I guess there will be no end to negative innovation.
I had not thought of this one, although, as often, once I become aware
of it, it's trivially obvious. Once again, the root issue is whether
persons are "treated" as members of the community to which all things
contribute, or as part of the things contributing to that community.
(My -- Habermasean -- definition of a community is not just an
aggregation of living human bodies, but a conversation deciding the
shape of the conversants' lives.)
I also had a more personal thought about this: working as a
computer programmer, it would not be ethically neutral to be helping
produce the software that enables this kind of changes in persons'
lives.
A less material irony is that the article says the company making
the software is "Kronos Inc." Emphatically, Kronos Inc is changing
the nature of time [kronos] for these persons, in deeper ways than
just "scheduling", and the specific nuances of the time we live are
basic and pervasive qualities of all our experience in living.
A question is whether and, if so, how this kind of new technology
could be used in ways that would be beneficial to the workers (as well
as for the customers and the enterprise).
brad
Wal-Mart Seeks New Flexibility In Worker Shifts
3 January 2007
The Wall Street Journal
A1
The nation's biggest private employer is about to revamp
the way it schedules its work force, in a move that could shake up
many employees' lives.
Early this year, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., using a new
computerized scheduling system, will start moving many of its 1.3
million workers from predictable shifts to a system based on the
number of customers in stores at any given time. The move promises
greater productivity and customer satisfaction for the huge
retailer but could be a major headache for employees.
The change is made possible by a software system that can
crunch an array of data, part of a shift toward computerized
management tools that can help pare costs and boost companies'
bottom lines. But it also could demand greater flexibility and
availability from workers in place of reliable work shifts -- and
predictable paychecks.
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
