[[!meta title="In the Age of the Smart Machine"]] ## Index * Deskilling, diplacement of "the human body and its know-how" and reskilling, 57. * Body's dual role in production: effort and skill. * Rebellion against the automated door, 21-23. * Humanization (Marx) as "tempering animality with rationality" in the progress of civilization, 30. * Uncivilized, savage worker's "spontaneous, instinctually gratifying behavior" in the past, signaling the problem of "how to get the human body to remain in one place, pay attention, and perform consistently over a fixed period of time", 31-34. * Paradox of the body, 36. * "Singer Sewing Machine Company was not able to produce perfectly interchangeable parts. As a result, they relied on skilled fitters to assemble each product.", 39. * Continous Process as a possible way to break the effort-skill body paradox and the U-curve of social integration, 50-56 ## Impressions The transition from manual to automated, the process of transferring knowledged from the body to the machine is a sistematization of the transference of knowledge from art (work whose reproduction is challenging) to technics (pramatized art, the art of practical, efficient life): However, the term transfer must be doubly laden if it is to adequately describe this process. Knowledge was first transferred from one quality of knowing to another-from knowing that was sentient, embedded, and experience-based to know- ing that was explicit and thus subject to rational analysis and perpetual reformulation. The mechanisms used to accomplish this transfer were themselves labor intensive (that is, they depended upon first-hand ob- servation of time-study experts) and were designed solely in the con- text of, and with the express purpose of, enabling a second transfer- one that entailed the migration of knowledge from labor to manage- ment with its pointed implications for the distribution of authority and the division of labor in the industrial organization. -- 56-57 Intro mentions a control room like the Star Trek bridge. It makes me relate to the skilled worker at one of its limits - those of the austronaut. Highly skilled and disciplined, could be an interesting comparison. ## Excerpts ### Choices on knowledge, authority and collaboration The choices that we face concern the conception and distribution of knowledge in the workplace. Imagine the following scenario: Intelli- gence is lodged in the smart machine at the expense of the human capacity for critical judgment. Organizational members become ever more dependent, docile, and secretly cynical. As more tasks must be accomplished through the medium of information technology (I call this "computer-mediated work"), the sentient body loses its salience as a source of knowledge, resulting in profound disorientation and loss of meaning. People intensify their search for avenues of escape through drugs, apathy, or adversarial conflict, as the majority of jobs in our offices and factories become increasingly isolated, remote, routine, and perfunctory. Al ternativel y, imagine this scenario: Organizational lead- ers recognize the new forms of skill and knowledge needed to truly exploit the potential of an intelligent technology. They direct their resources toward creating a work force that can exercise critical judg- ment as it manages the surrounding machine systems. Work becomes more abstract as it depends upon understanding and manipulating infor- mation. This marks the beginning of new forms of mastery and provides an opportunity to imbue jobs with more comprehensive meaning. A new array of work tasks offer unprecedented opportunities for a wide range of employees to add value to products and services. [...] The choices that we make will shape relations of authority in the workplace. Once more, imagine: Managers struggle to retain their tra- ditional sources of authority, which have depended in an important way upon their exclusive control of the organization's knowledge base. They use the new technology to structure organizational experience in ways that help reproduce the legitimacy of their traditional roles. Managers insist on the prerogatives of command and seek methods that protect the hierarchical distance that distinguishes them from their subordinates. Employees barred from the new forms of mastery relin- quish their sense of responsibility for the organization's work and use obedience to authority as a means of expressing their resentment. Imagine an alternative: This technological transformation engenders a new approach to organizational behavior, one in which relationships are more intricate, collaborative, and bound by the mutual responsibili- ties of colleagues. As the new technology integrates information across time and space, managers and workers each overcome their narrow functional perspectives and create new roles that are better suited to enhancing value-adding activities in a data-rich environment. As the quality of skills at each organizational level becomes similar, hierarchi- cal distinctions begin to blur. Authority comes to depend more upon an appropriate fit between knowledge and responsibility than upon the ranking rules of the traditional organizational pyramid. [...] Imagine this scenario: The new technology becomes the source of surveillance techniques that are used to ensnare organizational members or to subtly bully them into confor- mity. Managers employ the technology