[alabastervlog]

I think a lot of harm has been caused by "automation" actually meaning "distributing parts of the same tasks among a bunch of people". As far as I can tell that's one of the main outcomes of "efficiencies" from computerization of offices, among other places: they mostly just made it feasible to carve up the job of e.g. secretary among everybody, adding to the number of things and processes each worker has to understand and deal with.

[phkahler]

>> they mostly just made it feasible to carve up the job of e.g. secretary among everybody, adding to the number of things and processes each worker has to understand and deal with.

A previous generations old guy told me about this. He worked in the defense industry 50 years ago. You know, they had secretaries or admins that would handle all sorts of things for the engineers. Then the government changed the way they did contracts and companies couldn't bill for "overhead" any more. So the engineers (who bill to the project) had to start handling all those other things themselves and most of the support staff went away.

It's not that hard to handle any one thing, but if you do get the chance to work somewhere with a person that can "just handle that for you" it's really kind of amazing how much mental energy that frees up for your main tasks.

[Henchman21]

You’re describing the change from personnel to human resources. Its this little linguistic trick the C-suite foisted on the rest of us. You dehumanize then exploit. Resources, after all, are meant to be exploited.

[ranprieur]

"Efficiency" is selfishness. It's a word for when people in power want to give less and get more.

[erikerikson]

Zero sum claims do not a positive sum reduce