1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961
962
963
964
965
966
967
968
969
970
971
972
973
974
975
976
977
978
979
980
981
982
983
984
985
986
987
988
989
990
991
992
993
994
995
996
997
998
999
1000
1001
1002
1003
1004
1005
1006
1007
1008
1009
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035
1036
1037
1038
1039
1040
1041
1042
1043
1044
1045
1046
1047
1048
1049
1050
1051
1052
1053
1054
1055
1056
1057
1058
1059
1060
1061
1062
1063
1064
1065
1066
1067
1068
1069
1070
1071
1072
1073
|
[[!meta title="In the Age of the Smart Machine"]]
## Index
* Deskilling, diplacement of "the human body and its know-how" and reskilling, 57.
* 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; body's dual role in production: effort and skill (No Pain no Gain), 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
* Transition from oral communication to written communication (pages 77, 100);
it's followed by a transition where calculations were transferred from mental
operations to calculating machines.
* Characteristics of action-centered skills, 106.
* Typewriters, 115.
* Feminization of clerical work, 116-117.
* Secretaries: _dedicated_ (acting as buffers, sorters and organizers) versus _pool_ modes (treated as input-output devices), 122-123.
## Impressions
* 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.
* The pathway from motor knowledge to abstract knowledge recalls Piaget's discussion
about intelligence.
* Also some bridges can be built with Nicolelis' discussion of technology
transforming itself in extensions of the brain.
* I to, sometimes, can feel my systems. How they're running, which are
the bottlenecks, what should I look for. Load average from a server is
something you can "feel" just by delays in your terminal.
* Transitional generations might feel a strange feeling.
## 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
### The Transfer
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
(pragmatized 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
The worker's capacity "to know" has been lodged in sentience and
displayed in action. The physical presence of the process equipment
has been the setting that corresponded to this knowledge, which could,
in turn, be displayed only in that context. As long as the action context
remained intact, it was possible for knowledge to remain implicit. In
this sense, the worker knew a great deal, but very little of that knowl-
edge was ever articulated, written down, or made explicit in any fash-
ion. Instead, operators went about their business, displaying their
know-how and rarely attempting to translate that knowledge into terms
that were publicly accessible. This is what managers mean when they
speak of the "art" involved in operating these plants.
-- 59
### From action-centered to intellective skill
This does not imply that action-centered skills exist independent
of cognitive activity. Rather, it means that the processes of learning,
remembering, and displaying action-centered skills do not necessarily
require that the knowledge they contain be made explicit. Physical
cues do not require inference; learning in an action-centered context is
more likely to be analogical than analytical. In contrast, the abstract
cues available through the data interface do require explicit inferential
reasoning, particularly in the early phases of the learning process. It is
necessary to reason out the meaning of those cues-what is their rela-
tion to each other and to the world "out there"?
-- 73
As information technology restructures the work situation, it ab-
stracts thought from action. Absorption, immediacy, and organic re-
sponsiveness are superseded by distance, coolness, and remoteness.
Such distance brings an opportunity for reflection.
[...]
The thinking this operator refers to is of a different quality from the
thinking that attended the display of action-centered skills. It combines
abstraction, explicit inference, and procedural reasoning. Taken to-
gether, these elements make possible a new set of competencies that I
call intellective skills. As long as the new technology signals only deskil-
ling-the diminished importance of action-centered skills-there will
be little probability of developing critical judgment at the data inter-
face. To rekindle such judgment, though on a new, more abstract foot-
ing, a reskilling process is required. Mastery in a computer-mediated
environment depends upon developing intellective skills.
-- 75-76
[...]
The second dimension of this crisis involves the ambiguity of action.
It is conveyed in the question, what have I done? The computer system
now interpolates between the worker and the action context, and as it
does so, it represents to the worker his or her effects on the world.
However, reading symbols does not provoke the same feeling of having
done something as one gets from more direct, organic involvement in
execution. There is a continual questioning of action-Have I done
anything? How can I be sure?
