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Guest editorprofessor rik maes discusses how technologys transition from tools to machinesto apparatus alters human users from workers and high priests to information gatherers and

game-playing customers.

Computers areno longermachines:the mental leap

into the Info Age

For an extremely long period in mankinds

history, technology was equivalent to tools:

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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Thats 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: Whats next? Is outsourcing/

offshoring the final triumph of machine thinking and

hence the ultimate solution for IT-related problems?

I doubt it! Vilm Flusser1, 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).

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

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 dont 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 dont see the fact that their (future) customers are

far beyond them in apparatus thinking.

Who said the customers are the raison dtre of

organisations? Do organisations hear me?

Reference:

1. Flusser, Vilm. Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Reaktion Books, 2000

(original in German:Fr Eine Philosophie der Fotografie, 1983).

People no longer serve technologies

they play with them: an apparatus isbasically a plaything

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