Notebook: Real News and Automated Villains

The counterattack has started. Purveyors of the conventional wisdom have suddenly launched an all-out assault on all those who over the last few years have called attention to the dark side of automation. Last January, within a few days of each other, Look, Fortune, and The New York Times, issued glowing stories on the blessings of the new technology, minimizing at the same time the ominous government and private reports which dared to suggest otherwise. Aside from the curious phenomenon of simultaneous publication and the striking similarity in their tone, one stands aghast at the distortion of fact, the fundamental ignorance of the new technology, the strings of non-sequiturs, the primitive use of ad hominem argument, and the simplistic and archaic conception of the economic forces involved.

Of the first of these extraordinary pieces, by T. G. Harris in Look (January 12) the less said the better. To Mr. Harris, the worker is winning his b...