Re: Is speed/technology really progress? (was Re:Progress to swift)
Lou Kates (louk@research.teleride.on.ca)
Wed, 18 Jan 95 7:48:44 EST
Stephen Robbins writes:
>
> 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.
>
Competition ensures that the benefits of technology go to the end user of the
technology rather than the provider of the technology.
> 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???
You, the end user, got the benefit of waiting less time (and so on for your
other examples).
Lou Kates, louk@teleride.on.ca