<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div>All,<br><br></div>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, _<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lYYKObt0TDkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions</a>_, put out by the OTA. Automation + Taylorism + a dash of Foucault. <br><br></div>Later,<br><br></div>Lee<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 6:04 PM, Julie Cohn <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cohnconnor@comcast.net" target="_blank">cohnconnor@comcast.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Luke et al.,<div><br></div><div>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. </div><div><br></div><div>-Julie</div><div><br><div>
<span style="border-collapse:separate;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;font-size:medium"><span style="border-collapse:separate;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;font-size:medium"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><span style="border-collapse:separate;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;font-size:medium"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div>*****************************</div><div>Julie Cohn, Ph.D.<br>Research Historian<br>Center for Public History<br>University of Houston<br>315 McElhinney Hall<br>Houston, TX 77204-3007<br><a href="mailto:cohnconnor@comcast.net" target="_blank">cohnconnor@comcast.net</a></div></div></span></div></span></span>
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<br><div><div>On Jun 13, 2015, at 6:18 PM, Luke Fernandez wrote:</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>Bjorn (and others),</div><div><br></div>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? <div><br></div><div>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:</div><div> </div><div>“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.” [ <a href="http://www.economics.ubc.ca/files/2013/05/pdf_paper_paul-beaudry-great-reversal.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.economics.ubc.ca/files/2013/05/pdf_paper_paul-beaudry-great-reversal.pdf</a>]</div><div><br></div><div>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? </div><div><br></div><div>Sincerely,</div><div><br></div><div>Luke</div><div><a href="http://lfernandez.org/" target="_blank">http://lfernandez.org</a></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 4:30 PM, Bjorn Westergard <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bjornw@gmail.com" target="_blank">bjornw@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">A few tangents you might explore:<br><br>It's hard to overstate the influence of Norbert Wiener's <i>Cybernetics </i>(and popular writing like T<i>he Human use of Human Beings</i>) on subsequent management theorists.<br><br>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.<br><br>Finally, SHOT's own Nathan Ensmenger recently published <i>The Computer Boys Take Over, </i>an invaluable history of some of the changes in occupational structure engendered by "computerization". It's particularly good on gender.</div><div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 6:16 PM, Bjorn Westergard <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bjornw@gmail.com" target="_blank">bjornw@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>Here are some sources I've found helpful, albeit for a very particular set of questions around automation.<br><br>Marxian Historians, Social Scientists:<br>Nobel - Forces of Production (a one-time SHOT member)</div><div>Braverman - Labor and Monopoly Capital<br><div>Pollock - Automation: A Study of Its Social and Economic Consequences<br><br>Influential Popular Writers:<br>Rifkin - The End of Work<br>Andre Gorz - Farewell to the Working Class<br><br>Economists:</div><div>Leontief, Autor, Brynjolfsson, McAfee<br>Levy - The New Division of Labor</div><div>Vivarelli - Innovation and Employment: A Survey<span style="color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:TrebuchetMS;font-size:14pt;font-weight:700"> </span><br><br>Management Theorists:<br>Herbert Simon - The Corporation: Will It be Managed by Machines? (published 1960)<br>Drucker - The Practice of Management</div></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div>On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 1:29 PM, Daniel Ferrell <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:returnofjayhawk@hotmail.com" target="_blank">returnofjayhawk@hotmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div>
<div><div dir="ltr"><font face="Times New Roman,sans-serif" color="#666666">SIGCIS members,<br> 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? </font><div><div><br><br><div><b style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:12pt"><div style="display:inline!important"><b style="font-size:12pt">-Daniel Ferrell</b></div></b></div><div><font face="Garamond"><br></font><div><font face="Garamond"><i>Home Acceptance Corporation </i>(NMLS #1151715)<i>. </i><br>65 S. Outer Rd.<br>P.O. Box 72<br>Benton, MO 63736</font></div></div></div></div> </div></div>
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This email is relayed from members at <a href="http://sigcis.org/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">sigcis.org</a>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/</a> and you can change your subscription options at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org</a><br></blockquote></div><br></div>
_______________________________________________<br>This email is relayed from members at <a href="http://sigcis.org" target="_blank">sigcis.org</a>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/" target="_blank">http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/</a> and you can change your subscription options at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org" target="_blank">http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org</a></blockquote></div><br></div></div></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
This email is relayed from members at <a href="http://sigcis.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">sigcis.org</a>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/</a> and you can change your subscription options at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>Assistant Professor<br>Program on Science and Technology Studies<br>College of Arts and Letters<br>Stevens Institute of Technology<br>Hoboken, NJ 07030</div><div><a href="http://leevinsel.com" target="_blank">leevinsel.com</a><br>Twitter: @STS_News<br></div></div></div>
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