I think there's something to this. I worked in high tech for
seventeen years, and one major reason I got out was that I began to
hypothesize the following feedback loop:
As technology increases, so does productivity. I believe the
original idea was that then people would work less, leisure time
would increase, and the world would be a better place.
What's happened instead is that incremental increases in productivity
have been used by individual companies as competitive "weapons." [War
metaphor intentional.] Rather than transmitting the productivity
increase to employees in the form of decreased hours or increased
pay, companies have worked people the same amount to increase output
and decrease cost, or(and?) they've laid the extra people off. Net
result in that company: identical or decreased quality of life.
The competitive effects are even worse. When other companies AREN'T
able to adopt that technology as well, their only choice to compete
is to work their people even harder. Net result: VERY decreased
quality of life.
Speed is one aspect of this drive. In the late 80s, it was quite the
fashion to realize that speed was a competitive weapon. Companies
began Fedexing things and sometimes using the extra up-to-the-wire
time to produce a better product (or, more often, just out of habit).
People have gotten used to that speed, so the playing field has
simply been moved to a faster cycle time.
And as speed increases, human interaction DECREASES. Once upon a
time, not too long ago, you at least knew and recognized your bank
tellers. Now, ATMs have made life Convenient, but at the expense of
a certain degree of human contact. Once upon a time, people
socialized by getting together, TALKING, and interacting. Technology
has given us TV, movies, and radios. Rather than supplementing our
interaction, those have gradually come to replace much of it. And as
things speed up and free time decreases, we often opt for the most
convenient alternatives, rather than the ones which promote
interaction and community building.
Does time pressure reduce creativity, etc.? Certainly!
There's an excellent discussion of it in the book "Making Connections"
by Renate Numella Caine and Geoffrey Caine. They discuss education
reform in the context of the last 20 years' research in
neurophysiology and learning theory. They devote an entire chapter
to ideas about 'downshifting' (the diminishing of higher order brain
functions under stress).
> Aren't we using 'learning organizations' as a way to balance the extremes
> between fast and slow, light and heavy, now and future, simple and complex,
> conscious and subconcious, left-brain and right?
I suspect we're using 'learning organizations' to move in that
direction. Alas, I seriously doubt that they will have much impact.
If the loops I hypothesize above really exist, no SINGLE organization
can change this. It's a prisoner's dilemma situation; we must
ALL agree to start translating productivity into quality of life, or
else the companies which don't will still be able to "win" in the
marketplace.
As long as a business has a focused, primary objective which doesn't
include the general well-being of its members, it will never strike
a right/left brain balance. Even 'learning organizations' (as I
understand them) don't strive for generally developing people; only
developing them along the lines necessary for BUSINESS success (how
many businesses, even so-called learning organizations, encourage
people to dress and express themselves with the same range of
flexibility that they use in their personal lives? MAYBE a very few
high tech companies allow sandals, T-shirts, and shorts in the
summer(*), but even there, it's usually because techies hate
dressing up and they founded the company).
Perhaps a solution would involve completely eliminating the
distinction between work and the rest of life, and having one
overarching ... experience ... which meets all of the needs in an
integrated sort of way.
This is an excerpt I wrote a couple of years ago, which relates the
very supermarket checkout incident which began my thinking on all
this:
At the grocery today, they swiped my card through a card reader and
got 5 second purchase approval.
"Isn't technology amazing?" I remarked.
"It's faster, sure, but life isn't any better than it was
before, I still work too much, and whether it's a card reader
or a little book doesn't matter to me. If it's a card reader,
that just means I'm supposed to handle more people in the same
time." replied the cashier.
Progress = Fast Credit Checks???
CDs are progress, because they sound so much better than vinyl. Two
generations listened to vinyl and had a great time with it. Do any of
today's CD fanatics stop to appreciate how wonderful the sound is?
Probably a few audiophiles. Most people probably just take it for
granted, already. If they notice, it's for a few seconds.
Progress = Sound Clarity???
Ten years ago, I typed on an electric typewriter. It took a long time
to write 10 drafts. And they looked like drafts. Today, I use a word
processor and generate stuff that people take very seriously, because
it looks so nice. Even if it's fluff.
Has my writing process improved? Maybe. A word processor is more
flexible than a typewriter. And besides, word processors are fun to
use. And maybe knowing that every draft requires a total retyping
(with carbon paper, yet!) would inspire me to think more carefully
and deeply rather than "hack and rewrite."
Progress = Higher Resolution and Cut/Paste???
Fifteen years ago, preparing financial forecasts was a bitch. Now, we
have amazing spreadsheets, 1024x8192 cells, which can calculate for
us. I've seen dozen page spreadsheets covered with official looking
numbers, but typos in the formulas or in copying cells insure that
those numbers are nowhere near the intended values. It doesn't really
matter, because even the intended values are an illusion: more
precision does not imply more accuracy, as my beginning
physics class emphasized.
Progress = The Ability to Do Lots of Math, More Quickly. ???
Of course, what's missing from most of the above is the customer.
Everything above is framed in terms of features. Clearer, higher
resolution, precise, automatic. The bottom line question is: are
people benefiting, or are they the same or worse, but with different
toys?
The woman at the checkout counter really said it all. The more I
consider, the less "progress" in the last 20 years has really made
life more fun or higher quality. More and more, it seems to me that
what we call "progress" is really just creating useless new needs and
filling them. While we race to do that, homelessness rises, quality
of health care diminishes, and we poison our food chain and our
environment.
Koyanisqaatsi is a Hopi word meaning "Life out of balance."
-- Stever
(*) As an ex-engineer, business dress is a pet peeve of mine. It's
ridiculous to try to stimulate peoples' creativity in an environment
which a priori prohibits them from expressing their most basic
creativity: self expression. Perhaps there's a reason a lot of
artists and musicians dress a tad more elaborately than suits. Maybe
that's PART OF their creative impulses?
Besides, business dress is just silly: tassles and cutsey little
holes are formal in a shoe, but unacceptable in a suit. When buying
my first suit, the saleswoman showed me these formal "wingtips," I
burst out laughing. I thought they were the most stupid looking
things I'd ever seen. (The price tag and subsequent bloody break-in
period convinced me they are stupid along other dimensions as well.)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Stever Robbins stever@mit.edu stever@verstek.com
Accept no substitutes! http://www.nlp.com/NLP/stever.html
"You're only young once, but you can be immature forever."