You just can't trust humans, Charlie knew. After all, they are, well, just human. Every member of the species has a share of strength and frailty, love and hate, generosity and selfishness, humility and arrogance, honesty and knavery, loyalty and perfidy. So you never knew which of those bipolar elements might leap to the fore in a trying circumstance.

The key to success in business, Charlie knew, was to minimize the use of humans. This had many advantages; the most obvious, of course, was reducing payroll expenses. Beyond that, it slashed the cost of real estate-in the parking lot as well as in labs and offices. And it eliminated the hassle with greedy employees who periodically wanted more money to feed their families.

And now, thanks to the irrepressible forward march of technology, there was a blessed fact. One could replace unreliable humans with trustworthy software. Charlie took inspiration in this endeavor when he learned about replacing an expensive psychiatrist with a psychiatric recorder that would frequently mutter a sym-pathetic "I know. I know," or "How do you feel about that?"

It was necessary merely to hire one or two software engineers to write code that would perform many of the functions traditionally assigned to humans. One could start with the telephone system because the telephone companies and various voice-mail operations had already perfected telephone-response systems to replace costly human operators who demanded coffee breaks and other perquisites.

It was manifestly true that almost anybody who had encountered the layers of menus in many corporate voice-mail systems menus was annoyed and, in some cases, boiling mad. Fortunately, such people had no means to complain. Since they had no vehicle for venting their frustration, one could assume that the anger was irrelevant and could be ignored.

Moving along, Charlie would replace a lobby receptionist with a small sign directing visitors to a telephone with a voice-mail message featuring a series of instructive guides.

Then, of course, there was engineering. This posed a problem. There was certainly a great deal of software help for engineers. There were programs to help with design, layout, evaluation and test, and even component selection and procurement. Unfortunately, all of those programs required the participation of an engineer-a human engineer.

Charlie decided he would address that problem later, along with the problem of replacing manufacturing people with software. He knew he could employ software-driven robots, but they often required human supervision.

Finally, there was the challenge of Charlie's office. Since he often entertained important visitors, it was critical to develop a proper ambience. So he hired an attractive secretary to welcome visitors.

Sometimes, you just can't replace a human touch.