The IBM and I

In a computerized civilization no one communicates willingly. No one feels obligated to treat human beings with civility. The messages a householder receives are curt and cryptic: "F. O. $2.31." "53657 $14." "On Account $366. Adjustments $366. Total due $0.00." "W/T (claimed $1347.12) should have been $1347.12."

I take these items at random from bills and invoices recently addressed to me by computers whose vocabulary is taciturn and whose manners are abrasive. In most cases, I can guess the origin of the message because I remember having had transactions with the plaintiffs during the past months. But I shall never know what W/T refers to or how the alleged claim of $1347.12 differs from the corrected amount of $1347.12, because the accountant took my check without bothering to answer my inquiry. He got what he wanted; he did not choose to admit me into his confidence, although I have no proof that he did not bilk me. For the world of the computer, to which the accountant adheres, is a private world that has its own jargon and methods and avoids contact with human beings until, at regular intervals, a statement of amount due drops out of the slot.

When the check arrives, the computer and the account emit no further intelligence. No receipted bill, as in the naive days of a few years ago. No acknowledgment that you have discharged your part of the transaction. The world of the computer is boorish. Refined citizens used to take a superior and sardonic attitude toward the stereotyped business letter that began: "Your favor of 19th inst, received and contents noted. In reply would say, etc." The grammar was wretched, but the impulse was social. The person addressed was not held in low esteem.

This baffling estrangement between buyer and seller and this erosion of courtesy come at a time when sociologists dote on the word "communicate." They feel sure they are accomplishing something vital for democracy when they lure people into a "dialog." Everyone can become his own Plato or Santayana--two eminent authors of dialogs--if he can argue with someone over a long period of time without losing his temper. The theory is that if the United States and the Soviet Union, for instance, held a dialog long enough, their differences would vanish and everything would be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. (There is a fallacy here. The Soviet Union's capacity for creating and sustaining protracted boredom is invincible. You can't break Soviet citizens with words. They can break you.)

Despite a widespread faith in dialog as the great leveler and conciliator that makes friends and pulverizes enemies, the civilization of the computer has shattered the art of communication. A citizen is hard put to get a personal letter from a branch of the Government, a large business organization or, particularly, a department store.

I have had considerable experience in the area of noncommunication. Being a recent convert to the Federal Government's Social Security mythology, I am eager to establish a blameless record by concealing nothing and explaining everything. Government bureaucrats (concluded overleaf) are by nature sluggish, secretive and suspicious--the three Ss of the craft. They would be happy if the citizens would not disturb them.

Let me set down the details of my calamitous progress from receiving Social Security benefits every month to my present condition of receiving none--all in accordance with Pudder's Law: Anything that begins well ends badly. First, I must expound the Social Security law. If a retired citizen does not earn more than $1500 a year, he is entitled to the full course of Social Security benefits, which means 12 payments a year. But here comes a perplexing "exception to the general rule" that destroys the logic of the law and, I should think, would blow up any computer that tried to copy with it: "Regardless of total earnings for a year, however, benefits will be payable for any month in which you neither earn wages of more than $125 nor perform substantial services in self-employment." In other words, you can earn $100,000 or even $200,000 (probably you are a felon)in the month of January, but you are still entitled to monthly payments for the rest of the year if you are scrupulous about earning little or nothing. The $1500 annual limit appears to apply only to citizens who are honest or handicapped in other respects as well.

Now come the details of my baffling experience for which I have sought counsel without success. Big Brother remains elusive. When I retired and went off the payroll of my employer, I had the comforting experience of receiving monthly Social Security payments and enjoyed the benign sensation of getting back in monthly installments some of the money my employer and I had obediently paid the Government since 1936. The glory of the New Deal was beginning to come true. But almost immediately, I ran into the "exception to the general rule." I made the mistake of earning $3500 during the second month. To keep my account straight, I returned the next month's Social Security check, feeling rather smug about my honesty, and payments continued through the next two months. Then they stopped. I was dropped from the payroll because, according to a form letter, my expected earnings for the year "appeared to be $4800." True enough; but under "exception to the general rule," I was still eligible for payments in months when I earned less than $125, wasn't I?

