humans serving the makina

Ellen Ullman in the NYTimes on the The Boss in the Machine:

Notice that it's supposed to be the chip, not the human, that goes off to do something else while the keyboard idles. But internal engineering principles have a way of becoming external; software designers unconsciously adopt the values of the machine they're working on. After years of working in an environment where efficiency is a god and idleness in any component is intolerable, a programmer comes to think it's logical to keep humans as busy as possible.