---
type: "commonplace"
title: "Ironies of Automation"
description: ""
author: "Trey Causey"
date: 2026-10-04
slug: "2026-10-04-en-wikipedia-org-wiki-ironies-of-automation"
url: "https://treycausey.com/commonplace/2026-10-04-en-wikipedia-org-wiki-ironies-of-automation/"
tags: ["automation", "hci", "agents"]
sourceTitle: "Ironies of Automation"
sourceUrl: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironies_of_Automation"
---

> Irony: combination of circumstances, the result of which is the direct opposite of what might be expected.

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<div class="commonplace-commentary">

I spend most of my days right now thinking about agentic engineering, so-called software factories, and accelerating productivity. As a result, I've been spending a lot of time with human-computer interaction, the history of process automation, and more (to avoid reinventing the wheel).

This is a landmark paper with incredible information density. So many amazing sentences. Highly recommended and influencing a series of posts I'm working on.

</div>