One reason for this is the computer’s potential to “deskill” work—to reduce it to simple, repetitive actions. For example, instead of having each worker in an insurance company record an incoming insurance claim and then stay with it through all phases of processing, the job is broken up: One drone does nothing but complete the same log-in forms; another grind out identical letters to different addresses.
Even valued senior employees are burning out as a consequence, of computer monitoring—which affects between 20 and 35 percent of America’s workers, according to a report by the Office of technology Assessment [OTA].
When workers use electronic gear, it is easy to meter work-time to the millisecond, tally breaks and phone calls, or rank a worker’s output against that of his colleagues. Terminals track the number of keystrokes a workers uses in completing a particular project. This is all necessary, managers say, to improve productivity. (Yet the Japanese don’t do it, finding the notion offensive to loyalty and group spirit.)
BankAmerica, for example, paid $1million in 1985 to install a computer system for rating the 3,500 employees in the credit card division on 200 specific work criteria. “I measure everything that moves,” the senior vice president in charge declared.
Workers are less enthusiastic. A Boston insurance-claim keypuncher finds incredible pressure to enter data faster and faster to meet management’s standards. “I’d leave work every day with a terrible headache and pain in my neck and shoulders.” It’s a familiar complaint. An OTA survey of 110 organizations between 1982 and 1986 found that approximately two-third were engaged in some form of computer surveillance, monitoring, standardized pace, or quota systems.
This despite the fact that as early as 1981, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found that clerical work involving computers and video display terminals produced a higher level of tension than air-traffic control. Proponents of high technology dismissed the findings a transient spasm of adjustment to the new digital workplace. The volume of stress-based complaints continues to rise, however.”
In an atmosphere of computer monitoring, inept work station, inflexible pacing, and nerve-wracking anxiety, workman’s compensation claims based on job stress have more than doubled since 1980, and now account for approximately 15 percent of all occupational disease claims. According to estimates by the OTA, stress-related illness costs business, between $50 and $75 billion per year.
Labor Department figures show that productivity in the services sector—where electronic equipment should have maximum impact and which employs nearly three quarters of all American workers—is scarcely above levels in the mid-1970s, chiefly because of problems understanding and adapting to new technology.
3. Solar Energy
Solar power was an exotic new technology when John Schaeffer graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1972 and helped start a primitive commune in the woods in northern California. He was a tinkerer, and in his spare time he managed to rig up a solar-powered television set so he wouldn’t have to miss his favorite shows. Soon Schaeffer was selling solar panels to his fellow urban refugees. Today Schaeffer’s beard has become a white goatee, and his Real Goods Trading Company has blossomed into a catalog operation that is the country’s largest retailer of home solar equipment. With a circulation of 400,000, the catalog offers everything for the energy-efficient home. The growth of Real Goods—sales have jumped from $29,000 in 1986 to $10 million in 1933—is a small but sharp tremor along the shifting tectonic plates of America’s energy landscape.
Until now, solar energy has appealed mostly to affluent homeowners and the save-the-environment folks. That’s because buying and installing solar equipment can cost $15,000 for an average-size home before any currents starts to flow. What’s making solar energy so hot? For one thing, the technology is getting better and cheaper. The price of the photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight to electricity has fallen sharply from $500 a watt in the 1960s to about $4 today. 感谢您阅读《ScienceandTechnolo 》一文，出国留学网(liuxue86.com)编辑部希望本文能帮助到您。
