070105

 

Truth or Consequences, NM

Friday July 1, 2005

     8:21am  I woke up at, I don't know, about fifteen minutes ago. I came to take a shit in their bathroom and I shaved and brushed my teeth. I don't know what I'm going to do today. There's a gas station nearby where I want to hang out and tell my stories, I want to. Jacob has a day off and we're supposed to go to the library and look up some stuff. 

                   They have a sticker here on their refrigerator. Celestial Seasonings. "There is no end to the adventures that we can have, if only we seek them with our eyes open." - Nehru

Page 204

                   Work was "de-skilled" or dumbed-down, standardized, broken into the simplest operations. And as white-collar work spread, offices we re organized along parallel lines. Because they were not harnessed to an assembly line, clerical employees had a bit more physical freedom of movement. But the goal of management was to increase efficiency in the office by making it resemble the factory as much as humanly—or inhumanly—possible.
                   The smokestack factories and mills were severely criticized for their dehumanization of the worker. But even the most radical thinkers of the time regarded them as "advanced" and "scientific."
                   Less commented on was a change in the police function. Instead of the family policing work and pressuring its members to perform, a new power structure—hierarchical management— came into being to enforce the new rules.
                   This new Second Wave work regimen was at first bitterly resisted even by employers, who tried to keep the old agrarian system and to transplant it into the factory. Because families had long sweated together in the fields, early manufacturers hired whole families at once. But this system, efficient in agriculture for 10,000 years, proved totally inefficient in the factory.
                   Old people could not keep up with the machines. Children had to be beaten and often manacled to prevent them from running off to play. Families arrived at different times, straggling in as they had in the fields. Inevitably, the attempt to maintain a family production team in the new technological environment collapsed, and the smokestack regimen was imposed.
                   The lesson became clear: You couldn't organize work around a steam engine or textile loom the way you did around a hoe or a team of oxen. A new technical environment required a different discipline—and a different structure of power to police and enforce it.

 Page 205

                   THE ELECTRONIC PROLETARIAT

                   Today, as the super-symbolic economy develops, a new work regimen is once more supplanting an old one.
                   In our remaining smokestack factories and offices, conditions today are still largely the same as they were decades ago. Around the world, and especially in the newly industrializing nations, hundreds of millions of workers are still chained to a Second Wave industrial discipline.
                   And today, too, exactly as in the past, we still see employers underestimating the revolution taking place around them. They introduce computers and other advanced, Third Wave technologies—but attempt to retain' yesterday's Second Wave work rules and power relationships.

Page 207

                   Workplace democracy, like political democracy, does not thrive when the population is ignorant. By contrast, the more educated a population, the more democracy it seems to demand. With advanced technology spreading, unskilled and poorly educated workers are being squeezed out of their jobs in cutting-edge companies. This leaves behind a more educated group, which cannot be managed in the traditional authoritarian, don't-ask-me-any-questions fashion. In fact, asking questions, challenging assumptions are becoming part of everyone's job.

The whole section starting on Page 206. Tomorrow's Work Regimen.

TOMORROW'S WORK REGIMEN

                   The changes now transforming work are not a result of woolly-headed altruism. They are a consequence of much heavier loads of information and communication needed for wealth production.
                   In the past, when most businesses were still tiny, an entrepreneur was able to know virtually all that needed to be known. But as firms grew and technology became more complicated, it was impossible for any one person to carry the entire knowledge load. Soon specialists and managers were hired and formed into the characteristic compartments and echelons of the bureaucracy. The knowledge load had to be diffused throughout the managerial ranks.
                   Today a parallel process is at work. Just as owners became dependent on managers for knowledge, managers are becoming dependent on their employees for knowledge.
                   The old smokestack division of the firm into "heads" and "hands" no longer works. In the words of Teruya Nagao, professor of information and decision sciences at the University of Tsukuba, "The separation of thinking and doing in the traditional model . . . may well be appropriate for constant technology but is hardly in keeping with rapid technological progress."
                   Because technologies are more complicated and turn over more frequently than in the past, workers are expected to learn more about adjacent and successive jobs. Thus, a General Motors ad proudly speaks of workers' helping to choose the lighting in their plants, selecting the sandpaper, the tools, and even "learning how the plant runs, what things cost, how customers respond to their work." In computer-integrated manufacture, says consultant David Hewitt of United Research Company, workers "need not only to know how the specific machines work, but . . . how the factory works."
                   What is happening is that the knowledge load and, more important, the decision load are being redistributed. In a continual cycle of learning, unlearning, and relearning, workers need to master new techniques, adapt to new organizational forms, and come up with new ideas.
                   As a result, "submissive rule-observers, who merely follow instructions to the letter, are not good workers," says Nagao, quoting an earlier study of Sony. In fact, in today's fast-change environment, he points out, rules, too, need to be changed more frequently than in the past, and workers need to be encouraged to propose such changes.
                   This is so because the worker who helps frame new rules will also understand why they are necessary and how they fit into the larger picture—which means the worker can apply them more intelligently. In fact, says Reinhard Mohn, chairman of Bertelsmann A.G., one of the world's largest media conglomerates, "only regulations which are endorsed by the majority of the work force have a chance of being abided by."
                   But to invite workers into the rule-making process is to share power once held exclusively by their bosses. It is a power shift not all managers find easy to accept.
                   Workplace democracy, like political democracy, does not thrive when the population is ignorant. By contrast, the more educated a population, the more democracy it seems to demand. With advanced technology spreading, unskilled and poorly educated workers are being squeezed out of their jobs in cutting-edge companies. This leaves behind a more educated group, which cannot be managed in the traditional authoritarian, don't-ask-me-any-questions fashion. In fact, asking questions, challenging assumptions are becoming part of everyone's job.
                   Lowell S. Bain is the plant manager of GenCorp Automo - tive's new plant in Shelbyville, Indiana. Describing the role of the manager, he says, "Here the pressure comes from inside the work force—a work force that challenges management and doesn't accept its dictates or authority. Here people question objectives. . . . Just because you're a member of management doesn't make your ideas holy."
                   What we see, therefore, is a clear pattern. Workplace power is shifting, not because of fuzzy-minded do-goodism, but because the new system of wealth creation demands it.

     12:25pm  I am still here at Jacob's.

     9:05pm  I spent all day typing. I typed up a big 25kb day on the 15th, the day after I left. I can't believe this resource fell in my lap. I've got a computer to type on. It's a dinky 200mhz system, but it does the job. It's running Windows XP actually. It's all I need. Jacob gave me a 3½ floppy so I could save it and take my work with me too. Oh, and I put all the Alvin Toffler books on his computer. The whole trilogy. I had to install Adobe Acrobat Reader, but it's all there. Future Shock, The Third Wave and Powershift. I'm going to stop typing and go watch TV with them.

                   We had a good talk outside earlier.

     10:18pm  I watched this movie about Martin Luther with Jacob and Amy. I watched part of it, but I want to go type some more. I'm going to go outside and smoke a cigarette first.

     11:02pm  I am going to get off the computer for the day. I spent all day on this computer. I typed up like half a day. I'm going to see what Playstation 2 games he has.

Next day..