Mindless : why smarter machines are making dumber humans

The tools of corporate efficiency - expert systems, databases, and operations management - have improved our lives significantly, but with a cost: they're turning us into mindless drones. We live in the age of Computer Business Systems (CBSs) - highly complex, computer intensive management systems which large organizations, both in the public and private sectors, increasingly rely on to conduct their businesses. CBSs find their way into all aspects of our lives. They control the manufacturing of cars, the creation of financial derivatives, and even the processing of a patient through the hospital. These same systems simultaneously monitor the performance of these very processes and the employees who operate them. This all-encompassing and panoptic effect indeed makes us more efficient. And yet while these "digital inhabitants" are a constant presence in our lives, the development and upkeep of this vast and constantly growing world is little understood. In Mindless, Simon head expertly traces how these IT-intensive management systems have come to dominate our lives, with a profound effect in particular on the middle class.As we rely increasingly on "what the system tells us" we slowly lose the experience and judgment necessary to doing well-paying jobs. As the systems' requirements come to trump human intuition and expertise, and start dictating the goals and strategies of business endeavors, we are left with a de-skilled workforce that cannot solve its own problems. Mindless provides an in-depth and disturbing look at how placing too much dependence on CBSs, patients, employees, and students become mere goods on an assembly line. With his journalistic prowess and insight into the corporate, consulting, and government worlds, Head gives a startling humanistic perspective into the dominance of database culture. Full of rich examples from Head's own research, Mindless sheds lights on the murky underbelly of information technology and shows how we can learn to value, rather than diminish, human judgment and experience.