[SIGCIS-Members] Two works

Mon Jun 15 15:12:22 PDT 2015

All,

I've been watching this thread with interest. Then, just a few moments ago,
while doing some research on the history of technology assessment, I came
across this interesting text from 1987, _The Electronic Supervisor: New
Technology, New Tensions
<https://books.google.com/books?id=lYYKObt0TDkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false>_,
put out by the OTA. Automation + Taylorism + a dash of Foucault.

Later,

Lee

On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 6:04 PM, Julie Cohn <cohnconnor at comcast.net> wrote:

> Luke et al.,
>
> On other factor to consider when addressing the issue of high skilled
> workers moving down the occupational ladder is the total number of college
> graduates entering the workforce and how that changed over time. It may be
> important, for a particular era of automation and a given industry, to
> address not only who is filling the jobs but whether the total number of
> high-skill jobs in that industry is changing and how that compares to the
> number of qualified applicants entering the workforce.
>
> -Julie
>
> *****************************
> Julie Cohn, Ph.D.
> Research Historian
> Center for Public History
> University of Houston
> 315 McElhinney Hall
> Houston, TX 77204-3007
> cohnconnor at comcast.net
>
> On Jun 13, 2015, at 6:18 PM, Luke Fernandez wrote:
>
> 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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>
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-- 
Assistant Professor
Program on Science and Technology Studies
College of Arts and Letters
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hoboken, NJ 07030
leevinsel.com
Twitter: @STS_News
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