🚀 go-pugleaf

>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