconceivably（不可思议地）complex
operations using paper records; since electronic communication
has become virtually instantaneous, computer communications
create affinities（密切关系）of interest that are independent of
distance. This was the idea behind Marshall McLuhan’s concept
of a global electronic village; digitally encoded information
can be exactly recognized by a machine, which allows information
to be searched, compared, and logically processed and then
used to create new information and automatically trigger further
actions; intelligent machines, which emulate（仿效）the wiring
of synapses（神经键）in the brain, can be designed and programmed
so that the machines learn from repeated experience with a
task.
Realization of the elusive（难懂的）promise
of artificial intelligence has been long delayed. The hope
of automatic language translation in the 1960s remained unrealized
in the 1990s, but other areas of artificial intelligence research,
expert systems, image and sensory recognition, and robotic（机器人的）activity
have been integrated into many applications.2 Expert systems,
pioneered by Professor Edward Feigenbaum, create logical conclusions
by processing a large store of expert knowledge. Other computer
systems can see, hear, feel, and manipulate objects. These
two lines of investigation are coming together in new tools
for exploring artificial or virtual reality.
Despite their extraordinary capabilities
and promise, and a quarter-century of research on artificial
intelligence, computers are deterministic（确定性的）machines; they
do not think for themselves but instead doggedly follow the
instructions in their programs, using the data in their stores.
This fact has produced a great deal of frustration on the
part of those computer users who expect a computer to respond
to their instructions in the same way a human being might.
This frustration has been perhaps best expressed in a poem
posted anonymously（匿名地）on the bulletin board（公告牌）of the University
of Wisconsin Computer Center:
I’m sick and tired of this machine.
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does just what I want,
But only what I tell it.
Millions of citizens who use personal
computers take satisfaction in their mastery of the new technology,
but their frustrations also color their attitudes toward the
use of computers by government, merchants, banks, and other
institutions they encounter. People complain that computers
can be hard to understand, and that messages created by them
can be sometimes inappropriate or incomprehensible. Experts
on human factors and ergonomics（人类工程学）continue to attempt
to overcome these difficulties; the object of their efforts
has been a “user friendly machine”, a phrase used more often
in irony（讽刺）than in admiration.
Social Effects of Information Technology
It has become commonplace
to think of technological change as creating social consequences,
for good or ill. The anticipation of the social effects of
technology has become a field of study in social science called
technology assessment.3 While it can hardly be described as
an exact science, it has become a useful guide for monitoring
the effects of a technology and planning regulations, training,
and other interventions（干涉）to mitigate（减轻）the undesired consequences
and maximize the benefits from a new technology. However,
technological change has itself become a product of social
forces. Thus the character of social change resulting from
a technology may be quite different in different societies,
and the evolution of the technology in those societies may
also be quite different.4 Indeed, the fact that transnational
computer networks link societies with quite different laws
and customs and create legal questions about jurisdiction（权限）and
accountability（责任）has become a major source of conflict arising
from the global spread of information technology.5
The explosive growth of information
technologies raised concerns on two counts: the possibility
of technological abuse by authoritarian（独裁的）and bureaucratic（官僚的）government’s
intent on exercising political control of their citizens,
and concern that computers could displace human beings in
clerical jobs as well as in other forms of employment.6 The
first of these concerns may be best illustrated by George
Orwell’s apocalyptic（预示未来灾难的）novel “1984”, first published
in 1949 during the Cold War era, in which authoritarian governments
use new information technologies to deprive individuals of
their humanity and their freedom.
(1167 words)
|
