[SIGCIS-Members] Automation bibliography

Tue Jun 23 02:07:17 PDT 2015

A few elements of answers.
There are several reflections comparing the social concerns about automation with the Luddite movement of the nineteenth century. AFAIK it is mostly militant-scholarly literature, for example :
Cedric Biagini,  Guillaume Carnino,  Les Luddites en France. Resistance al’industrialisation et a l’informatisation,  Montreuil,  Editions L’Echappee,  collection « Frankenstein »,  2010,  336 pages.
http://dissidences.hypotheses.org/2558
http://www.liberation.fr/grand-angle/2007/06/21/rage-against-the-machines_96524
(the latter paper also mentions  David Noble)
One of the co-authors, Celia Izoard, was recently prosecuted after demolishing biometric equipment ; she translated Kirkpatrick Sale's  Rebels Against the Future as La Revolte Luddite.

I wrote a few pages in my doctoral dissertation about the 1957 hearings and reports of the French Conseil Economique et Social on "the social consequences of automation". It obviously aimed at adressing the concerns about job destruction by automatic machinery and computers. It essentially (and unsurprisingly) concluded that automation would induce change, rather than loss, of jobs ; and require considerable educational efforts.

Anecdotically Renault, the car manufacturer, acquired in the late 1950s an IBM 705, soon nicknamed Anatole. In 1960, after the failure of Renault's commercial venture in the USA,  the management decided to fire 3030 workers. The story goes that the computer was programmed to chose worker profiles to prepare the layoff decision “On  October 10,  the to-be fired workers at Billancourt gathered and set off to "break the face" of the inaccessible Anatole ("casser la gueule à Anatole"). A riot started. High pressure was organized by the communist union CGT – with no great result.” 
(Richter Daniel et alii,  Renault,  100 ans d'histoire sociale,  Boulogne-Billancourt,  Comité de Groupe Européen Renault,  1999). 

Best,
Pierre Mounier-Kuhn

Le 22 juin 2015 à 20:24, Daniel Ferrell a écrit :

> SIGCIS members,
> 
>    The discussion of automation, (as it relates to displacement of human labor in favor of machines) and the over-arching concerns that result seem to parallel the impetus behind the Luddite movement of the nineteenth century. Does anyone think this notion meritorious? Does anyone think there are similarities? A question arises as to the extent and trajectory of technology as it relates to vocation. Can technology become too unrestrained when it causes jobs to evaporate, or will obsoleteness always bring a wave of new positions associated with the latest technology?
> 
> 
> -Daniel Ferrell
> 
> Home Acceptance Corporation (NMLS #1151715). 
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> 
> From: dgolumbia at gmail.com
> Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2015 13:18:43 -0400
> To: members at sigcis.org
> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Automation bibliography
> 
> i was recently in one of the largest used bookstores in the US, in which there was an entire row dedicated to "computers." one entire shelf of that row, speaking roughly, was books with "automation" in the title. most from the 1980s, 1970s and before. it gave me some pause about the ability of we writers & humanists to impact the world of technological change, as much of what I leafed through (including many works I knew, some I'd read, and many more I didn't/haven't) could roughly be said to predict and caution against exactly what is happening today, particularly with regard to labor. 
> 
> On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 11:47 AM, Bernardo Batiz-Lazo <bbatiz64 at gmail.com> wrote:
> You may also want to look at
> 
> Booth, A. E. (2007). The Management of Technical Change: Automation in the U.K. and U.S.A. since 1950. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
> 
> 
> Best
> Bernardo
> Bangor University (Wales)
> 
> On 15 Jun 2015, at 23:19, Ian S. King <isking at uw.edu> wrote:
> 
> Another take on replacement - not for economic reasons, but in obsessive obeisance to other values - is the classic, "With Folded Hands".  
> 
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 10:15 PM, Andrew Meade McGee <amm5ae at virginia.edu>wrote:
> Another cultural suggestion to pair with the Desk Set is the May 1964 episode of The Twilight Zone, "The Brain Center at Whipple's." One of those Rod Serlingesque accounts of an efficiency expert who completely automates a factory, laying off all the assembly line workers, until his job too is replaced with a robot. Not the most profound account, but reflective of period anxieties. 
> 
> 
> -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
> Andrew Meade McGee
> Corcoran Department of History
> University of Virginia
> PO Box 400180 - Nau Hall
> Charlottesville, VA 22904
> 
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 5:53 PM, McMillan, William W<william.mcmillan at cuaa.edu> wrote:
> Don't forget Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Desk Set (1957)!
> 
> ________________________________
> From: Members [members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org] on behalf of James Cortada [jcortada at umn.edu]
> Sent: Monday, June 15, 2015 4:03 PM
> To: Paul McJones
> Cc: members at sigcis.org
> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Automation bibliography
> 
> I devote attention to the subject as it related to manufacturing in the USA, with lots of bibliography, in The Digital Hand: How Computers Changed the Work of American Manufacturing, Transportation, and Retail Industries (Oxford U Press, 2004).
> 
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 2:21 PM, Paul McJones <paul at mcjones.org<mailto:paul at mcjones.org>> wrote:
> Paul,
> 
> Burt Grad described the creation of GE’s first applications for the UNIVAC I in this article:
> 
> The First Commercial Computer Application at General Electric
> By: Burton Grad, December 2006
> http://ethw.org/First-Hand:The_First_Commercial_Computer_Application_at_General_Electric
> 
> He said a large team was assigned the task of writing a payroll system for the Washer and Dryer Department, while he was assigned the task of writing a manufacturing control system for the Dishwasher and Disposer Department. It took him about six months, and his programs "operational long before the payroll system was completed.”
> 
> I’m not sure exactly what manufacturing control referred to, but I suspect it involved scheduling and tracking the movement of parts and subassemblies, but not actually performing real-time control of any machinery.
> 
> 
> Paul McJones
> 
> 
> On Jun 15, 2015, at 11:32 AM, Ceruzzi, Paul <CeruzziP at si.edu<mailto:CeruzziP at si.edu>> wrote:
> 
> ... When GE installed one of the first commercial UNIVACs at their Louisville, KY appliance plant, they were concerned with the topic of automation eliminating jobs and its possible bad publicity. ...
> 
> All that from the installation of a vacuum-tube computer with very primitive, by modern standards, computing power. A further irony is that the UNIVAC, as far as I could tell, did not have anything to do with automating production on the factory floor.
> 
> 
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> Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate
> The Information School
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