-- 81
It seems clear to me that, despite de physical alleviation introduced by
intellectual work, it still does not free workers from fatigue. It just put it
in a different framework: mental exhaustion and
[burn-out](/books/sociedade/burnout-society). Only dead, abstracted "work"
won't lead tiredness. But then it won't be work anymore.
### Evolution of white-collar work
The evolution of white-collar work has followed a historical path
that is in many ways the precise opposite of that taken by blue-collar
work. Manufacturing has its roots in the work of skilled craft. In most
cases, that work was successively gutted of the elements that made it
skillful-leaving behind jobs that were simplified and routinized. An
examination of work at the various levels of the management hierarchy
reveals a different process. Elements of managerial work most easily
subjected to rationalization were "carved out" of the manager's activit-
ies. The foundational example of this process is the rationalization of
executive work, which was accomplished by ejecting those elements
that could be explicated and systematized, preserving intact the skills
that comprise executive craft. It was the carving out of such elements
that created the array of functions we now associate with middle man-
agement. A similar process accounts for the origins of clerical work. In
each case, the most easily rationalized features of the activities at one
level were carved out, pushed downward, and used to create wholly
new lower-level jobs. In this process, higher-level positions were not
eliminated; on the contrary, they came to be seen more than ever as
the depository of the organization's skills.
[...]
White-collar employees used their bodies, too, but
in the service of actino-with, for interpersonal communication and coor-
dination. It was not until the intensive introduction of office machinery,
and with it scientific management, that this distinct orientation was
challenged. During this period, an effort was made to invent a new kind
of clerical work-work that more closely resembled the laboring body
continually actino-on the inanimate objects, paper and equipment, that
were coming to define modern office work. Automation in the factory
had diverse effects, frequently limiting human effort and physical
suffering, though sometimes exacerbating it. But the discontinuity in
the nature of clerical work introduced with office machinery, together
with the application of Tayloristic forms of work organization, did
much to increase the physical suffering of the clerk. While it remained
possible to keep a white collar clean, the clerk's position was severed
from its earlier responsibilities of social coordination and was con-
verted instead to an emphasis on regularity of physical effort and mental
concentration.
-- 98
Many successful merchants and entre-
preneurs were well known for the speed of their mental calculations,
and Eaton's how-to book provides a chapter on tricks and shortcuts to
aid in rapid mental arithmetic. 6 Owner-managers frequently sur-
rounded themselves with sons, nephews, and cousins-a move that fa-
cilitated oral communication through shared meaning and context and
eased the pressure for written documentation. 7
[...]
Detailed empirical studies of modern executives' work, several of
which have been published over the last thirty years, are greeted with
the curiosity and fascination usually reserved for anthropological ac-
counts of obscure primitive societies. It is as if these researchers had
brought back accounts from an organizational region that is concealed
from observation and protected from rational analysis. Perhaps this
sense of mystery surrounds top management activities because they
derive from a set of skills that are embedded in individual action, in
much the same way as those of the craftsperson. In both cases, skilled
performance is characterized by sentient participation, contextuality,
action-dependence, and personalism.
What is different is that the craftsperson used action-centered skills
in the service of actino-on materials and equipment, while the top man-
ager's action-centered skills are applied in the service of actino-with.
Like the seventeenth-century courtier, the top manager uses his or her
bodily presence as an instrument of interpersonal power, influence,
learning, and communication. The know-how that is developed in the
course of managerial experience in actino-with remains largely implicit:
managers themselves have difficulty describing what they do. Only the
cleverest research can translate such embedded practice into expli-
cated material suitable for analysis and discussion.
[...]
"The process is the sensing of the organization as a whole and the total
situation relevant to it. It transcends the capacity of merely intellectual
methods, and the techniques of discriminating the factors of the situa-
tion. The terms pertinent to it are 'feeling,' 'judgment,' 'sense,' 'pro-
portion,' 'balance,' 'appropriateness.' It is a matter of art rather than
science, and is aesthetic rather than logical. For this reason it is recog-
nized rather than described and is known by its effects rather than by
analysis. ,,8
-- 100-101
Kotter stresses the implicit quality of the general managers' knowledge,
noting that their agendas tended to be informal, nonquantitative, mental road
maps highly related to "people" issues, rather than systematic, formal planning
documents.
