The perceived bane of automation – can we map it to the absence of background knowledge?
A few years ago a colleague told us a story. She and her relative had a joint bank account. Once when she went to deposit a cheque of her relative’s, the bank told her that the latter’s name did not exist in the account! Our colleague happened to have an old pay in slip with the relative’s name and showed it to the clerk. The clerk did not know how to handle this, and asked a senior official for help. The senior had worked for the bank in the days of manual operations. He figured out what could have been…
