Date: Sat, 21 May 1994 23:34:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: ssj <ssj-AT-cnj.digex.net>
Subject: Re: The technological "we"
To: technology-AT-world.std.com
Cc: technology-AT-world.std.com




On Sat, 21 May 1994, Malgosia Askanas wrote:

> >   [...]   [Now] Our machines are frighteningly 
> > alive, and we ourselves frighteningly`inert."
>                      (from Michael Current's quote from Haraway)
> 
>   Instead, somebody other
> than the craftsman invents a machine to make the craftsman's job 
> obsolete.  If the craftsman now didn't have to work, one could still
> say that he has benefitted.  But this is not the case: even though 
> there are more and more machines around, there seems to be no change
> in the social arrangements which forces people to work in order to
> make a living.  If the craftsman is lucky, he will get retrained
> and thus, through no choice of his own, learn to adjust to a means
> of production which he did not help create.  If he is unlucky, he may
> have to endure the humiliations of unemployment.  Yet it is common to
> talk about technology as "our" technology, as if "we" (who?) 
> could be thought to represent a cohesive, unified set of interests in 
> this context.


I reread your post (abbreviated above) several times.  It is bemusing.
You almost seem to be saying that any work that is done with contemporary,
"technical" tools is degrading.  That unlucky is the craftsman (worker?)
that is forced to use the new tools.

For over twenty years as a research director for a major multinational, 
and for almost ten years in a smaller company that I am largely
responsible for my colleagues and I worked hard to develop improvements
in the chemical technologies that we voluntarily chose to study.

Gratefully, in a number of cases we were successful.  I do believe that
the people that benefitted the most from the improvements were the
accounts that eagerly purchased and then employed the new technology
because it inevitably gave them a better way to reach their production
requirements.  The people who often seemed the most grateful were the
"workers" who had the hands on job of actually producing product.  Most
chemical improvements allow cleaner, simpler ways to achieve production,
and it is the workers that benefit the most - not least of all because
a cleaner, simpler way is usually safer too.  

I have spent over thirty years moving new technology from the lab to
production lines.  I have gotten to know many "workers" "craftsmen"
personally.  I have never know any that wanted to go back to the 
harder, more difficult way of doing things.

Best regards,

ssj (Sanford Jacobs)