Computers versus humans: feelings and emotions

In Barcelona we have a metro line that is entirely driven by computers. I find it funny that in general we, as humans, tend to rely more on human drivers than computer-assisted ones. I think it is a cultural matter that arises from ignorance and that we will pull through over the next generations. It is probably due to human speciesism too.

Now, from my point of view there is one critical thing that differentiates us from computers: feelings and emotions. These may bring a human to poorly perform in any task. I see them as counter-productive routines written in our brain that are triggered more or less often depending on our nature as individuals. Can you imagine what would happen if computers had feelings and emotions influencing their activity?

- Imagine an emotional web service whom you send several incorrect requests in a row. It gets pissed off with you and decides not to return you anything in the next several requests...

- Imagine an emotional interpreter that has sentimental problems. It can't properly concentrate and will throw unexpected, non-deterministic errors to your scripts that you won't be able to debug...

- Imagine that two components of your server are angry with each other and decide not to talk to each other anymore for a while...

The magnitude of the influence of emotions and feelings in our work life is so big that good companies have to sort out all kind of problems related to them. They even might have personnel only dedicated to team building. Failure to create a good environment for positive human emotions to arise could lead to a company's disaster. What is even worst, is that our psychology tends to change very little with time and in the end it becomes a key component for recruiters to make the appropriate decision.

Diego Campo has a nice theory about human performance in sports where feelings pay an important role.