[SIGCIS-Members] Two works

[Luke Fernandez]

Bjorn (and others),

Thanks for those cites.  In your recollection which of these texts (or
others if they come to mind) best detail what sectors of the labor force
find their jobs more interesting as a result of the so-called computer
revolution and what sectors find them less interesting?

To this concern, in The Glass Cage Nicholas Carr suggests that some jobs,
like being an airline pilot or a health worker, have been cognitively
degraded by the introduction of automation.  And he worries that this is
just a harbinger of more degradation to come.    Barbara Garson, in The
Electronic Sweatshop:  How Computers Are Transforming The Office of the
Future Into the Factory of the Past made similar observations in 1988, and
Matthew Crawford in Shop Craft as Soul Craft (2009) argues (in passages
that footnote Braverman and Garson) that the degradation that blue collar
workers experienced with the advent of the assembly line and automation are
now also being experienced by white collar workers. In a similar vein, Ben
Sand, Paul Beaudry and David Green argue in _The great reversal in the
demand for skill and cognitive tasks_ that the cognitive challenges that
college graduates face in their jobs have been declining significantly
since the year 2000:

“high-skilled workers have moved down the occupational ladder and have
begun to perform jobs traditionally performed by lower-skilled workers.
This de-skilling process, in turn, results in high-skilled workers pushing
lowskilled workers even further down the occupational ladder and, to some
degree, out of the labor force all together.” [
http://www.economics.ubc.ca/files/2013/05/pdf_paper_paul-beaudry-great-reversal.pdf
]

On the other hand I would guess that most of the people who subscribe to
this listserv feel that their jobs are becoming more cognitively demanding
rather than less.    So what's going on?  Does automation mean that (as
Matthew Crawford argues) "genuine knowledge work comes to be concentrated
in an ever smaller elite"  while the rest of white collar workers become
subject to a "rising sea of clerkdom?"  Or is the story more complicated
than the one Crawford and Carr recount?  What texts should I read to better
answer the question in my first paragraph?

Sincerely,

Luke
http://lfernandez.org

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 4:30 PM, Bjorn Westergard <bjornw at gmail.com> wrote:

> A few tangents you might explore:
>
> It's hard to overstate the influence of Norbert Wiener's *Cybernetics *(and
> popular writing like T*he Human use of Human Beings*) on subsequent
> management theorists.
>
> SHOT's very own David Allen Grier has written quite a lot on the labor
> processes used in scientific computing before and during the introduction
> of automatic computing machinery. These are not directly related to
> "automation" per se (which term was coined circa 1940) but I found them
> very helpful in providing historical context and illustrating the basic
> continuity of some tendencies in the technical division of labor from the
> pre- to post- automatic computing eras.
>
> Finally, SHOT's own Nathan Ensmenger recently published *The Computer
> Boys Take Over, *an invaluable history of some of the changes in
> occupational structure engendered by "computerization". It's particularly
> good on gender.
>
> On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 6:16 PM, Bjorn Westergard <bjornw at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Here are some sources I've found helpful, albeit for a very particular
>> set of questions around automation.
>>
>> Marxian Historians, Social Scientists:
>> Nobel - Forces of Production (a one-time SHOT member)
>> Braverman - Labor and Monopoly Capital
>> Pollock -  Automation: A Study of Its Social and Economic Consequences
>>
>> Influential Popular Writers:
>> Rifkin - The End of Work
>> Andre Gorz - Farewell to the Working Class
>>
>> Economists:
>> Leontief, Autor, Brynjolfsson, McAfee
>> Levy - The New Division of Labor
>> Vivarelli - Innovation and Employment: A Survey
>>
>> Management Theorists:
>> Herbert Simon - The Corporation: Will It be Managed by Machines?
>> (published 1960)
>> Drucker - The Practice of Management
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 1:29 PM, Daniel Ferrell <
>> returnofjayhawk at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> SIGCIS members,
>>>     Concerning the subject of automation, and how it relates to modern
>>> society--particularly, the economic and psychological effects that ensue,
>>> seems to be a thought-provoking topic in our current milieu. Can anyone
>>> suggest any good publications on this topic?
>>>
>>>
>>> *-Daniel Ferrell*
>>>
>>> *Home Acceptance Corporation *(NMLS #1151715)*. *
>>> 65 S. Outer Rd.
>>> P.O. Box 72
>>> Benton, MO 63736
>>>
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>>
>>
>
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