Uncovering Labour in Information Revolutions, 1750–2000

by Edited by Aad Blok , Greg Downey

• ISBN13: 9780521543538
• ISBN10: 0521543533
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-01-05
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Discussion of the current Information Revolution tends to focus on technological developments in information and communication and overlooks both the human labour involved in the development, maintenance and daily use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), and the consequences of the implementation of these ICTs for the position and divisions of labour. This volume aims to redress this imbalance by exploring the role, position and divisions of information and communication labour in the broadest sense through periods of revolutionary technological change. The contributions range from eighteenth-century German clerical work, through Indian telegraph workers' actions in 1908, computing labour in early twentieth-century US electrical engineering, the impact of containerization and ICT on South-African stevedores and international seafarers, to the development of the computer programmer, labour organization in Silicon Valley, and the role of volunteer work in the early development of the World Wide Web.

Table of Contents

Uncovering Labour in Information Revolutions, 1750-2000
Edited by Aad Blok and Greg Downey
Introduction
Aad Blok	1	(12)
Hands and Minds: Clerical Work in the First "Information Society"
Eve Rosenhaft	13	(32)
India's First Virtual Community and the Telegraph General Strike of 1908
Deep Kanta Lahiri Chowdhury	45	(28)
Perpetually Laborious: Computing Electric Power Transmission Before the Electric Computer
Aristotle Tympas	73	(24)
Breaking the Buffalo: The Transformation of Stevedoring Work in Durban Between 1970 and 1990
Bernard Dubbeld	97	(26)
Compressing Time and Constraining Space: The Contradictory Effects of ICT and Containerization on International Shipping Labour
Helen Sampson and Bin Wu	123	(30)
Letting the "Computer Boys" Take Over: Technology and the Politics of Organizational Transformation
Nathan L. Ensmenger	153	(28)
"Computers in the Wild": Guilds and Next-Generation Unionism in the Information Revolution
Chris Benner	181	(24)
Emerging Sources of Labor on the Internet: The Case of America Online Volunteers
Hector Postigo	205	(20)
Commentary: The Place of Labor in the History of Information Technology Revolutions
Greg Downey	225