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Aucbvax.2428 fa.works utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!works Fri Jul 24 09:24:45 1981 Mother Jones article on Office of the Future >From Newman.ES@PARC-MAXC Fri Jul 24 09:18:55 1981 "For those of us who have to work there, the office of the future is the factory of the past".

That's the conclusion of an article by Barbara Garson in the July 1981 issue of MOTHER JONES. Entitled "The Electronic Sweatshop: Scanning the Office of the Future", it's a clerk's eye view of the effect of word processing, "distributed data entry", and other office technology on the people who must operate it for a living.

A particularly insidious development discussed in the article is the use of such technology to monitor the performance of its user (how many keystrokes per hour, how many hours per day spent on a particular task, etc.)

You may disagree with Ms. Garson's conclusions (she sees the new technology as a step toward the de-skilling of secretarial and other white-collar professions), but the article is an important reminder that many workers see the automated office as a threat rather than an opportunity.

/Ron

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