Mark C. Sheehan
Director, Information Technology Center
MSU-Bozeman
Moths to the Flame is a technologist's view of technology. Author Gregory Rawlins teaches computer science at Indiana University and does research on computational complexity and machine learning. His book shows clearly that he has done much informed thinking about the roles computing machines play in society now and in the future.
As the title implies, Moths to the Flame is sensitive to the complex implications of computer technology: the allure is bright, but danger is ever present. The theme is as old as Prometheus, who stole fire from the Gods for the use of humankind and, for his pains, received eternal punishment. The view of machine computation Rawlins presents contains elements of the Prometheus myth, the story of Adam and Eve, and of Faust's bargain with Mephisto. Humankind is always reaching beyond its capabilities, technologically, intellectually, and socially. Culture evolves, and always has evolved along a thousand radiating lines, at any given juncture taking two steps forward and, usually, at least one step backwards. Our beginning forays into the development of thinking machines have been no exception. The sense of danger we have about this new Promethean development is strong--almost as strong as our inescapable fascination with it.
Moths to the Flame follows the evolution of culture, as mediated by computer technology, along eight basic lines. Rawlins devotes a chapter to each. The first topic Rawlins takes on is encryption. As more information is put into electronic format, becomes accessible from anywhere by anyone via computer network, and includes more and more confidential personal, commercial, and governmental content, how are we to safeguard our privacy, our trade secrets, and our national security? Rawlins discusses the tools available and their shortcomings, and the promises and drawbacks of sharing information through computer and network technologies.
The author then moves on to virtual reality. Computer technology has created places where no place existed before. Science fiction author William Gibson, in his novel Neuromancer, coined the term cyberspace to describe this place-that-isn't-a-place. Computers and networks can be used to create environments that real humans can enter and interact with. Such virtual realities are rich with implications. How wonderful it would be to travel to a distant business meeting, to appear to be seated in a room with one's colleagues, but not to have left one's office! But how perplexing to be in an unfamiliar world, unsure who is real and who is the product of a machine's calculations and projections! Rawlins paints vivid pictures of the options virtual realities may provide.
Electronic publishing is the next topic tackled. This is an area of particular interest for Rawlins and for many scholars. In addition to an interesting interpretation of the history of printing, Rawlins gives us a glimpse into the future electronic book shop, discussing the business-related issues raised by online access to commercial literature. He brackets his discussion with metaphors drawn from biological evolution. He develops his vision of the electronic publishing industry in between stories about the extinction of the dinosaurs (and the rise of quick, adaptable mammals) and the Middle Ages' Black Death (a result of Asian bacteria riding into Europe along newly opened trade routes to the Orient). Rawlins points out that the publishing industry faces a revolution in media no less portentous than the invention of Gutenberg's printing press, and no less dangerous to the status quo than huge asteroids to the dinosaurs or plague bacilli to the unadapted European immune system. The publishing industry literally must respond or perish. Rawlins postulates that when the dust settles there will be two kinds of publishers: the quick and the dead. The quick will be those who can adapt to new electronic media; the dead will be those who can't.
Chapter four deals with electronic communication. Electronic mail and the sharing of text and data files have enabled a new kind of scholarly collaboration. For a decade, at least, electronic newsgroups have allowed large sectors of the population to discuss issues in interactive forums in ways unprecedented in history. The West's early knowledge of the riots in Tienamen Square came from such sources. The World Wide Web has created a new medium and new paradigms for communication of many kinds. Rawlins discusses the potential for good and bad in computer-based communication. He includes a sensitive look at inequities in access to these valuable tools among different segments of the world's population. Western Europe, the US, and the Pacific Rim are well wired. Many developing countries, however, have little or no access, despite their crying need for new tools to develop modem, sustainable information-based industries.
In chapter five, the author delves into electronic warfare. As they have done with other technologies throughout history, the world's military powers have found plenty of uses for computer technology in warfare. Anyone who witnessed the recent Gulf War on television saw the advantages just a few years' technological innovation gave to Kuwait's allies. The escalation of technological developments in warfare is both frightening and strangely reassuring. Techno-warfare is becoming less a human blood bath than a high-stakes competition between robots. Nevertheless, Rawlins shows us, the quickness, the power, and the entirely artificial allegiances of disembodied killing machines have terrifying implications.
