Technological advance cannot be stopped, nor do I think that even if it were possible that it would be a fruitful area to explore. Rather, the social cost and abuse of technology is my concern. Since in the U.S. the collective bargaining system is the key area for dealing with the abuse of power by the corporations...
Tag - technology
Launch on warning should be opposed by progressives in the context of the Pentagon’s dangerous and wasteful doctrine of land-based missile protection. Opposition to this doctrine has become more urgent with Reagan’s recent decision to deploy MX missiles in single, fixed silos, protected by either an ABM system or...
New computer based technology applicable to office work is becoming available at continuously decreasing cost. At the same time, clerical workers have begun to organize to demand higher wages, better working conditions and more opportuities for advancement.
Presently in the U.S., technology and production processes are exclusively defined by engineers and management in technical positions. From there technology invades the shop environment, whether it is welcome or not, and imposes new rules of work and behavior on the shopfloor people. No communication takes place...
The introduction of NC processes in metal machining has affected the class struggle. It alters the skills required of production workers, but it is not clear that the skills required are lesser or greater than those needed for conventional machining processes. The major purpose of NC technology is to increase...
For nearly a decade a major battle has been waged over conditions in coke plants. While the steel industry has resisted clean-up efforts tooth and nail, the United Steel Workers of America (USWA), prodded by rank-and-file coke oven workers, has won definite improvements in conditions in coke plants. Still, most plants...
The Star Wars series may be one of the last visual indulgences of this style of thinking. For we, as a society, are being confronted with our limitations. We feel the pinch of depleting resources and the occurrence of events like Three Mile Island and Love Canal have made some people realize that since we will be on...
One of the most significant by-products of the economic recession currently affecting almost all industrialized countries is that it has eclipsed much of the concern expressed at the beginning of the decade about the destructive impact of current patterns of technological growth. It is almost ten years since a set of...
As food and energy prices soar, they pose an immediate problem for the poor, who must worry about keeping warm and feeding themselves. As food products become more processed, synthetic and chemicalized, they pose a longer-term threat to the health of all economic classes. The less poor, those not immediately...
In the last few years, a sizeable movement has sprung up which criticizes the technology of the economically advanced countries, and which is trying to develop and build “alternative technologies”. The Magazine General Meeting (the bi-monthly meeting of the Boston Chapter to evaluate the magazine) urged that Science...