From c9ffcc0a81a620d5495f26c8a64454dd5720d7c3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Silvio Rhatto <rhatto@riseup.net>
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2018 18:58:30 -0300
Subject: [PATCH] Books: In the Age of the Smart Machine: chapter two
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books/sociedade/age-of-the-smart-machine.md | 117 ++++++++++++++++----
1 file changed, 96 insertions(+), 21 deletions(-)
diff --git a/books/sociedade/age-of-the-smart-machine.md b/books/sociedade/age-of-the-smart-machine.md
index 19f53db..6bc6ce6 100644
--- a/books/sociedade/age-of-the-smart-machine.md
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@@ -3,13 +3,12 @@
## Index
* Deskilling, diplacement of "the human body and its know-how" and reskilling, 57.
-* Body's dual role in production: effort and skill.
* Rebellion against the automated door, 21-23.
* Humanization (Marx) as "tempering animality with rationality" in the progress of civilization, 30.
* Uncivilized, savage worker's "spontaneous, instinctually gratifying behavior"
in the past, signaling the problem of "how to get the human body to remain in one place,
pay attention, and perform consistently over a fixed period of time", 31-34.
-* Paradox of the body, 36.
+* Paradox of the body; body's dual role in production: effort and skill (No Pain no Gain), 36.
* "Singer Sewing Machine Company was not able to produce perfectly interchangeable parts.
As a result, they relied on skilled fitters to assemble each product.", 39.
* Continous Process as a possible way to break the effort-skill body paradox and the U-curve
@@ -17,28 +16,21 @@
## Impressions
-The transition from manual to automated, the process of transferring knowledged
-from the body to the machine is a sistematization of the transference of
-knowledge from art (work whose reproduction is challenging) to technics
-(pramatized art, the art of practical, efficient life):
+* Intro mentions a control room like the Star Trek bridge. It makes me relate
+ to the skilled worker at one of its limits - those of the austronaut. Highly
+ skilled and disciplined, could be an interesting comparison.
- However, the term transfer must be doubly laden if it is to adequately describe
- this process. Knowledge was first transferred from one quality of knowing to
- another-from knowing that was sentient, embedded, and experience-based to know-
- ing that was explicit and thus subject to rational analysis and perpetual
- reformulation. The mechanisms used to accomplish this transfer were themselves
- labor intensive (that is, they depended upon first-hand ob- servation of
- time-study experts) and were designed solely in the con- text of, and with the
- express purpose of, enabling a second transfer- one that entailed the migration
- of knowledge from labor to manage- ment with its pointed implications for the
- distribution of authority and the division of labor in the industrial
- organization.
+* The pathway from motor knowledge to abstract knowledge recalls Piaget's discussion
+ about intelligence.
- -- 56-57
+* Also some bridges can be built with Nicolelis' discussion of technology
+ transforming itself in extensions of the brain.
+
+* I to, sometimes, can feel my systems. How they're running, which are
+ the bottlenecks, what should I look for. Load average from a server is
+ something you can "feel" just by delays in your terminal.
-Intro mentions a control room like the Star Trek bridge. It makes me relate
-to the skilled worker at one of its limits - those of the austronaut. Highly
-skilled and disciplined, could be an interesting comparison.
+* Transitional generations might feel a strange feeling.
## Excerpts
@@ -413,3 +405,86 @@ Effects:
bl ... 85
-- 48-49
+
+### The Transfer
+
+The transition from manual to automated, the process of transferring knowledged
+from the body to the machine is a sistematization of the transference of
+knowledge from art (work whose reproduction is challenging) to technics
+(pramatized art, the art of practical, efficient life):
+
+ However, the term transfer must be doubly laden if it is to adequately describe
+ this process. Knowledge was first transferred from one quality of knowing to
+ another-from knowing that was sentient, embedded, and experience-based to know-
+ ing that was explicit and thus subject to rational analysis and perpetual
+ reformulation. The mechanisms used to accomplish this transfer were themselves
+ labor intensive (that is, they depended upon first-hand ob- servation of
+ time-study experts) and were designed solely in the con- text of, and with the
+ express purpose of, enabling a second transfer- one that entailed the migration
+ of knowledge from labor to manage- ment with its pointed implications for the
+ distribution of authority and the division of labor in the industrial
+ organization.
+
+ -- 56-57
+
+ The worker's capacity "to know" has been lodged in sentience and
+ displayed in action. The physical presence of the process equipment
+ has been the setting that corresponded to this knowledge, which could,
+ in turn, be displayed only in that context. As long as the action context
+ remained intact, it was possible for knowledge to remain implicit. In
+ this sense, the worker knew a great deal, but very little of that knowl-
+ edge was ever articulated, written down, or made explicit in any fash-
+ ion. Instead, operators went about their business, displaying their
+ know-how and rarely attempting to translate that knowledge into terms
+ that were publicly accessible. This is what managers mean when they
+ speak of the "art" involved in operating these plants.
+
+ -- 59
+
+### From action-centered to intellective skill
+
+ This does not imply that action-centered skills exist independent
+ of cognitive activity. Rather, it means that the processes of learning,
+ remembering, and displaying action-centered skills do not necessarily
+ require that the knowledge they contain be made explicit. Physical
+ cues do not require inference; learning in an action-centered context is
+ more likely to be analogical than analytical. In contrast, the abstract
+ cues available through the data interface do require explicit inferential
+ reasoning, particularly in the early phases of the learning process. It is
+ necessary to reason out the meaning of those cues-what is their rela-
+ tion to each other and to the world "out there"?
+
+ -- 73
+
+ As information technology restructures the work situation, it ab-
+ stracts thought from action. Absorption, immediacy, and organic re-
+ sponsiveness are superseded by distance, coolness, and remoteness.
+ Such distance brings an opportunity for reflection.
+
+ [...]
+
+ The thinking this operator refers to is of a different quality from the
+ thinking that attended the display of action-centered skills. It combines
+ abstraction, explicit inference, and procedural reasoning. Taken to-
+ gether, these elements make possible a new set of competencies that I
+ call intellective skills. As long as the new technology signals only deskil-
+ ling-the diminished importance of action-centered skills-there will
+ be little probability of developing critical judgment at the data inter-
+ face. To rekindle such judgment, though on a new, more abstract foot-
+ ing, a reskilling process is required. Mastery in a computer-mediated
+ environment depends upon developing intellective skills.
+
+ -- 75-76
+
+ [...]
+
+ The second dimension of this crisis involves the ambiguity of action.
+ It is conveyed in the question, what have I done? The computer system
+ now interpolates between the worker and the action context, and as it
+ does so, it represents to the worker his or her effects on the world.
+ However, reading symbols does not provoke the same feeling of having
+ done something as one gets from more direct, organic involvement in
+ execution. There is a continual questioning of action-Have I done
+ anything? How can I be sure?
+
+ -- 81
--
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