Reading+19

Reading 19
__Taylorism Revisited__
 * “Scientific Management” deals with task oriented optimization of work tasks and is closely related to fordism
 * Felt that workers in repetitive jobs go at the slowest rate
 * Believed that if everyone is paid the same, they will all work as hard as the slowest person
 * Believed there was one best way of performing a task, and if it is taught to workers their productivity will go up
 * Believed in certain suitability to certain people in certain jobs
 * Usually linked with Fordism (Mass Production - post war)
 * "Technology is neutral, it only performs as it is guided to by people. The mass of traditional knowledge” understands the success of scientific management as being due to expropriation of the craft knowledge formerly controlled by the workers

__Sabel and the Thesis of Democratic Technology__
 * Sabel believed that the breakup of mass markets in the 70’s and 80’s will force American industry to abandon Taylorism and to adopt a more flexible system of production
 * Two conflicting lines of policy
 * Geographic extension of the mass production system
 * Designed to create new markets for mass produced commodities and to control the fierce competition that now prevails among the major industrial powers
 * Flexible Specialization
 * Points to a new technological paradigm based on short production runs, a highly skilled work force, and a resurgent sense of community

__Technology and the Ideology of Total Control__
 * Capitalism is an ideology
 * Technology of mass production was closely bound up with fantasy that man can free himself from limitations imposed by nature and achieve godlike powers over nature through his own inventions
 * It is this idea of total control that drive our technology