Next comes a discussion of digital commerce. One beckoning flame of computer technology is electronic banking and commerce. The convenience of the automatic teller machine appeals to most of us, though it brings with it financial risks and questions about privacy. The convenience of on-site loan approval is wonderful when we want to buy that shiny new roadster, but it gives us pause when we realize that any modestly computerized businessperson, armed only with our Social Security number, can find out more about our credit history than most of us know ourselves. Computers are making an information economy out of our old, familiar manufacturing economy. What are the implications? Rawlins warns us of our vulnerability to replacement by automatons that can do our jobs better than we can. But he balances this by urging us into careers based on lifetime learning, where our jobs change constantly, in time with technology, and our success is tied to our ability to adapt to that change.
Chapter seven is about computer bloopers. A monkey wrench in the works of an Industrial Revolution factory could damage the machine, endanger a few workers, and disrupt productivity for a time. When a computer makes a mistake, though, it can have monumental repercussions. Software bugs in an X-ray machine controller can kill the patients the machine was designed to cure. A single line of computer code in a program thousands of lines long can result in lost banking transactions and cost the bank millions of dollars a day in interest alone. At any given moment, the million people in aircraft flying over North America rely for their safety on an air traffic control system based on 40-year old, vacuum-tube computers. Rawlins' stories are hair-raising!
The book's final chapter discusses a kind of techno-Darwinism. The evolution of computer technology is now interwoven into the evolution of human culture. Just as it has been shaped by fire, the stone projectile point, metallurgy, and nuclear power, human culture is being affected by computers. Technology drives civilization, Rawlins says, providing humanity with the means to live. Computers are driving us out of the industrial age and into the information age. Jobs have changed from manufacturing things to manufacturing ideas. A credit rating is a manufactured idea. So is a telephone number and an e-mail address and the news story or the sitcom that was just on TV. Computers don't drive those ideas, but computers do enable their expression on today's global scale and at today's astonishing speeds. Rawlins points out that the current wave of information technology is only a prelude to a wave of biotechnology, again enabled by computers, that will directly impact our lives, allowing us to live longer, be more healthy, and make more choices about how we look, how we feel, and what we do. Rawlins shows his biases as a technologist most clearly in his last chapter, making it clear that he feels humankind has no choice but to continue on its current path into a future enabled by, and dependent upon, technology.
Moths to the Flame is a collection of essays, not a scholarly treatise. Rawlins is an opinionated writer, able to provide balance, but more than willing to take sides on issues that have more to do with ethics and morality than with cost-benefit ratios and feasibility studies. This both helps and hurts his book. It helps, of course, in making for colorful, intimately personal reading. The voice Rawlins injects into his writing is enhanced by his facility with metaphors and the fascinating, sci-fi imagination he employs in cooking up vivid scenarios and examples.
The downside is that the book is all about Greg Rawlins. It suffers from an apparent lack of outside perspective. The author writes as though he were the sole authority in his field. While he credits dozens of colleagues with helping review his work, he attributes vanishingly few of his ideas to anyone else. There is no bibliography and virtually no references to the background literature on which Rawlins bases his thinking and his arguments. There are, however, plenty of veiled, almost camouflaged, allusions to the work of other writers, from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to ideas from the marketing group at Apple Computer, including Apple Fellow and software developer Alan Kay. And there are citations of hundreds of facts and figures, only a few of which are substantiated by reference to published work.
My sense is that rather than writing to inform, Rawlins has written much of this book for effect. For example, in chapter six he tells us that a machine is an ideal employee because, rather than drawing a monthly salary with regular raises, it represents a one-time expense. But we all know that a new computer is obsolete before we can open the box and get it set up! Seven pages later, while making a slightly different point, Rawlins shows that he knows that, too. He says "computer costs halve and complexity doubles roughly every eighteen months." Clearly, then, a computer is no more a one-time cost than a human employee is; the author just told us it was because it helped him make a point. As is typical of essays, the author's wish seems to have been to express himself, rather than to inform his readers objectively. In this context, it is a credit to Rawlins that he gave us so balanced a view of many issues.
Readers looking for a flamboyantly painted picture of the past, present, and future roles of computers in society will be pleased with Moths to the Flame. Its literary sound bites and quips and clever turns of phrase will bring many a smile to the lips of the recreational reader. Unfortunately, those looking for a scholarly review of the literature of computer technology or an introduction to the work of the many talented thinkers in this field will find Rawlins' book a cleverly written, charming disappointment.