-- 102
Daniel Isenberg's research on "how senior managers think" has pen-
etrated another layer of this, usually inarticulate, domain of executive
management. 12 Isenberg found that top managers think in ways that are
highly "intuitive" and integrated with action. 13 He concluded that the
intuitive nature of executive behavior results from the inseparability of
their thinking from their actions: "Since managers often 'know' what
is right before they can analyze and explain it, they frequently act first
and think later. Thinking is inextricably tied to action. . . . Managers
develop thought about their companies and organizations not by ana-
lyzing a problematic situation and then acting, but by thinking and
acting in close concert.,,14 One manager described his own immersion
in the action cycle: "It's as if your arms, your feet, and your body just
move instinctively. You have a preoccupation with working capital, a
preoccupation with capital expenditure, a preoccupation with people
. . . and all this goes so fast that you don't even know whether it's
completely rational, or it's part rational, part intuitive. 15
[...]
Kanter con-
cluded that the manager's ability to "win acceptance" and to communi-
cate was often more important than any substantive knowledge of the
business. The feelings of comfort, efficiency, and trust that come with
such shared meaning are triggered in a variety of ways by the manager's
comportment. The nuances of nonverbal behavior and the signals em-
bedded in physical appearance are an important aspect of such group
participation. Because the tasks at the highest levels of the corporation
are the most ambiguous, senior executives come to rely most heavily
on the communicative ease that results from this shared intuitive world.
-- 103
Top managers' days and nights are filled to the breaking point with a myriad of
activities, contacts, events, discussions, and meetings, which tend to be
brief, rapid, and fragmented. Many students of managerial activity have
proposed ways
-- 105
"Today the manager is the real data bank. . . . Unfortunately he is a
walking and a talking data bank, but not a writing one. When he is busy,
information ceases to flow. When he departs, so does the data bank.,,28 Lodged
in the body and dependent upon presence and active display, the implicit heart
of the executive's special genius appears to evade rationalization.
-- 106-107
That's brilliant:
In the case of executive activity, those elements most accessible
to explication, and therefore rationalization, were carved out of the
executive's immediate domain of concern. These more analytical or
routine activities were projected into the functions of middle manage-
ment, just as those functions were also absorbing new responsibilities
for planning and coordination that had resulted from systematic analy-
sis of the production process. Thus, the activities that made the execu-
tive most special, based on action-centered skill, were left intact, while
the more explicit and even routine aspects of executive responsibilities
were pushed downward and materialized in a variety of middle-
management functions. This contrasts with the case of craft workers,
in which the action-centered skills that had made them so special were
resealched, systematized, and expropriated upward. To put it bluntly,
workers lost what was best in their jobs, the body as skill in the service
of actin8-on, while executives lost what was worst in their jobs, retaining
full enjoyment of the skilled body as an instrument of actin8-with.
-- 107-108
In other words, automation and the robotization of the body that follows flows
downward in that particular kink of enterprise -- capitalist business and other
hierachical type of organizations with information-based management. From
_action with_ to _acting on_ (page 119).
Intelligence is extracted from the worked, deskilled, automated and robotized.
From oral to written communication, from her memory to a memory bank of some
sort. From her artisan skills of interpersonal relationships to standardized
procedures. In a movement downward the hierarchy.
How that phenomemon predates or is contemporanean to cybernetic-inspired
corporate management?
Also, today we see a discourse on replacing even top management with A/I
working according to "smartcontracts", which might be an assymptotic
ideological consequence of automating things downward, but that might be proved
wrong if we consider that there's no way these organizations could work without
any craftsmanship at it's top.
Sounds like if there's no way to fully automated a capitalist bussiness or
government body, even replacing it's management but at the same time there's
an urge to do just that. The net effect is an overconcentration of power
to an ever-diminishing managerial elite.
