c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a pastor, writer and software developer living in Winston-Salem, N.C.)

UNDATED _ Don’t take these thoughts wrong. I am not a Luddite, fighting technology. I make my living in it.

Nor am I nostalgic for a day when legions of clerks passed paper from desk to desk to filing cabinet. Our economy is soaring largely because of productivity gains made possible by digital computers.

This is a plea directed at the human masters who stand behind every computer system, whose decisions about proportion, fairness and responsiveness tell the machines what to do.

My oldest son finished his college exams and came over for supper. His eyes were ablaze, his voice excited, as he talked about new knowledge.

Then came a computer-generated postcard from the university he attends. His registration for summer school had been cancelled because of an unpaid balance from a previous semester. As the one who writes checks to this school, I was baffled.

The problem, it turned out, was a $10 visit to the school health service.

I don’t question the fee, but I have to wonder. For $10, are they willing to stifle a young man’s excitement for learning? If it were an entire semester’s unpaid tuition, I could understand. But $10?

Take this as a parable, not a bill-payer’s lament. As one who designs and implements computer software, I can imagine the university’s digitized process. It is designed to catch unpaid balances and to generate automated responses. My son registered by computer, he got his assignments, tests and grades by computer, he was de-registered by computer, and, once I send a $10 check, the computer will reopen its arms. How else could a university manage its complex affairs?

Well, it takes a little programming. You write in criteria. If the unpaid balance is learning-related _ tuition, lab fees _ you fire off one response. If it’s institutional _ health fees, cable fees _ you fire off another. You can also test for amount of underpayment _ $1,000, say, kicks out one postcard, while $10 kicks out another _ and for timing.

Why go to that trouble? Aren’t all negative numbers the same?

It has to do with purpose. And purpose ends up having to do with people.

A big university, like any modern enterprise, has no choice but to computerize. But the computer doesn’t define purpose. People do that.

Dell Computer Corp., for example, is lauded for its business model: Digitize everything in sight, from mailing lists to inventory to sales to manufacturing to service. But”iron”isn’t Dell’s secret. Their strategy is grounded in customer service: Automate what can be automated, and pour tons of money into live bodies _ rule-bending, sympathetic people _ on customer support phones.

A university’s purpose has to do with learning, a profoundly human venture _ imprecise, passionate, quixotic _ whose customers are young and distracted. The fact that a school can computerize everything doesn’t dictate the specifics of how it does do. It’s sheer laziness to treat all expenses the same, or to enforce rigid deadlines, or to trigger automated responses without counting their human cost. Computers are capable of being smarter than that.

Consider the computerized hoops that we impose on users of government services, especially the poor. It isn’t computers that design incomprehensible forms and processes. People do that. It’s just as easy to make the forms simple, or to streamline processes. We impose a bureaucratic maze for human reasons _ resentment of people”on the dole,”for example, or resentment of minorities. It’s similar to the artificial complexity that shapes the tax code _ entire professions depend on preserving that complexity.

Or consider the computerization that we don’t apply to the resale of guns. If we can track who bought Cheerios last week at Wal-Mart, or who now drives the 1962 Volkswagen that I sold 31 years ago, we can track gun sales. We just don’t choose to do so.

Behind any computer system stands a human process of defining purpose and values. If computerized systems seem absurd or oppressive, it’s because someone designed in that absurdity or unfairness, or is too lazy or mean-spirited to correct it.

Ethics in the digital age aren’t about machines. Ethics are about people deciding whether to be fair or unfair, responsive or unresponsive, life-enhancing or life-denying.

DEA END EHRICH