Lecture 9

Working Technology

1971

Arms race for the future of intelligence

Machine Human

• Blue Gene/L 596 teraFLOPS (>596 trillion IPS) and 74 TB memory1

• Unlimited operational/build knowledge

• Quick upgrade cycles: performance capability doubling every 18 months

• Linear, Von Neumann architecture

• Understands rigid language

• Special purpose problem solving (Deep Blue, Chinook, ATMs, fraud detection)

• Metal chassis, easy to backup

• An estimated 20,000 trillion IPS and 1,000 TB memory2

• Limited operational/build knowledge

• Slow upgrade cycles: 10,000 year evolutionary adaptations

• Massively parallel architecture

• Understands flexible, fuzzy language

• General purpose problem solving, works fine in new situations

• Nucleotide chassis, no backup possible

<How does automation impact alienation?>

WhiteBoard Exercise

-TOURAINE-

(Technological Determinism)

Phase A - Craftsmen

Phase B – Mass Production

Phase C – Automation

“Higher skills and the demand for ever more control over work and decisions would lead the ‘new working class’ to contest capitalist relations of production more openly.”

Korczynski, Marek(Editor). Social Theory at Work.Oxford, , GBR: Oxford University Press, UK, 2006. p 330.http://site.ebrary.com/lib/u21global/Doc?id=10233738&ppg=345

-BLAUNER-

(Technological Determinism)

Powerlessness

Isolation

Meaninglessness

Self-Estrangement

-GALLIE-

(Social Determinism)

Britain1

France

24vs

“Chimerical control” (Sewell)

A Post-Hierarchical Relationship (Zuboff)

GroupWork

(next slide)

How do workers in a high-tech age express frustration at the office?

Actor Network Theory

“It's not a weapon, it's more of a highly advanced prosthesis.”

“Organisation power does not emanate from the leader(s) at the centre in a diffused mode but is the result of subordinates’ translative action.”

Grint, K. (2005), p.148