Although my private financial affairs are not the subject of this article, I have to refer to them in order to explain my frustration in a computer civilization. Bewildered by what seemed to me a new procedure. I wrote to an amiable member of the Social Security Administration, who had invited me to consult him if I needed help. No answer. After a polite interval, I wrote to his assistant, who had also offered personal counsel whenever I needed it. No answer.

About three months later, a third staff member in another county 100 miles upstate illustrated the first Law of Big Brother: If a direct question is asked, an indirect reply is mandatory. He said that my earnings were not the criterion for Social Security payments, but the number of hours I worked a month in self-employment were. "You should request payments in any month in which you are eligible," he said, shifting the burden of proof from him to me. For the Government was falling back to a previously prepared position in order to deprive me of the money I had been paying into the treasury for 29 years.

To avoid unnecessary tedium, I shall skip the next two stages in my attempts to inaugurate a dialog--one of them a telephone call from a fourth staff member; the next an office visit by me to a fifth staff member. Although nothing specific was said, I could see that I was steadily losing ground. Obeying instructions from the New York office, I set forth my claims for eligibility in the month of January. No answer. When I was in San Francisco five weeks later, I did receive a communication from the Albany branch of the Administration reporting that it had no record of my Social Security number. Why Albany? Now I am back to where I began in 1936.

I do not blame the bureaucrats in the Social Security Administration for hating to write letters. For the laws that they administer are so irrational and self-defeating that only a sadist or an acrobat could apply them to the individual situations of the clients. Social Security does not like to say so bluntly, but now I realize that it has dropped me as too temperamental or too intricate. Probably it is paying other clients out of the money I paid to the Administration for 29 years. Adopting the manners of the computer, it remains impassive, like the menacing, noiseless world of Kafka. (Stop press bulletin. After considering my case in dignified silence for two and one half months, the Social Security Administration wrote me a letter. It said that it had overpaid me. It asked me to send the United States Government my check for $407.80. In a computer civilization, the rules change every time a person intervenes.)

But this situation is not unique. The inability of the New York State Income Tax Bureau to communicate with the citizenry resulted in a painful experience for me recently. In December 1965, the Bureau broke a long though comforting silence by mailing me a check for $822.96, representing, the Bureau said, a gross overpayment by me earlier in the year. Now, this was the happiest event in a lifetime of fidelity in the payment of income taxes. Although I did not understand the motive for the check, I did not question it. The next month, the Bureau tersely billed me for $542.93, which not only surprised me but hurt my feelings. According to Murphy's Law, if anything can go wrong, it will, and I believe it. When I paid the new assessment, I prayed to the director of the Bureau to explain in simple language suitable for a layman why the Bureau had quixotically given me $822.96 one month and snatched back $542.93 the next. No answer. My check was not acknowledged; the inquiry was not answered.

An accountant, employed by me in a state of crisis and shock, looked over my records a few months later and made a discovery that amounted to genius. In a temperate, impressive letter, he notified the Income Tax Bureau that it owed me an additional $857.93: "Will you therefore," he asked in blameless English, "please issue a check to the taxpayer for the above amount at your earliest convenience."

But the Bureau did not issue a check to me for $857.93 or communicate with me about it. It communicated with the accountant, sensing perhaps in his literary style the personality of a confederate. It invited him to a conference. When they all put their heads together and held a dialog behind closed doors, they all agreed: that I owed the state another $510.77. This came under the jurisdiction of Finagle's Law: If anything goes wrong, anything you do only makes it worse. The accountant carried Finagle's Law to its logical conclusion. He charged me a professional fee of $150 for conspiring with the state to seize $510.77 more from my bank account. Although the state has ingested that sum in silence, it recently sent me a message that was unique and delightful: "Unpaid balance, $90.11. Installment due, None." Although this conclusion does not seem logical, I welcome it. But there will be trouble later on. Being immensely complex, representing years of broad-scale conniving and hanky-panky, the income-tax laws of the state and the nation are more crackbrained than the Social Security laws. They have to be administered by sensory perception.

Norbert Wiener, the celebrated cyberneticist and godfather to computerism. said: "The brain is better for a writer than a computer." He made that remark in his capacity as a writer. But the writer's brain does not make it possible for him to understand the curt messages the computers send him. Nor does his brain assure him that the messages the computer sends are correct. Computers understand one another; they chatter away together like old friends. But they have jettisoned the courtesies of communication that were once taken for granted as an integral part of a civilization. Computers send messages to checkbooks. They eliminate people.