Automation does not remove humans but tends to redefine their roles: operators become concerned with maintenance, repair and higher level supervisory control and decision making.

Sociological and memetic organisms supplant individual consciousness.

Operators relegated to central control rooms
Case in Point: 1977 NYC Blackout

• Indirect Information
• Operator followed prescribed procedures
• But electrical system was brought to a complete halt
• Operator could not know there were two relay failures: (1) one leading to a high flow over line normally carrying little or no current (operator would have been alerted) and (2) other blocked flow over line making it appear normal
• Operator had no way of knowing that zero reading would appear normal
• Operators become the “scapegoat” of an automated system

Consider: Assassination [fly-by-wire] and mutually-assured destruction [nuclear; Dead Hand retaliation] increasingly automated – destruction-by-proxy encouraged, full circumvention of individual decision making preferred.

Operators and Embedded Systems

• Embedded systems can mask the occurrence and subsequent development of a problem
• When malfunction is discovered it may be more difficult to control
• Systems may be hidden or distorted
• Such design further limits operator options and hinders broad comprehension

- Safeware by Nancy Leveson

… AZATHOTH — hideous name …

A conversation happening at this moment:

Will you stop singing that song already? [Hazardous memetic waste?]

Now hurry and lose some weight while I get taller so we can watch some stuff online and then make some babies!

… wait, how’re we gonna pay for all this?

There is an existential force which exceeds the sensory possibilities of day-to-day reality and the limits of imagined perception.

You never get back to your past – half deja vu, half future shock – rekindles dead memories and ideas – resurrects and violently awakens a dead self – perhaps I really have been trapped here all these years – am I overwriting what I’ve become with an older copy?

I haven’t become anything, nothing more than a shade haunting a solipsist amalgam of memorized footpaths amidst an increasingly real location (for the corporeal) – the two combine and it’s a mental wasteland – only bits and pieces of the mundane realities of this place remain – the people are all gone – some facts remain – some facts may be token souvenirs and mementos – some facts may be memoirs and intimate correspondence – most facts are broken promises and liquor bottles – rusted metal facts.

Demand tracers, lost in the dark or increasingly blurred vision – food is all I want now: ephemeral sensations to take me further – back down this memory pit – maybe that’s a one-way ticket – maybe I’ve got to go it alone – maybe that’s why, somehow – this was a known possibility – maybe that’s why – I haven’t set foot in this place for so many years – maybe I go it alone and I’m no longer anything I’d be able to ID anyway – maybe we all come back that way.

Note: Atypical character set ends – synch with standard encoding.

I believe my head is clearing up – far fewer violent thoughts – more introspection.

Note: Entry continues – it is immediately apparent that
the communication channel of interest has closed.