Yikes that really hits home. Since the dawn of computers, people have been handing over more and more of their thinking to processes and machines, becoming more robotic. Or like how the factory line changes the way people think, reduces their creativity. Maybe now that the robots are getting scarily good, I can hope that humans will go back to acting like humans again.
> 1960's Futurists: Automation will free mankind from meaningless tedium to focus on creative pursuits only human beings can master.
> 2020's Techbros: We're building AI to write all your books, music, and TV so you can focus on the meaningless tedium of your cubicle job.
Except instead of "cubicle job" it's also "algorithm-pleasing #content drudgery".
I remember it was something absurd and kafkesque, I returned a product, and they could only return the money on the card I used to pay for it, but that card has expired.
I was exasperated "Here is my ID, its the same bank account, by the same bank. Use y common sence!"
"But there is message sating it has to be the same card"
"it no longer exists, so how do I get the money back now?"
"There is no button for that"
At that moment, I thought, this person can only do what the computer says. The Developer didn't program the computer.
The develiper programmed the person that will use the computer.
I think more accurately the developer constrained the end user of the system.
By comparison, some years later after that company had gone out of business, I was in a big box version of the same service and we ran into a problem that was the equivalent of "accidentally closed this ticket, need to re-open". The cashier could see that it was a problem, and needed to be fixed. The supervisor could see it was a problem and needed to be fixed. The store manager could see it was a problem and needed to be fixed. And it was unfixable because there was no way to do it in the system and no system developers reachable by mere mortals.
When creation is having a idea and then flesh it with some procedural, repetitive work, then you are not doing a lot more of what this kind of tools might be able to do, just hand it the idea and let it produce the fleshed out product.
You can still chop a tree with an axe for the joy of it, but we have a cheap chainsaw available for use too.
One of the major motifs of Chaplin's Modern Times.
It was released in 1936.
It's also, um, kinda something Karl Marx was concerned about. So.
Here's a famous sequence from the film, in which Chaplin's character is volun-told to try out a new efficiency-improving worker lunch machine: