eChunks 9

Augmentative tools are comforting, for they leave the decisions about activities to people. Thus, we can take them or leave them, choosing those that we feel aid our lives, ignoring those that do not. Moreover, because these are voluntary, different people can make different choices, so that people can choose whatever mix of technology suits their life style. (P131)

When conditions are stable and the task well understood, then no mechanical agility is required and the unexpected happens infrequently, then automation can indeed take over. (P132)

Augmentative tools and automation are two things we face daily in life.  There are tasks that are automated, such as in a factory producing mass quantities of shirts.  Then there are augmentative tools such as cars, where we are able to chose to use or not.  These two things are heavily depend on what task we are looking at.  In comparison, these tools both have pros and cons.  As the two quotes above mention, augmentative tools are beneficial as we are able to choose what we require to fit our lifestyles.  Take the car as an example; I for one know living in Calgary, with the public transportation extremely inefficient, not having a car for transportation can make life here quite difficult.  However, living in big cities where everything you need is basically beside where you live, you probably wouldn’t require a car.  Hence this car is what would be an augmentative tool.  The other quote on the other hand talks about automation; it should only occur if the task we need to be done is simple and the same every time it is done.  Such as producing a shirt, this can be automated as basically we are just cutting it out of fabric, folding, stitching and then printing on it.  Hence, both of these methods have their advantages and disadvantages.  The disadvantage when it comes to augmentatives tools is well, simply put some people now days are lazy, they rather have every thing around them automated and done for them.  And these people wouldn’t want to be bothered with the simple everyday decisions, such as driving a car, picking the best route to get to the destination and such.  However, with automation, comes the problem of how much do we trust it.  If the car was completely automated, how are we going to be able to completely trust that the car will do as it is intended.  Automation of cars has many problems, can we trust it enough to make the right decision going through heavy traffic, what about other cars? How about traffic lights?  As most of you know, driving a car here there are many things we need to pay attention to, people crossing, other cars, lights, speed limits and such, the question now is can we trust the automated car to perform all these things without error?  Because these errors would be fatal, possibly causing loss of life.  Another problem with automation is how can we develop it?  To develop something like the automated car would require artificial intelligence, we would require something like a neural network simulating our brains.  We would next need to implement data mining methods to mine out traffic problems, people, other cars, lights, speed limits and such.  It is not that its impossible, it is just very difficult.  Automation is good, but the question comes to how far should we go with automation.