Micro Futures: Who Pays?Year Published: 1986
Resource Type: Book
Cx Number: CX3182
Abstract: MICRO FUTURES WHO PAY? is a lavishly illustrated booklet exploring the impact of micro-technology on people's lives. By asking who benefits from and who pays for the new information society, the group hopes to assist students, unionists, women's groups and others to understand technological changes and gain greater control over them.
Half of the booklet is devoted to storeis from a secretary, a reservation clerk, a bank teller, a welfare officer, a supermarket clerk, a phone operator, a fast-food worker, and word processing worker. Entitled Chipped Lives, the stories personalize the layoffs, increased supervision and workload, speed-up stress and changed home lives that new technology entails.
The next section asks who benefits, looking at productivity and control, de-skilling and displacement of workers, and "cottage industry" (isolated work at home). A dozen examples of how people have organized responses to micro-technology are offered, from Canada, the United States and Europe.
MICRO FUTURES": WHO PAYS? concludes with an analysis of why people feel powerless, suggestions of how to break out of isolation, and lists of seven films and 15 publications with distibutors.