The Shape of Future Technology: The Anthropocentric Alternative

ISBN-13: 9783540195764 / Angielski / Miękka / 1990 / 136 str.

Peter Bradner; Peter Br'odner

Opis

Mike Cooley One of the most remarkable features of modern industrial society, is the gap between that which technology could provide for society (its potential) and that which it actually does provide for society (its reality). We have for example, complex control systems which can guide a missile to another continent with extraordinary accuracy, yet the blind and the disabled have to stagger around our cities in very much the same way as they did in mediaeval times. There are advanced communication systems enabling messages to be sent around the world in a fraction of a second, but it now takes longer to send an ordinary letter from Washington to New York than it did in the days of the stage coach. Such a growing chasm between potential and reality, is giving rise to a thorough questioning of many of the orthodoxies in these areas and the priorities on which they are based. Similar contradictions, even if at this stage less obvious and dramatic, abound in the field of manufacturing technology. There, we find technologies which have the potential of liberating human beings from soul destroying, routine, backbreaking tasks and leave them free to engage in more creative work, but which in reality, often end up reducing the human being to a mere machine appendage, acted upon by the technology and becoming a passive, pathetic element in the productive system rather than a creative, dynamic human being."

Spis treści

1. The Factory of the Future.- 1.1 Prophecies by the Dozen.- 1.2 Banish the False Prophets!.- 1.3 The Workshop, not the Production Line.- 2. The Origins and Nature of the Factory.- 2.1 The Heroic Phase.- 2.1.1 Increased Production through Division of Labour.- 2.1.2 Productivity Increased: Skills Limited.- 2.1.3 Taylorism: Dividing Hand and Brain.- 2.2 The Computer and the Automation of “One-offs”.- 2.2.1 The Vain Hope: Unskilled Flexible Automation.- 2.2.2 Automating the Office.- 2.3 Today’s Factory: Unresolved Problems.- 2.3.1 Capital Intensity: Ever Growing.- 2.3.2 The Vicious Circle of Stocks and Throughput Times.- 2.3.3 The Inappropriate Work Structure.- 2.3.4 The Inappropriate Attitude to Costs and Benefits.- 2.3.5 The Increased Demands of the World Market.- 3. The Technocentric Route: Fossilized Taylorism.- 3.1 “The Ghost Shift”: Forerunner of the Workerless Factory?.- 3.2 White-Collar Automation.- 3.2.1 Industrial Staff Work.- 3.2.2 CAD: Models of Models.- 3.2.3 Timetable by PPC.- 3.3 The Failure of Isolated Systems.- 3.3.1 Can Self-Will Be Expropriated?.- 3.3.2 Coping with Uncertainty.- 3.3.3 Does the Designer Shape the Design or the Design Shape the Designer?.- 3.4 The Second “Heroic Phase”: CIM and Expert Systems.- 3.4.1 CIM and Segmented Work.- 3.4.2 The Claims of “Artificial Intelligence”.- 3.4.3 Deskilling and its Consequences.- 4. The Anthropocentric Route: The Return of the Human Being.- 4.1 The Workerless Factory: Signs of Return.- 4.1.1 The Dilemma of Radical Change.- 4.1.2 Management Split.- 4.1.3 Trade Union Interests.- 4.1.4 Skill as a Resource.- 4.2 Human or Machine: Who Controls?.- 4.3 Group Technology: A Non-Taylorist Route.- 4.3.1 The Principles of Group Technology.- 4.3.2 Integrated Production: Component Family Production and Design Islands.- 4.3.3 Shop Floor Programming: A Tool for Skilled Workers.- 4.3.4 Different Forms of Component Family Production.- 4.3.5 Design Islands: A New Structure for Design Work.- 4.4 Forces of Inertia.- 5. Horizons New: Farewell to Necessary Work?.- 5.1 Investment Decision Making: Pastures New.- 5.2 Work Planning is Available in Every Case.- 5.3 The Dangers of Segmentation.- 5.4 Conclusion: For and Against the Anthropocentric Production Concept.