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Fishman, K. D. (1982).  The Computer Establishment.
"Computing is a technology with many paths to follow; at each fork there is vigorous dissension among the brightest practitioners. We need to preserve that dissension, to offer scientists and businessmen a reasonable chance to pursue whatever goal seems promising and customers the greatest possible opportunity to choose their supplier." (p. 408)
Roszak, T. (1986).  Cult of Information.
"The result [in Vonnegut's book Player Piano1] is a technocratic despotism wholly controlled by information technicians and corporate managers. The book raises the issue whether technology should be allowed to do all that it can do, especially when its powers extend to the crafts and skills which give purpose to people's lives. The machines are slaves, Vonnegut's rebellious engineer-hero insists. True, they make life easier in many ways; but they also compete with people. And 'anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave.' As Vonnegut observes, 'Norbert Weiner, a mathematician, said all that way back in the nineteen-forties.'" (p. 11)
Pacey, A. (1985).  The Culture of Technology.
Harry Braverman draws an instructive comparison with the first industrial revolution. That was not primarily a technical revolution; there was no change in the nature of many processes, which were merely reorganized on the basis of the division of labour. Craft production was dismembered and subdivided so that it was no longer 'the province of any individual worker'. In the modem 'revolution' the whole system is transformed. New materials, techniques and machines are used in an effort 'to dissolve the labour process as a process conducted by the worker and reconstitute it as a process conducted by management'. The individual workman or operative is analysed almost as a piece of machinery; he or she is seen as a 'sensory device', linked to a 'computing mechanism' and 'mechanical linkages'. This, says Braverman, is what modern industry 'makes of humanity'; labour is 'used as an interchangeable part' and progress is seen as a matter of indefinitely increasing the number of tasks that can be carried out by machine. The final triumph is achieved when all the human components have been exchanged for mechanical or electronic ones." (p. 110)
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