If more value is given to non-automated work, then this overconcentration
is directly related to wealth concentration.
I guess this whole mainstream discourse on automation is entirelly flawed.
It separates mind and body, hates the body, want it automated, a slave of the mind
enslaved in a dellusion to free itself even more as the mind is considered a slave
of the brain, it's material support.
The next step after the creation of middle-management was it's removal from
the organization by downsizing/delayering/outsourcing which happened after
this book was published.
In 1925, the same year that Mary Parker Follett made her speech
exhorting managers to become more scientific, William Henry
Leffingwell published his well-known text, Office Mana8ement: Principles
and Practice, which he dedicated to the Taylor Society in appreciation
of its "inspirational and educational influence." Leffingwell presented
a copy of his book to Carl Barth, one of Taylor's best-known disciples.
That copy bore the following inscription: "It is with deep appreciation
of the honor of knowing one of management's greatest minds that I sit
at your feet and sign my name." Leffingwell was obsessed with the
notion of bringing rational discipline to the office in much the same
way that Taylor and his men were attempting to transform the shop
floor. Though his was not the only treatise on the subject, it quickly
became one of the most influential. 56 In an earlier work, published in
1 91 7, Leffingwell had discussed "mechanical applications of the princi-
ples of scientific management to the office." His new text was written
to address the need for "original thought" concerning the fundamental
principles of his discipline and their relationship to office management.
Leffingwell summed up the message of his book with one sentence:
"In a word, the aim of this new conception of office management is
simplification. "
[...]
The overwhelming purpose of Leffingwell's approach to simplifica-
tion was to fill the clerical workday with activities that were linked
to a concrete task and to eliminate time spent on coordination and
communication. This concern runs through almost every chapter of his
850-page text; it is revealed most prominently in his minutely detailed
discussions of the physical arrangement of the office and in his views
on the organization, flow, planning, measurement, and control of office
work.
Leffingwell advocated what he called "the straight-line flow of
work" as the chief method by which to eliminate any requirement for
communication or coordination. The ideal condition, he said, was that
desks should be so arranged that work could be passed from one to the
other "without the necessity of the clerk even rising from his seat. . .
[...]
. . . Routine. . . tends to reduce communication. ,,58 Layout,
standardization of methods, a well-organized messenger service, desk
correspondence distributors, reliance on written instructions, delivery
bags, pneumatic tubes, elevators, automatic conveyors, belt conveyors,
cables, telautographs, telephones, phonographs, buzzers, bells, and
horns-these were just some of the means Leffingwell advocated in
order to insulate the clerk from extensive communicative demands.
-- 117-119
Mind how such changes of reducing interpersonal communication, despite
raising production efficiency, also reduces worker self-organizing capacity
and class awareness.
The requirements of actino-on associated with these new clerical jobs
demanded more from the body as a source of effort than from skilled
action or intellective competence. It is only at this stage, and in the
context of this discontinuity, that the fate of the clerical job can be
fruitfully compared to that of skilled work in industry.
[...]
Frequently, the jobs that were created had the
effect of driving office workers into the role of laboring bodies, en-
gulfing them in the private sentience of physical effort. Complaints
about these jobs became complaints about bodies in pain. In 1 960 the
International Labour Organization published a lengthy study of mecha-
nization and automation in the office.
[...]
Clerks complained of being "treated like trained animals" because of the
"uniformity and excessive simplification of the work of many machine
operators."
-- 119-120
Another form of [labor camp](/books/history/ibm-holocaust), it's mirror image:
"Tabulat- ing machine operators, for instance, even when the controls are set
for them and an automatic device stops the machine when something goes wrong,
cannot let their attention flag. . . . The strain of this kind of close
attentiveness to a repetitive operation has resulted in a rIsIng number of
cases of mental and nervous disorders among clerical work- ers . . . physical
and intellectual debility; disturbances of an emotional nature such as
irritability, nervousness, hypersensitivity; insomnia; vari- ous functional
disturbances-headaches, digestive and heart troubles; state of depression, etc.