to circumvent the demanding work of face-to-face engagement, substituting instead techniques of remote management and automated administration. The new techno- logical infrastructure becomes a battlefield of techniques, with manag- ers inventing novel ways to enhance certainty and control while em- ployees discover new methods of self-protection and even sabotage. Imagine the alternative: The new technological milieu becomes a re- source from which are fashioned innovative methods of information sharing and social exchange. These methods in turn produce a deep- ened sense of collective responsibility and joint ownership, as access to ever-broader domains of information lend new objectivity to data and preempt the dictates of hierarchical authority. -- 5-7 ### A paradox From the unmanned factory to the automated cockpit, visions of the future hail information technology as the final answer to "the labor question," the ultimate opportunity to rid our- selves of the thorny problems associated with training and managing a competent and committed work force. These very same technologies have been applauded as the hallmark of a second industrial revolution, in which the classic conflicts of knowledge and power associated with an earlier age will be synthesized in an array of organizational inno- vations and new procedures for the production of goods and services, all characterized by an unprecedented degree of labor harmony and widespread participation in management process. I Why the paradox? -- 7-8 ### Informate and automate: the duality of Information Technology Thus, information technology, even when it is applied to automati- cally reproduce a finite activity, is not mute. It not only imposes infor- mation (in the form of programmed instructions) but also produces information. It both accomplishes tasks and translates them into infor- mation. The action of a machine is entirely invested in its object, the product. Information technology, on the other hand, introduces an ad- ditional dimension of reflexivity: it makes its contribution to the prod- uct, but it also reflects back on its activities and on the system of activi- ties to which it is related. Information technology not only produces action but also produces a voice that symbolically renders events, ob- jects, and processes so that they become visible, knowable, and share- able in a new way. -- 9 [...] An emphasis on the informating capacity of intelligent technology can provide a point of origin for new conceptions of work and power. A more re- stricted emphasis on its automating capacity can provide the occasion for that second kind of revolution-a return to the familiar grounds of industrial society with divergent interests battling for control, aug- mented by an array of new material resources with which to attack and defend. -- 11-12 ### The natural attitude The most treacherous enemy of such research is what philosophers call "the natural attitude," our capacity to live daily life in a way that takes for granted the objects and activities that surround us. Even when we encounter new objects in our environment, our tendency is to expe- rience them in terms of categories and qualities with which we are already familiar. The natural attitude allows us to assume and predict a great many things about each other's behavior without first establishing premises at the outset of every interaction. The natural attitude can also stand in the way of awareness, for ordinary experience has to be made extraordinary in order to become accessible to reflection. This occurs when we encounter a problem: when our actions do not yield the expected results, we are caught by surprise and so are motivated to reflect upon our initial assumptions. 2 Awareness requires a rupture with the world we take for granted; then old categories of experience are called into question and revised. For example, in the early days of photography, the discrepancies between the camera's eye and the hu- man eye were avidly discussed, but, "once they began to think photo- graphically, people stopped talking about photographic distortion, as it was called.,,3 -- 13 ### The Control Room Whoa, the description of the Control Room from the Piney Wood Mill recalled me the Cybersyn Control Room built -- and then destroyed -- less than a decade before: Workers sit on orthopedically designed swivel chairs covered with a royal blue fabric, facing video display ter- minals. The terminals, which display process information for the purposes of monitoring and control, are built into polished oak cabi- nets. Their screens glow with numbers, letters, and graphics in vivid red, green, and blue. The floor here is covered with slate-gray carpet- ing; the angled countertops on which the terminals sit are rust brown and edged in black. The walls are covered with a wheat-colored fabric and the molding repeats the polished oak of the cabinetry. The dropped ceiling is of a bronzed metal, and from it is suspended a three dimen- sional structure into which lights have been recessed and angled to provide the right amount of illumination without creating glare on the screens. The color scheme is repeated on the ceiling-soft tones of beige, rust, brown, and gray in a geometric design. -- 20-21 ### Technology, work and the body Technology represents intelligence systematically applied to the problem of the body. It functions to amplify and surpass the organic