Automation, a curse or a blessing?
| 6. Where are we now? |   |
All great Traditions have some form or other of asking the three essential questions19):
- what am I?
- what is creation?
- What should my role, my behaviour be towards that creation?20)
As we can read in the book of Genesis, we were created in the image of God, so that we ourselves would be able to make our own creation. A so-called subcreation for the ego. With the advent of computers, we are now able to make an automated subcreation for that small self. The devoted IT professional therefore regards designing and developing software as creating a work of art. He creates an image (an idol) of his own small ideas, which represents as it were his own personal creation.We will illustrate what this automated creation looks like on the basis of a small number of related subjects, and we will shed a philosophical light on each of those. We may ask the question: curse or blessing? Or we may ask related questions, such as: does it lead to addiction, does it help us break away from routine habits, can any beauty or glow be found in it?
6.4 Algorithms: rigidity or flexibility