Computer Based Office Automation And The Dynamics Of Sociotechnical Change PDF Download

Excerpt from Office Automation: The Dynamics of a Technological Boondoggle, May 1980 For anyone who has taken the time to read these words given the title of the paper, the proposition that office automation will dramatically reshape American society within twenty years is probably assumed. Likewise, few would disagree with the assertion that the direction of office automation is largely driven by technological developments rather than responding to specific organizational or societal needs. (While most users are currently interested in office automation to reduce labor costs and improve productivity, they are seeking to take advantage of technological developments rather than guiding the form of automation.) The second fact was recently confirmed by a recent study here at M.I.T. of the current office automation efforts in nine large users (Driscoll, Sirbu, Alloway, Hammer, Harper, and Khalil 1980). Less well-understood is presence of choice within any technology. There is no such thing as a technological inevitability. David Noble, a colleague here at M.I.T., has made that argument persuasively, and documented his contention in a series of compelling studies. More recently, Wendy Mela and Richard Walton at Harvard Business School have supported the presence of technological choice in the specific area of 2 concern here, namely advanced office technology. If the direction of technological development is not a given, and if office automation is certainly being driven by technological developments, then who is making the choices among technological alternatives? Noble believes that technology is a means of social control in the conflict between classes within the society. The ruling (capitalist) class selects specific technologies to maximize its control over the working class. My own analysis explores some additional explanations. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current technological path of office automation, and to demonstrate the possibility of an alternative, more humanistic path. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.