In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power by Shoshana Zuboff

In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power Reviews

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  Elizabeth

  You have to look back the dated nature of many of the observations this book makes to see its real contributions, however there are many. First off, Zuboff completed an extensive ethnography of three organizations over the course of several years in the late 70s/early 80s -- integral moments in varied workplace environments in terms of adopting computerized systems. Zuboff interviews and interacts with people at various levels of the three companies -- a paper mill, a global bank, and an insurance office. From both her interviews and participant observation, she aims to identify how technological changes influence the patterns of work and feelings toward work of various employees. Given the proclivity to making grandiose claims about technology that pervades much business scholarship of this time period, this ethnography offers a refreshingly different account. In her conclusion, for example, she becomes one of the first people to note that, though technology "redefines the possible, it cannot determine which choices are taken up and to what purpose" (p.398). Therefore, she argues, "it is necessary to consider both the manner in which it [technology] creates intrinsically new qualities of experience and the way in which new possibilities are engaged by the often-conflicting demands of social, political, and economic interests in order to produce a 'choice.' To concentrate only on intrinsic change and the texture of an emergent mentality is to ignore the real weight of history and the diversity of interests that pervade collective behavior. ...Moreover, these two dimensions of technological change, in intrinsic and the contingent, need to be understood not separately, but in relation to each other" (p.389). Here, Zuboff is at her best -- balancing her evidence to make clear, worthwhile claims. At other times, her arguments seem more tedious as she trods through seemingly endless examples from her own work as well as extensive details about attitudes toward work in the past. Despite these limitations, however, her work is still relevant and worth reading, particularly by those interested in workplace dynamics.
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  Ietrio

  Stupidity blended with a good dose of tantrum: if Zuboff can't control it, nobody should have access to it.
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  TΞΞL❍CK Mith!lesh

  Zuboff's 1988 book, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power, is a study of information technology in the workplace.
  
  Major concepts introduced in this book relate to knowledge, authority, and power in the information workplace. These include the duality of information technology as an informating and an automating technology; the abstraction of work associated with information technology and its related intellectual skill demands; computer-mediated work; the "information panopticon"; information technology as a challenge to managerial authority and command/control; the social construction of technology; the shift from a division of labor to a division of learning; and the inherently collaborative patterns of information work, among others.
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  Keith Swenson

  This was a particularly key book in understanding the basis for collaborative software back in the 1990's. I have given many presentations on collaborative software technology, and almost every one has included a quote or two from Zuboff. I read it so long ago I don't have a full review at this time, but I do consider it one of the seminal books in the field.
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  Richard

  Zuboff is the best writer on implications of technology for our time. Sadly, this and her subsequent book, "The Support Economy," are her only two book-length works (to my knowledge; if someone knows more, let me know?).
  
  Read particularly the chapter on "The Laboring Body: Suffering and Skill in Production Work." Workers were not accustomed to being cogs in a machine, a utilitarian "human resource." Quote: "The owner of a Pennsylvania ironworks complained of frequent 'frolicking' that sometimes lasted for days, along with hunting, harvesting, wedding parties, and holiday celebrations" (p.33).
  
  Oh, yeah. That's right. We aren't supposed to do any of those things. Just work.
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  Kevin jones

  good book on information and behavior change, set in a pulp mill in the south.
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  Michael Quinn

  A comprehensive history of work and the dynamics of working environments
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  Rene Schlegel

  His foresight was astonishing. E.g. the pace different of our and technologies development. Still recommended for all CIO.
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  Mary Karpel-Jergic

  A book about the alternate futures of an information world