,,61
-- 120-121
The Office, featured an article in 1 969 by the director
of a New Jersey industrial engineering firm who said: "We know from
our company's studies that manpower utilization in most offices-even
those that are subject to work measurement controls-rarely exceeds
60%. In some operations the percentage of utilization may fall below
40%. At least 17% of the time, employees are literally doing nothing
except walking around or talking. . . . While many companies have
squeezed out much of the excess labor costs in their production opera-
tions, only a few have given serious attention to the so called indirect
labor or service operations. ,,62
[...]
"Clerical jobs are mea- sured just like factory jobs.
Clerical costs can be controlled on
any routine, Le., repetitive or semi-repetitive work. Non-repetitive
tasks, such as research and development, cannot be economically mea-
sured. Similarly, jobs such as receptionists, confidential secretaries,
etc., do not lend themselves to control. ,,65
-- 121-122
### Office technology as exile and integration
The whole chapter is worth reading. Some excerpts:
One afternoon, after several weeks of participant observation and
discussions with clerks and supervisors, I was returning to the office
from a lunch with a group of employees when two of them beckoned
me over to their desks, indicating that they had something to show me.
They seated themselves at their workstations on either side of a tall
gray partition. Then they pointed out a small rupture in the orderly,
high-tech appearance of their work space: the metal seam in the parti-
tion that separated their desks had been pried open.
With the look of mischievous co-conspirators, they confided that
they had inflicted this surgery upon the wall between them. Why? The
small opening now made it possible to peek through and see if the
other worker was at her seat, without having to stand up and peer over
or around the wall. Through that aperture questions could be asked,
advice could be given, and dinner menus could be planned. At the time
I took this to be the effort of two women to humanize their surround-
ings. While I still believe that is true, the weeks, months, and years that
followed led me to a fuller appreciation of the significance of their
action.
Installing those partitions was the final step that completed the
clerks' relegation to the realm of the machine. Exiled from the inter-
personal world of office routines, each clerk became isolated and soli-
tary. That interpersonal world involves the work of managing; it is the
domain in which coordination and communication occur. These clerks
not only had been denied benign forms of social intercourse but also
had been expelled from the managerial world of actino-with that had
formerly required them to accept, in some small degree, responsibility
for the coordination of their office. Installing the partitions was one
concrete technique, among others, designed to create the discontinuity
needed to achieve Leffingwell's goal: to convert the clerk from an inter-
personal operator to a laboring body, substituting communicative and
coordinative responsibilities with the physical demands of continuous
production.
-- 125
In many cases, organizational functions, events, and processes have been so
extensively informated-converted into and displayed as information-that the
technology can be said to have "textualized" the organizational environment.
-- 126
Why was it felt to be important and natural to check the ledgers?
Many of the clerks experienced a loss of certainty similar to that of the
pulp mill operators when they were deprived of concrete referents. In
the office the referent function operated at a higher level of abstraction
than in the mills. For these clerks, written words on pieces of paper
had become a concrete and credible medium-for several reasons.
First, paper is a three-dimensional object that carries sensory weight-
it can be touched; carried; folded; in short, dominated. Secondly, writ-
ing is a physical activity. The pen gives voice to the hand. Each written
word is connected to the writer both through the intellectual relation-
ship of authorship and through the immediate physical relationship of
fingers and pen. In the act of writing there is a part of the self that is
invested in and so identified with the thing written. It comes to be
experienced as an extension of the self rather than an "otherness."
This identification occurs so subtly, that it is rarely noticed until it has
been taken away. Electronic text confronts the clerk with a stark sense
of otherness. Text is impersonal; letters and numbers seem to appear
without having been derived from an embodied process of authorship.
They stand autonomously over and against the clerk who engages with
them. A benefits analyst described the sensation:
You can't justify anything now; you can't be sure of it or prove it
because you have nothing down in writing. Without writing, you can't
remember things, you can't keep track of things, there's no reasoning
without writing. What we have now-you don't know where it comes
from. It just comes at you.
