The principles underlying computer automation are clear and strong. They account for most of the automation we see. They tell us clearly what will happen, why it will happen, and what the benefits will be. What the principles do NOT tell us is who will first apply automation to what process in what sector.
Understanding the principles lets you predict the rough order of the sequence of automation.
The principles are extremely simple. Perhaps that's why they're rarely stated and appear not to be taught in schools or understood by practitioners. So much the better for people who want to innovate and win by automating!
The Principles
You can probably guess the principles of automation from the definition of the word: "automate" means to do by machine or computer what a human would otherwise do.
At core, there's really a single simple principle:
- Replace time that a person would have spent with work done by a computer.
The core principle is demonstrated by a before-and-after comparison: the principle requires that human time/value doing whatever activity is being automated, net of the investment in the computer hardware and software, is reduced after the addition of the computer and software. Lots of words, same meaning: apply the computer stuff, and there's less total human time/effort.
Expanding on the replace theme, "replace" means anything that reduces human time to do something:
- Replace time that a human would have spent with work done by computer; REPLACE!
- Reduce the amount of time spent by a human; REDUCE!
- Arrange the human's time more efficiently, eliminating waste; RE-ARRANGE!
- Decide Who does What work, How and Where they do it; RE-ORGANIZE!
That's it!
This notion of what software was REALLY about struck me quite early in my career. The thought was simple: the ultimate purpose of most of the software I wrote is to replace humans. The thought made me uncomfortable. But after a while, I connected the thought with all the rest of the mechanization and industrialization in society for hundreds of years. A new machine is valuable only to the extent that it somehow reduces the total amount of human labor to reach a given result, everything taken into account! This was true for the Jacquard Looms to which the luddites violently objected in the early 1800's, and the same principles are at work today with computers, resisted by modern-day luddites.
In other words, computers are the next step in a long sequence of people figuring out how to get stuff done with less effort by themselves and/or other people.
Here are some simple examples:
REPLACE
Replace what humans do with computers doing it is the core principle of automation. E-mail is a super-simple example, since computers automate the entire process of delivering the result of typing to another human being, eliminating the many steps involved in doing it physically. The replacement can be low-level and mechanical, like delivering email, or it can be high-level, like the work of deciding who should do what work in what order.
REDUCE
Electric light is a pre-computer example, since it reduces all the time required to, for example, deal with the oil lamp, and replaces it with flicking a switch. A modern example is spreadsheets, which automate the time people used to spend making calculations with adding machines.
RE-ARRANGE
Introducing chat into customer call centers eliminated huge amounts of wasted waiting time, so that phone operators could handle chat when they weren't on the phone.
RE_ORGANIZE
Routing certain kinds of calls to the optimal customer service person (Who does What work), giving them scripts and hints.
The Principles apply to Manual and Mental work
At the start of automation, the computer and software automate work that it's pretty plain that people are doing. As it gets more advanced, a couple interesting things happen.
- Once the work is done by computer, it sometimes happens that better ways of getting the work done are possible. This is the same principle we see in mechanical flight: even though all birds have wings that flap, airplane wings don't flap. Instead of flying the ways birds do, engineers have figured out of the core principles of flying and reflected those in airplane design. Similarly, human work is often first translated to computer automation simplistically, and later rebuilt without reference to the human origins.
- Once computers are a significant part of the landscape, computer people figure out valuable things to do that have little to do with what humans have done in the past, though this is uncommon.
The Principles are recursive
At the beginning, getting computers to do things is incredibly labor-intensive. As time goes on, some people look at the work humans do to get computers to do things -- and automate the automation process! Yes, the very programmers whose job is to put people out of work can be put out of work by computers. And on and on.
The Principles applied to human interaction
We can see the principles in action in the sequence of changes that have taken place in normal interactions between human beings.
Prior to automation, the only way humans could communicate was by voice, and by being in each other's physical presence. Here are the major automation steps that have taken place:
- Writing a letter.
- Automation is making and acquiring paper, pen and ink, and transporting letter
- Eliminates the travel time of the sender and/or receiver
- Automation is making and acquiring paper, pen and ink, and transporting letter
- Publishing books, newspapers.
- Automation is printing and distributing the books or papers
- Eliminates the travel time of all the receivers
- Telephone
- Eliminates the travel time for the parties to get together
- Eliminates the time spent writing and reading, and the delay in transmission of prior methods
- Mobile phone
- Eliminates the need to travel to a phone to make and/or receive calls
- Voice mail
- Eliminates the requirement that the receiver be available when the caller calls, for those cases when it's applicable
- Eliminates the requirement that the receiver be available when the caller calls, for those cases when it's applicable
- E-Mail
- Writing a letter with near-real-time delivery and the ability to read when ready, like letter reading and voice mail.
- Chat
- Like email, only with a different interface, making it better for real-time, written exchanges, with minor delays acceptable.
- Scripting
- In customer service centers, reduces training, reduces human error, and reduces the time to produce an optimal answer to a question.
- In customer service centers, reduces training, reduces human error, and reduces the time to produce an optimal answer to a question.
- VRU, chatbot
- A recorded and/or machine-generated party in a conversation.
- Applicable to all of the above methods.
- Eliminates a human giving repetitive responses or messages.
This all seems obvious, right? Like we know all this stuff, what's new?
For the steps above that are computer-based, what's interesting is that the technical capabilities were often in place considerably before they were brought into production. The gap was usually not decades-long, like it has been with more esoteric technologies. And in each case, knowing the technology and this fundamental principle could enable you to predict that the automation would be built and deployed.
Conclusion
If you want to predict the future of technology and evolution, study the evolution of software and the fundamental principles that drive its application. The principles are obvious! But they are nonetheless rarely discussed or applied.
As always, well thoughout, succinct, and, once digested, everyone should be in agreement. Kudos to you!!
Posted by: Arthur Petrou | 01/17/2020 at 02:14 PM
Thanks!
Posted by: David B. Black | 01/19/2020 at 02:22 PM