The Paradox of Automation: QWERTY and the Neuter Keyboard

With the neutering of the QWERTY keyboard in the early 1980s following largely successful clerical worker organizing, male workers in offices began taking on clerical work that, until recently, they would have considered beneath both their job descriptions and their manhood. Paradoxically, the men who now began typing, filing, and performing data entry for themselves did not generally consider the imposition of these new tasks an increase in work. Rather, they called it “automation.” Employers’ and computer manufacturers’ regendering of the QWERTY keyboard from feminine to neuter in the last quarter of the twentieth century was an example of the uses and power of the automation discourse, an ideological commitment that obscured the intensification of human labor behind utopian rhetoric and technological enthusiasm. Employers regendered the keyboard to get more work out of their employees, and as they did so, they claimed that no one did the work at all. Obscuring human labor behind technological marvels, the claims that the work was done by “automation” proved persuasive, even as human labor was sped up and intensified.

Lay Preaching and Living Saints

Chapter 3 explores the hesitant and outright critical responses to new forms of sainthood that developed within and beyond England at the close of the twelfth century and into the thirteenth. This chapter situates orthodox hostility toward these “new saints” in relation both to the gift of prophecy, to which many charismatics aspired, and to debates about preaching. At this chapter’s centre is an Anglo-Latin rule for anchorites, the Regula reclusorum (c.1280), which is examined alongside several twelfth- and thirteenth-century figurations of preachers and prophets. Here a discourse directed against allegedly “false” prophets and preachers owes much to the collaboration between the charismatic voices that emerged through lay-anchoritic communities and the forms of sanctity that were quickly gaining ascendancy in the thirteenth century. Contemporary anchorites often summoned the demonic nightmare of orthodox culture by replicating and thereby obviating clerical work, as well as by encouraging lay preaching.

THE BOOK OF SOCHNY WRITING AS A HISTORICAL SOURCE

Книга сошного письма является важным источником при изучении писцового делопроизводства. Сохранившиеся редакции памятника до настоящего времени не стали объектом систематического исследования. При подготовке данной работы, были исследованы 22 списка книги сошного письма. Изученные рукописи позволяют выделить две полных редакции памятника. Текст книги сошного письма в первой редакции выявлен в 4-х списках, относящихся к середине XVII в. Вторая редакция книги сошного письма сохранилась в 6 списках первой половины XVIII в. 12 списков являются сокращенными редакциями документа, отличающимися друг от друга. Анализ комплекса списков книги сошного письма показывает, что первая редакции текста содержит элементы протографа, составленного в 1588-1610 гг. К правлению царя Михаила Фёдоровича следует отнести дополнения в тексте, касающиеся разверстки живущей четверти. Текст первой редакции сохранял много разделов, устаревших к середине XVII в. После налоговой реформы 1679 г. текст был переработан, вторая редакция книги сошного письма являлась официальным руководством по землемерию до середины XVIII в. The book of soshny writing is an important source in the study of scribal clerical work. The surviving versions of the text have not been become the object of systematic research yet. During the preparation of this work 22 copies of the book of soshny writing were examined. The studied manuscripts are allowed to distinguish two complete versions of the written artifact. The first edition of the book of the soshny writing is revealed in 4 copies belonging to the middle of the XVII century. The second edition of the book of soshny writing is preserved in 6 copies of the first half of the XVIII century. 12 copies are shorten versions of the document. The analysis of copies of the book of soshny writing shows that the first version of the text contains elements of the protograph compiled in 1588-1610. To the reign of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, it is necessary to include additions in the text concerning assessment of the living quarter. The text was revised after the tax reform of 1679. The second edition of the book of soshny writing was the official guide for land surveying until the middle of the XVIII century.

