Introduction
In 1990 I was driving through what had once been small towns on Canada’s west coast, when I suddenly became aware of something radically different.
All the familiar Mom-and-Pop restaurants and grocery stores were now gone, replaced by the same franchise outlets that I was used to in the big city.
The recognition came as an epiphany. I asked myself what had happened to alter the business landscape so much. The inquiry led to eight years of studying the impact of automation which, by 1990, was well underway.
I became alarmed at what that impact on the work world seemed to be. But, though a few authors were writing on it and though I contacted labour leaders, government leaders, and anyone else of influence, no one seemed willing to listen. My own personal belief was that everyone was in love with the computer at that particular time and no one wanted to hear bad news about it.
That one cognition, that one perceptual take or snapshot that seeing the familiar rendered so unfamiliar set off in me, caused me to study for years after.
A recognition of homogenous, national-chain franchises maxed out with computerization, drawing on low-paid, dead-ended employees, usually young, old, or immigrant, gave me a gestalt of what was happening to my world-neighborhood. Looking into all facets of the situation I began to read about the technological revolution and the many reasons for applying automation to work.
Somehow the first awakening, which simply had me look and see, was leading to a more general awakening. I felt awake when I saw that automation was a process that we set in motion which had the potential to turn on us and destroy our well-being piece by piece and step by step.
When I presented my conclusions to friends, reporters, business leaders, union leaders, and others, no one recognized what I was saying or saw a threat when they understood.
Or else the subject had been talked about too often and wasn’t new any longer. For whatever reason, no one in 1990-91 seemed moved to act on their knowledge. Zuboff was aware of it. Edgar Schein at MIT knew about and agreed with my conclusions. The most bizarre exchange was with a labor economist employed by the Canadian government who said in a phone call, “Oh yes, we know all about it. Yes, I agree with what you’re saying. And I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
It was not useful to talk about what was wrong with automation in 1991. I remember once feeling so driven that I stood up on a park bench on English Bay in Vancouver and began to ask people what they thought about the situation. I couldn’t believe how energized I felt by speaking out and listening to others on the subject. But these were token gestures.
I remember once visiting a pulp-and-paper engineering firm halfway through the Nineties, a firm that I had once worked for as a corporate communications officer. I found them reduced to doing only modifications rather than entire mills, because the machine manufacturers could now do the additional computerized design without the help of high-paid consultants. The firm was left with no work, made obsolete by the computer.
And so it went, industry by industry, career by career.
Much later, around 2002, when I offered my collection of primary materials on automation to any archive or library that would take it, as representative documents collected at a key time in the history of the automation of industry, again no one showed any interest.
Meanwhile, my wife, then a travel agent, was “bridged” and her job gutted by online travel systems. She went to work in a hospital, with automation closing in fast behind her, like the Lawnmower Man, lowering her wages, taking away her benefits, and threatening to swallow her job.
I now enclose some of those writings from that era. Time has moved on. We are now busy outsourcing all the work that automation left us, which global automation now allows us to export to India and China. Watch for China particularly to exercise a baneful influence over us later on. But more to the point, I’m not sure what gainful employment will be left to our workers here. Are we racing towards the bottom? Will we turn ourselves into Third-World nations?
Shall we allow our precious Canadian universal medicare program to be shredded by what amount to predatory capitalists? Shall we watch an age of home ownership pass? How will we all afford old age in this heartless era of lowering what has come to be known as “the burden rate” (i.e., our wages)?
When will we blow the whistle and shout: “Stop!”