African-Americans

• 1793: Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin- led to need for more workers in the field, 6 fold increase in the number of slaves from 1790-1860.
• Post Civil War- sharecropping and poverty.
• Industrialization: Massive migration- rural South to urban North (agriculture mechanized, jobs in cities. Lack of skills and education- confined to low level, menial work.
• Post-Industrialization: Same pattern, now Blacks of the inner cities are left without jobs as high-tech factories relocate and industrial work fades. Emergence of the "underclass."
• Role of technology- Mass Media- in the Civil Rights Movement: "Crystallization of a national Black consciousness." Today: homogenization of the heterogeneous Hispanic population-- cable TV.
• Modern mass media- heightening Black aspirations?
• Post-industrial world: Low level service sector, growth in high tech- but still problems- 1986: 3% of scientists 2% of engineers
• Information processing and Computers: Skill sets that have not been developed with the African-American population- Educational inequality!!

• The emergence of "Childhood"
• Growth of Educational Institutions. Higher skill sets and cognitive abilities demanded by the structure of work in a technologically sophisticated economy. Childhood as distinctive stage of life, and children as distinct and isolated from adults. Juvenile delinquency versus Criminal, Child labor laws.
• Today: Dividing line blurring- Cognitive skills necessary to grasp "adult" material through the written word are not necessary with television and modern information technology. TV: retards development of reading skills, intensifies sex-typing.
• Children, Computers and Identity (Sherry Turkle)- three stages of relationships: "Metaphysical (is it alive?); "Mastery phase" - "hard" and "soft"- learning to control the machine; "Identity phase"- early experiences and significance of attachment- ideas about relationships, consciousness, self-reflection.
• Computer children ==> Adult groups (Turkle again): Artificial Intelligence community, The Hacker Subculture, and the Community of Home Computer Users (parts of their identity wound up in the use of the PC).
• Evocative rather than Deterministic
• Other technological influences: Living arrangements- especially high-rise apartments: less exploration!?!-- more susceptible to peer influence!
• TV and socialization- Sesame Street, multi-culturalism
• Increasing age stratification

• The emergence of "Old age"
• Shift in power structure
• Quality vs. Quantity of life
• Intergenerational Conflict:
  • "The central, productive involvement of youth and young adults and the negligible, unproductive involvement of the elderly in contemporary science and technology."
  • "The fact that the non-elderly must foot the bill for the technology-intensive medical care of the growing, longer-living elderly population."

• Industrialization and social roles- bifurcation.
• New wave of service sector work- factory/office based women's work.
• Industrialization of the household- Ruth Schwartz Cowan: Not liberation, but increasing domination and further splitting of social roles.
• Yet, technological changes have reduced certain differentials between males and females-
  1. Relative importance of physical strength
  2. Post-industrial shift- need for women to enter into the paid labor force.
  3. Relative anonymity of electronic communication and interaction???

• 1860: 64% of labor force- agricultural
• 1910: manual workers- 37%, agricultural- 30%
• 1986: Blue collar- 28.5%, agricultural- 2.5%
• The Changing Composition of the Workforce in the USA

  Shift in the locus of work: Field- Factory- Home(?)

  • Shift in the content of work: Direct manipulation of nature- Indirect manipulation of "resources"- manipulation of symbols
  • Shift in the process of work- organization and control: human power- mental power- technological power ("expert systems")

  Restructuring of Time and Work Week

  • Task to time orientation in the work process
  • Ideational and economic impact here, too. But, the technology of the factory system "demanded" a rationalized approach to the productive process.
  • Taylorism and Scientific Management: Save time, eliminate waste.
  • Work week shortened- unions, bolstered by increased productivity foster by high tech production.

  New Form of Business:

  • "Large scale, multi-unit, horizontally and vertically integrated, professionally managed," bureaucratic. Now- "McDonaldization" (George Ritzer)

  Rise (and perhaps fall) of Labor Unions

  • Early industrial period: grim conditions, tedium, breakdown in reciprocity and personal relations between employee and boss.
  • Now:
    1. "Global factories" and decentralization of production.
    2. Technology and decline in manufacturing jobs
    3. Technology with manufacturing- less employee contact, increasing blue-collar stratification and lessening of solidarity.

