Fable
The waterwheel turns by itself, yet someone still sits by the gate
Qinglan Village had a new waterwheel. In the past, the mill relied on people pushing the stone mill—slow, tiring, and often with long queues. After the new waterwheel connected to the mountain spring, the stone mill turned by itself, and sack after sack of wheat became flour. Everyone in the village thought this was a good thing.
When the waterwheel was first built, the village chief wanted it to run entirely on its own. When water came, it turned; when grain came, it ground; when grinding was done, it bagged. The miller was happy too, because he no longer had to stand by the millstone.
The first few days went smoothly. Then after a heavy rainstorm, the mountain spring's water volume suddenly increased. The waterwheel spun fast, the millstone heated up, and the flour burned. A few days later, what was delivered was not wheat but old grain mixed with stones. The waterwheel did not know how to distinguish; it ground whatever was poured in.
Some people said, then shut down the waterwheel and go back to people pushing the mill. The miller disagreed. He said the waterwheel really did save us a great deal of effort. The problem is not that it turns, but that it does not know when it should stop turning.
So the village changed the mill. The waterwheel still ran automatically, but a mill keeper sat by the gate. He did not need to push every turn, nor inspect every sack; he watched only a few things: whether the water flow was too fast, whether the millstone was overheating, whether the grain sacks were abnormal, and whether the color of the flour had changed.
The mill keeper had three ropes at hand. The first rope could slow the waterwheel, the second could temporarily stop the mill, and the third could divert grain sacks to the manual sorting table. Normally he rarely touched the ropes, but whenever an anomaly appeared, he could intervene immediately.
Later, the mill's efficiency did not decline. Most grain was still milled automatically by the waterwheel, and the mill keeper handled only a few exceptions. The villagers were also more willing to bring valuable grain, because they knew this was not a machine no one was watching.
Only then did the village chief understand that the person watching the waterwheel was not the waterwheel's enemy. His presence let the waterwheel take on more. The deeper automation goes, the more someone needs to have the power beside the system to observe, pause, correct, and take over. Later the neighboring village copied the waterwheel but didn't arrange for a mill watcher. They only pasted rules on the wall, and when wet wheat and gravel came along they kept grinding as usual. When Qinglan Village's mill watcher heard about this, he added a record board beside his own gate: when to intervene, why to intervene, and what the result was. Only then did the village chief see that bypass supervision is not sitting around watching the show, but an observation position that comes with power and responsibility.