limits of the body; it compensates for the body's fragility and vulnera- bility. Industrial technology has substituted for the human body in many of the processes associated with production and so has redefined the limits of production formerly imposed by the body. As a result, society's capacity to produce things has been extended in a way that is unprecedented in human history. This achievement has not been with- out its costs, however. In diminishing the role of the worker's body in the labor process, industrial technology has also tended to diminish the importance of the worker. In creating jobs that require less human effort, industrial technology has also been used to create jobs that re- quire less human talent. In creating jobs that demand less of the body, industrial production has also tended to create jobs that give less to the body, in terms of opportunities to accrue knowledge in the production process. These two-sided consequences have been fundamental for the growth and development of the industrial bureaucracy, which has de- pended upon the rationalization and centralization of knowledge as the basis of control. [...] Throughout most of human history, work has ines- capably meant the exertion and often the depletion of the worker's body. Yet only in the context of such exertion was it possible to learn a trade and to master skills. Since the industrial revolution, the acceler- ated progress of automation has generally meant a reduction in the amount of effort required of the human body in the labor process. It has also tended to reduce the quality of skills that a worker must bring to the activity of making something. Industrial technology has been developed in a manner that increases its capacity to spare the human body, while at the same time it has usurped opportunities for the devel- opment and performance of skills that only the body can learn and remember. -- 22-23 The progress of automation has been associated with both a general decline in the degree of know-how required of the worker and a de- cline in the degree of physical punishment to which he or she must be subjected. Information technology, however, does have the potential to redirect the historical trajectory of automation. The intrinsic power of its informating capacity can change the basis upon which knowledge is developed and applied in the industrial production process by lifting knowledge entirely out of the body's domain. The new technology sig- nals the transposition of work activities to the abstract domain of infor- mation. Toil no longer implies physical depletion. "Work" becomes the manipulation of symbols, and when this occurs, the nature of skill is redefined. The application of technology that preserves the body may no longer imply the destruction of knowledge; instead, it may imply the reconstruction of knowledge of a different sort. -- 23 There is reason enough to want to avoid exhausting work, but the constancy of repugnance was not confined to forms of labor that were extremely punishing. As noted earlier, in the membership practices of some guilds, even the craftsworker was liable to be an object of con- tempt because of the manual nature of that work. Such repugnance is in itself an act of distancing. It is both a rejection of the animal body and an affirmation of one's ability to translate the impulses of that body into the infinitely more subtle behavioral codes that mediate power in complex organizations. Once this translation occurs, the body is no longer the vehicle for involuntary affective or physical displays. Instead, it becomes the instrument of carefully crafted gestures and behaviors designed to achieve a calculated effect in an environment where inter- personal influence and even a kind of rudimentary psychological insight are critical to success. In the interpersonal world of court society, the body's knowledge involved the ability to be attuned to the psycho- logical needs and demands of others, particularly of superiors, and to produce subtly detailed nonverbal behavior that reflected this awareness. -- 28-29 The differences between the work performed by the skilled workers and the laborers was not of an "intellectual" versus manual activity. The difference lay in the content of a similarly heavy manual work: a content of rationality of participation for skilled workers versus one of total indifference for laborers. 5 5 The work of the skilled craftsperson may not have been "intellec- tual," but it was knowledgeable. These nineteenth-century workers participated in a form of knowledge that had always defined the activity of making things. It was knowledge that accrues to the sentient body in the course of its activity; knowledge inscribed in the laboring body- in hands, fingertips, wrists, feet, nose, eyes, ears, skin, muscles, shoul- ders, arms, and legs-as surely as it was inscribed in the brain. It was knowledge filled with intimate detail of materials and ambience-the color and consistency of metal as it was thrust into a blazing fire, the smooth finish of the clay as it gave up its moisture, the supple feel of the leather as it was beaten and stretched, the strength and delicacy of glass as it was filled with human breath. These details were known, though in the practical action of production work, they were rarely made explicit. Few of those who had such knowledge would have been able to explain, rationalize, or articulate