Networks

• SOCIAL NETWORKS: Oliver's 1988 research, Milgram's "Target Person."
  • It's a Small World (Small World Research Project)
  • Spring 2003 report on online project in Science magazine
  • IM study virtually confirms 'small world' theory
  • Obesity and STD Flow in Social Networks (Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks, by Dr. Nicholas Christakis, Havard University, and Dr. James Fowler, University of California, San Diego, 2010.
• Manuel Castells: Network society
  • Social networking: Facebook, Texting
  • Folksonomies (social bookmarking)
  • Flash mobs
  • Social Side of the Internet (Pew Internet & American Life Project. January 18, 2011)

Wessells: The Computer and....

Productivity

• The Electronic Office- word processing
• E-Mail and Electronic Conferencing- improved communication, time saving, lacks elements of F-T-F.
• Electronic Funds Transfer- reduction in paperwork. Banking, Point of Sale, Pre-authorized (direct deposit/payment), ATM's, Home banking
• Expert Systems and Decision Making: managing the configuration of complex production systems.
• Computer-Aided Design: speed, comparisons, testing (stress, etc). Boeing- productivity doubles.
• Robotics: lower labor costs, increased productivity.
• Computer Numerical Control- production of tools and dies: Old- labor intensive set-up, only mass production feasible. With CNC little set-up necessary- computer guided cutting vs jig.
• Computer-Integrated Manufacturing: Linking together all of the above. Fanuc Limited in Japan: robots and computers guide production from warehouse to production to warehouse. GTE: computer controlled production of printed circuit boards- from order receiving to final testing.

• Issues of planning and implementation rather than pure technological determinism.

• Abstraction- work more and more set apart from the 'old' "reality" of everyday life.
• Manual versus intellectual skills
• Particularly hard hit- high skill occupations- tool and die makers, etc.
• Modern expert systems- many white collar occupations. Banking and loans.
• Issues of craft and creativity, sensory contact, distrust of computers

• Alienation and depersonalization
• Big Brother is watching
• Health (sedentary lifestyle)
• Telecommuting

• Most of our leisure activities have become dependent or somehow influence by technological reality.
• Even the advent of leisure- as a distinct and separate element of our everyday life- is related to the changing nature of work in an advanced technological society.
• Free time vs. Leisure (100 saints' and feast days in medieval Europe, 1761- 47 bank holidays)
• Industrialization and the extended work week- 24/7/365.
• Work equals success, idleness equals ruin

• Late 19th Century (and on): profits to be made from the masses who were on the same schedule- Mass Entertainment
• Role of public transportation (now cars-highways and MetroLink extension 2006: Clayton, Galleria, and Sam's/Lowes)
• Shift from "self-generated leisure" to purchase and consumption of leisure.
• Leisure and mass consumption- shopping (maintenance of the production system)

• After sleep and work- our primary activity
• Most every household has one, typically two.
• Sets are on an average of 7 hours per day
• Children and the elderly watch the most, and Americans on averagge spend 40% of their leisure time in front of the television.
• "Television and Human Behavior" Comstock, et al
  1. Reduction in other social activities- especially for those over 56
  2. Resulting in age segregation
  3. Decline in reading skills
  4. Decline in "creativity scores"
• Influences leisure by shifting intersts away from activities which require skills that television watching destroys.

• We continue to work long weeks, over 45 hour on average
• Jobs in tertiary sector typically demand most time
• Electronic communications have create the "permanent office."
• Spend much of our "free time" buying, fixing, and using technics and less and less "relaxing."
• Obsessed with time and time savings- no time for pleasures that require time
• Commodification of Leisure- Mass Leisure: appeals to what is "safe" and sure, caters to existing tastes rather than stimulating the "new." (Die Hard 47)

URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/280/techinst.html
Owner: Robert O. Keel: rok@umsl.edu
Last Updated: Thursday, January 20, 2011 15:58