-- 130-131
Concentrating on concentrating: nano-genealogy of clerical work
---------------------------------------------------------------
Sounds like there's a paradox between the simplification of work -- the diminishing
knowledge required to do the task -- and the increased need for concentration in
the task accomplished -- not only because it was dificult to rollback transactions,
but also because of an increased pressure to do more.
We really did not have a need for such intensive concentration be-
fore. There are times when you are looking at the screen but you
are not seeing what is there. That is a disaster. Even when you get
comfortable with the system, you still have to concentrate; it's iust
that you are not concentrating on concentrating. You learn how to
do it, but the need doesn't go away.
-- 131
Here I get a curious feeling. Which makes me get back to the origin of the term
"clerk" and "clerical work". This is what Norbert Elias tells us from his second
volume of [The Civilizing Process](/books/sociology/processo-civilizador):
They entered this appararus by two main routes: 103 first through their growing
share of secular posts, that is, positions previously filled by nobles; and secondly
through their share of ecclesiastical poset, that is as clerks. The term _clerc_ began
slowly to change its meaning from about the end of the twelfth century onwards;
its ecclesiastical connotation receded and it referred more and more to a man who
had studied, who could read and write Latin , though it may be that the first
stages of an ecclesiastical career were for a time a prerequisite for this. Then, in
conjunction with the extension of the administrative apparatus, both the them
_clerc_ and certain kinds of university study were increasingly secularized. People
no longer learned Latin exclusively to become members of the clergy, theu also
learned it to become officials. To be sure, there were still bourgeois who entered
the king's council simply on account of their commercial or organizational
competence. But the majority of bourgeois attained the higher regions of
government through study, through knowledge of canon and Roman law. Study
became a normal means of social advancement for the sons of leading urban
strata. Bourgeois elements slowly pushed back the noble and ecclesiastical
elements in the government. The class of royal servants, of ''officials", became --
in contrast to the situarion in Germany -- an exclusively bourgeois formation.
[103] https://www.worldcat.org/title/philippe-le-long-roi-de-france-1316-1322-le-mecanisme-du-gouvernement/oclc/489867779
-- 332
The same excerpt but from the portuguese translation:
Eles ingressaram na máquina do governo através de dois caminhos principais:103
inicialmente, graças a sua crescente participação em cargos seculares, isto é,
em posições antes ocupadas por nobres e, depois, devido a sua participação em
postos antes eclesiásticos, isto é, como amanuenses. O termo _clerc_ começou a
mudar lentamente de significado a partir de fins do século XII, recuando para
um plano inferior sua conotação eclesiástica e aplicando-se mais e mais a
indivíduos que haviam estudado, que podiam ler e escrever latim, embora possa
ser verdade que os primeiros estágios de uma carreira eclesiástica fossem, por
algum tempo, precondição para isso. Em seguida, em paralelo com a ampliação da
máquina administrativa, o termo _clerc_ e certos tipos de estudos universitários
foram cada vez mais secularizados. As pessoas não aprendiam latim
exclusivamente para se tornarem membros do clero, mas também para ingressar na
carreira de servidores públicos. Para sermos exatos, também havia burgueses que
passavam a integrar o conselho do rei simplesmente devido a sua competência
comercial ou organizacional. A maioria dos burgueses, porém, chegava aos altos
escalões do governo através do estudo, do conhecimento dos cânones e do Direito
Romano. O estudo tornou-se um meio normal de progresso social para os filhos
dos principais estratos urbanos. Lentamente, elementos burgueses suplantaram os
elementos nobres e eclesiásticos no governo. A classe de servidores reais, ou
“funcionários”, tornou-se —, em contraste com a situação vigente nos
territórios germânicos — uma formação social exclusivamente burguesa.
-- Da seção 22 da parte "Distribuição das Taxas de Poder no Interior da Unidade
de Governo: Sua Importância para a Autoridade Central: A Formação do “Mecanismo
Régio”"
The development both of the term _clerc_ and the change this activity took deserves
some attention.
In a sense, the clergy lives in a form of isolation, of exile.
