Introduction

In many of his novels and short stories, American writer Isaac Asimov describes future society where robots live with humans almost behaviors with humans, even without him. Although this mechanistic anticipation of our future may seem more exaggerated, it poses the problem of replacing the human by the machine: to what extent such substitution is possible? And how far will she?

Machinery, ie, to use the dictionary definition of "systems of devices intended to receive some form of energy and transform it to produce a given effect," were most often designed in a context industrial production. Therefore, in the first part, I do not consider man as a factor in production, facing the machine.

The coexistence of man and the machine does not stop at this purely economic: the man as a social individual is found more often confronted with the machine, as we shall see on.

The human factor of production, facing the machine.

For centuries, humans have implemented techniques become more sophisticated with the main goal the reduction or elimination of physical exertion as a source of energy in the production process. This transformation of the way to produce took place in several phases.

The use of simple tools at first allowed him to better leverage its strength. Thus it is easier to drive a nail with a hammer, with a stone or with his fists! We can call this stage "the age of matter", since the main purpose of human activity was around the production of material objects.

Later, more complex devices have enabled him to overcome more and more completely from the physical effort by the use and control of natural energies and artificial. It started with sailboats or the windmill, reaching full development with the steam engine, the key to the industrial revolution. It was the age of energy, where everything was increasingly focused on finding new material that intangible.

In all cases, monitoring and controlling the work remained the responsibility of man and man alone.

This phenomenon of mechanization of labor has taken a new turn in the years following the Second World War, with the advent of machines that can monitor and control the work of other machines. We began our entry into the information age, where knowledge is the basis of everything.

This set of new techniques, often grouped under the generic term "automation" implies a replacement of human mental processes through systems becoming more sophisticated, capable, for example, to correct their own mistakes and imperfections. To take a more specific example, many machines no longer need to stop for adjustments, but doing their development continuously, without human intervention.

Made visible by the spectacular achievements and media, such as factories or trains without workers without a driver, is a ubiquitous phenomenon and irreversible, largely dictated by the imperatives micro-economic short-term gain in productivity, lower costs production, etc. ...

Greatly facilitated by the emergence of information technology, which reduces costs considerably, and stimulated by the current economic environment, which justifies the investment, automation has considerable impact on the world of work.

To believe journalists and unions, the biggest change is in an ever-growing unemployment, related to a direct replacement of humans by the Machine. "The language that we hear quite often is" the flying machine the work of Man. "

Although the examples of workers being replaced by robots do not miss, this is only true to some extent only because it is a transient phenomenon: the direct effects of job cuts are immediate, while that new services and markets that arise from the use of these new technologies become established in a decade at least. Over time these replacements Rights by machine factors prove progress and generate employment. Thus, if the standard manual telephone had not been replaced by automated attendants, call the park would require an army of current operator, equal to half the earth’s population! And nobody today can deny the usefulness and necessity of this new communication tool.

The real impact of these new techniques are done on a behavioral level: changing the way we live, as we shall see later, and by upsetting our notions of "work".

The major consequence of automation is indeed a "cerebralisation" increasing work related to the need to know how to use these new techniques, and to the distance they make us take over the production process clean. It is increasingly necessary to possess a certain skill or some knowledge, even in the context of jobs considered "unskilled" or "not qualified", know-how that is changing more rapidly. The workforce must adapt to these techniques.

It is true that machines are apparently becoming increasingly easy to use, but, simultaneously, they can perform tasks more complex, it is not always easy to understand or control. For example, desktop publishing, ie the desktop publishing appears to have opened the doors of publishing at all, but does not eliminate low knowledge that we do not unfortunately find in textbooks. This deficiency often involves a lower quality in the documents obtained, hardly compatible with the professional use of the tool.

The rate of appearance of these new techniques are becoming faster, this adaptation of the workforce can hardly be longer naturally. The knowledge gained through the education should remain in effect longer valid lifetime. It therefore becomes necessary to recover periodically or perpetually in question and agree to "go back to school."

Our education system must evolve to enable us to capitalize on this new way to learn. In particular, rather than preparing for the use of technical obsolescence promised more and faster, it would give better capacity to address new technologies, ie, "learning to learn."

Without such developments, we may find ourselves more often overtaken by progress and unable to exploit the new services associated with the use of these new techniques. The effect "generates employment" which I already mentioned that can not be done properly, an increasing proportion of the workforce could be driven by the production system machine. In this case, we really can say that the Machine has replaced the man, at least partially, but certainly more and more completely.

Man, social individual, facing the machine

Fortunately, at least for most people, there is something else than work life! We could therefore decide not to worry unduly at this invasion of the machine to wait, probably with some impatience, a civilization of leisure where man finds himself freed from all work. But the machine is not limited to invade the world of work: it affects us, and more and more strongly in our lives every day.

When one turns to the past, it does not appear that machines have never tried to replace men. Quite the contrary, they are apparently there in order to bring us a comfortable life always increased. It is in this context they were designed.

If one looks closer, however, shows two rather disturbing phenomena:

First, man has more often become isolated from other men. No need to leave home to communicate: telephone and fax numbers are there. No need to dredge out: they are not lacking telephone sex. We could continue this long list, pitching machine balls that replace a human partner in tennis to vending machines that you provide to enter a store .. . As for what lies ahead for tomorrow, not the projects are limited, but the current limits of technology that limit the imagination of designers .. . There is already talk, and you begin to test the "cybersex" and other virtual realities. Man Will it still be truly human when alone in the middle of its machines? Or will he more than a machine among others? ..

The second transformation we are experiencing much slower, however, is a dependence of more and more complete with respect to these machines. Who among us is still able to live without his watch? Many businessmen who can not do without their electronic organizer, their telephone and radio their laptops. In the field of medicine, we realize prostheses increasingly sophisticated for us to repair by spare parts. Man would it therefore being mechanized, identify with the machine, its creation?

Conclusion

Extrapolating to the extreme latter two phenomena, which are still in their infancy, we are left to imagine companies even more grotesque as those described by Isaac Asimov:

One begins to unravel the mechanisms of human intelligence appears to be the last barrier separating us from the machine yet. Of course, progress in this area are very slow and it is long since returned more than optimistic forecasts of the 60 researchers: for example, automatic translation of text did not yield the expected results, or even more tasks basics such as speech recognition, writing or computer vision. Moreover, the term too vague and too generic "artificial intelligence" was abandoned, except by some advertisers in search of commercial arguments in favor of more specific terms such as "expert systems".

You can always find arguments to prove that the machine can never match humans. The English mathematician Alan Turing, one of the founders of computer science, has grouped these objections into nine major issues, ranging from theology to extrasensory perception, via mathematical arguments such as Lucas’s theorem. He replied at length in an article that I am at your disposal.

Anyway, without even becoming the equal of man, the machine will certainly supplant us in areas of growing. This raises a final question: will he a time when we can not distinguish man from machine?

Men mechanized to excess, became human and machines more and more strongly, the limit will become increasingly blurred. Perhaps one day we shall have no right to make moral distinction whatsoever!

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