it. Such skills were learned through observation, imitation, and action more than they were taught, reflected upon, or verbalized. For example, James J. Davis, later to become Warren Harding's Secretary of Labor, learned the skill of pud- dling iron by working as his father's helper in a Pennsylvania foundry: "None of us ever went to school and learned the chemistry of it from books. . . . We learned the trick by doing it, standing with our faces in the scorching heat while our hands puddled the metal in its glaring bath. ,,56 -- 40 ### The Scientific management Taylor, when "worker's know-how was expropriated to the ranks of management", using information technology -- that _automates_ and _informates_ -- before computer adoption, 41-44. Scientific management frequently meant not only that individual effort was simplified (either because of labor-saving equipment or new organizational methods that fragmented tasks into their simplest components), but also that the pace of effort was intensified, thus raising the level of fatigue and stress. Effort was purified-stripped of waste-but not yet eased, and resis- tance to scientific management harkened back to the age-old issue of the intensity and degree of physical exertion to which the body should be subject. As long as effort was organized by the traditional practices of a craft, it could be experienced as within one's own control and, being inextricably linked to skill, as a source of considerable pride, satisfaction, and independence. Stripped of this context and mean- ing, demands for greater effort only intensified the desire for self- . 69 protectIon. Taylor had believed that the transcendent logic of science, together with easier work and better, more fairly determined wages, could inte- grate the worker into the organization and inspire a zest for production. Instead, the forms of work organization that emerged with scientific management tended to amplify the divergence of interests between management and workers. Scientific management revised many of the assumptions that had guided the traditional employer-employee rela- tionship in that it allowed a minimal connection between the organiza- tion and the individual in terms of skill, training, and the centrality of the worker's contribution. It also permitted a new flexibility in work force management, promoting the maximum interchangeability of per- sonnel and the minimum dependence on their ability, availability, or motivation. 70 [...] A machinist gained prominence when he debated Taylor in 1 914 and remarked, "we don't want to work as fast as we are able to. We want to work as fast as we think it's comfortable for us to work. We haven't come into existence for the purpose of seeing how great a task we can perform through a lifetime. We are trying to regulate our work so as to make it auxiliary to our lives. ,,73 -- 45-46 Fordism: "The instruction cards on which Taylor set so much value, Ford was able to discard. The conveyor belt, the traveling platform, the overhead rails and material conveyors take their place. . . . Motion analysis has become largely unnecessary, for the task of the assembly line worker is reduced to a few manipulations. Taylor's stop-watch nevertheless remains measuring the time of operations to the fraction of a second. ,,74 The fragmentation of tasks characteristic of the new Ford assembly line achieved dramatic increases in productivity due to the detailed time study of thousands of operations and the invention of the conveyor belt and other equipment that maximized the continuity of assembly. [...] Effort is simplified (though its pace is frequently intensified) while skill demands are reduced by new methods of task organization and new forms of machinery. The continuity of assembly depended upon the production of interchangeable parts for uniform products. -- 47 Effects: For the majority of industrial workers in the generations that followed, there would be fewer opportunities to develop or maintain craft skills. Mass production depended upon interchangeability for the standardization of production; this principle required manufacturing operations to free themselves from the particularistic know-how of the craftsworker. [...] Thus, applications of industrial technology have simplified, and gen- erally reduced, physical effort, but because of the bond between effort and skill, they have also tended to reduce or eliminate know-how. 78 [...] Self-preservation would induce the worker to accept automation. [...] the machine assumes responsibility [...] In Braverman's influential critique of what he called the "degradation of work" in this century, he used Bright's study to make a very different point. Where Bright saw the glass half full because the physical demands of work were curtailed, Braverman saw the glass being drained, as work- ers' skills were absorbed by technology. For Braverman, the transfer of skill into machinery represented a triumph of "dead labor over living labor," a necessity of capitalist logic. As machinery is enlarged and per- fected, the worker is made puny and insignificant. By substituting capital (in the form of machinery) for labor, Braverman believed that employers merely seized the opportunity to exert greater control over the labor process. As the work force encountered fewer opportunities for skill development, it would become progressively less capable and, thus, less bl ... 85 -- 48-49