Or, in another sentence, a clerc was someone who renounced the sensorial and the
material word to live a monastic life. What I just said?
monastery (n.)
c. 1400, from Old French monastere "monastery" (14c.) and directly from Late
Latin monasterium, from Ecclesiastical Greek monasterion "a monastery," from
monazein "to live alone," from monos "alone" (from PIE root *men- (4) "small,
isolated"). With suffix -terion "place for (doing something)." Originally
applied to houses of any religious order, male or female.
-- https://www.etymonline.com/word/monastery
men- (4)
Proto-Indo-European root meaning "small, isolated."
It forms all or part of: malmsey; manometer; monad; monarchy; monastery;
monism; monist; monk; mono; mono-; monoceros; monochrome; monocle; monocular;
monogamy; monogram; monolith; monologue; monomania; Monophysite; monopoly;
monosyllable; monotony.
It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by:
Greek monos "single, alone," manos "rare, sparse;" Armenian manr "thin,
slender, small."
-- https://www.etymonline.com/word/*men-?ref=etymonline_crossreference
Noun
monastērium n (genitive monastēriī); second declension
(Medieval Latin) monastery quotations ▼
(Medieval Latin) cell; area used by a monk.
-- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/monasterium
From Old French monastere, from Latin monastērium, from Ancient Greek
μοναστήριον (monastḗrion, “hermit's cell”), from μόνος (mónos, “alone”).
Doublet of minster.
-- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/monastery
Clerical work can be considered those isolated, repetitive, monotonous tasks
separated from the daily, communal life.
Curiously enough, the `*men-` root also means:
men- (1)
Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to think," with derivatives referring to
qualities and states of mind or thought.
It forms all or part of: admonish; Ahura Mazda; ament; amentia; amnesia;
amnesty; anamnesis; anamnestic; automatic; automaton; balletomane; comment;
compos mentis; dement; demonstrate; Eumenides; idiomatic; maenad; -mancy;
mandarin; mania; maniac; manic; mantic; mantis; mantra; memento; mens rea;
mental; mention; mentor; mind; Minerva; minnesinger; mnemonic; Mnemosyne;
money; monition; monitor; monster; monument; mosaic; Muse; museum; music;
muster; premonition; reminiscence; reminiscent; summon.
It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by:
Sanskrit manas- "mind, spirit," matih "thought," munih "sage, seer;" Avestan
manah- "mind, spirit;" Greek memona "I yearn," mania "madness," mantis "one who
divines, prophet, seer;" Latin mens "mind, understanding, reason," memini "I
remember," mentio "remembrance;" Lithuanian mintis "thought, idea," Old Church
Slavonic mineti "to believe, think," Russian pamjat "memory;" Gothic gamunds,
Old English gemynd "memory, remembrance; conscious mind, intellect."
[...]
men- (2)
Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to project."
men- (3)
Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to remain." It forms all or part of:
maisonette; manor; manse; mansion; menage; menial; immanent; permanent; remain;
remainder.
-- https://www.etymonline.com/word/*men-?ref=etymonline_crossreference
To think in isolation, projecting, calculating. "Automaton" shares the same root.
We can also say tha clerical work can refer to a dedication to spiritualism or
philosophycal inquiry, freed from mundane affairs, desires an necessities.
To be continued:
* The monastic way is a mode of existence. But is different if someone chooses this path or is forced to it.
* Monotasking during large periods of time was enabled by civilization. Multitasking was the way if you had to pay attention all the time
for dangers to your life. See [The burn-out society](/books/sociology/burnout-society) for discussion. It's related to the
differentiation, specialization and automation of tasks. One needs someone's else, a third-party protection to be able to abstain from
the environment and even from oneself and focus on abstract and to be able to deep reflection and medidation.
* How some contemporaneous clerical work tends more to multitasking and attention deficit.
* Any equivalent term in portuguese to "clerical work"?
* Class differentiation among both the catholic clergy and the modern monastic automated office, with high ranks of technomonks
doing the thinking (and acting-with) and the lower clerks acting like automatons (acting-on).
[[!tag sociology technology history]]
|