Decreasing Boarders in the Emergency Department By Reducing Clerical Work in the Discharge Process of In-Hospital Patients – An Interrupted Time-Series Analysis

Background: Emergency Department (ED) boarding is related to in-hospital patients' discharge. New techniques implemented in hospital institutions, such as digital signature, offer an improvement on these processes.Goals: Evaluate the impact of expediting patient's discharge after medical orders with the number of patients diverted to ED.Methods: We conducted a quasi-experimental study before and after an intervention. It consisted of an encrypted digital signature used to reduce clerical work and expedite the patient's release from the institution after medical discharge. We used Interrupted Time Series Analysis based on administrative data (number of hospital discharge, bed turnover, the time between medical discharge and the appointment's closing) from 2011 to 2019 using.Results: The interrupted time series analysis for the time from medical order to virtually hospital discharge showed an immediate change in level (Coefficient β2 -3.6 hours - 95% confidence interval -3.9; -3.4 - Lag1), but not a difference in the slope of the behavior of the post-intervention curve (β3 0.0005 coefficient - 95% confidence interval -0.0040; 0.0050 - Lag1). For the number of diverged patients to ED, we observed no immediate change in level (Coefficient β2 -0.84 patients - 95% confidence interval -0.33; 0.16 - Lag1), but a difference in the slope of the behavior of the post-intervention curve (β3 0.0005 coefficient - 95% confidence interval -0.0040; 0.0050 - Lag1).Conclusion: Reducing clerical work and so expediting patient discharge was associated with a decrease of potential boarders to ED.

The documentation system of anti-Bolshevist government’s military departments during the Russian Civil War

Статья посвящена вопросам документирования деятельности органов военного управления антибольшевистских правительств и системе военной документации, сложившейся в период Гражданской войны в России. На основании изучения нормативных документов дореволюционной России, регламентировавших ведение письмоводства и делопроизводства в царской армии, и архивных документов, находящихся на хранении в Российском государственном военном архиве, автором сделаны выводы о попытке сохранения имперских традиций в этой области, точном соблюдении установленных правил составления и оформления служебных документов, относящихся к системе военной документации в Белой армии. Система военной документации в статье разделена на группы: организационные документы, распорядительные, служебная переписка, документы оперативного характера. Особое внимание уделено видам документов, их функциям, стилистике написания текстов документов. Приведены примеры различных видов документов, относящихся к системе военной документации и использовавшихся в период Гражданской войны в России. This article is devoted to the issues of documenting the operations of military authorities of anti-Bolshevik governments and the system of military documentation that developed during the Russian Civil War. The author studied pre-revolutionary Russian documents that regulated clerical work in the Tsar's army, and archival documents stored in the Russian State Military Archive. Based on those documents, the author draws conclusions about attempts to preserve Imperial traditions in that area, as well as strict adherence to existing rules for drafting and formalising official documentation related to the White Army. The article divides the military documentation system into several groups: organisational documents, executive documents, official correspondence, operational documents. The author focuses on the types of documents, their functions and the language used. The article provides examples of different types of documents related to the military documentation system and used during the Russian Civil War.

Donosheniye as the Petitionary Document Type in Russian Legislative Acts and Regional Business Writing of the 18th Century

The purpose of the article is to describe some genre and stylistic features of the 18th-century regional report, or donosheniye. The research is also focused on the semantic history of the term donosheniye reflected in the legislative acts of the 18 th century that regulated the language style of regional clerical work and determined the main trends in its systematization. It is pointed that the term donosheniye was used in the legislative documents of Peter the Great period as a synonym for doklad, raport (report) and chelobitnaya (humble petition). The research results show that the term donosheniye had lack of genre "purity" and was functionally polysemantic in regional business writing, which explains the original conceptual syncretism of the term. The author characterizes the petitioning type of donosheniye that emerged in the 18 th century simultaneously with establishment of the chelobitnaya. The analysis of the documents circulating in the Russian regions discovered that donosheniye, being integrated into the petitioning documents system, functioned as a petitioning statement in the cases which did not require judicial consideration. Conversely, chelobitnaya was a kind of lawsuit claim. It was proved that the petitioning type of donosheniye slightly changed the form, which was characteristic of this type of petitions; its genre features move closer to the reporting type of donosheniye.

The Diplomatic Service of Louis XVI: The Work of French Foreign Affairs Department in the 1780s

The article aims to examine the organization of work of the State Secretariat for Foreign Affairs of France in the last decades before the Revolution of 1789 when the department was headed by Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes. By this time, there had developed a practice of preferentially appointing as head of the foreign affairs department people who had the first-hand experience of diplomatic service at the helm of embassies. He managed to create an efficiently working ministry apparatus. The details of its work are known thanks to the primary source for the research presented in this article, namely a note drawn up by one of Vergennes’ subordinates, the head of the “northern” directorate of the State Secretariat Pierre-Michel Hennin. During the years of Vergennes’ ministry, the staff was increased and a topographic bureau was created, which was tasked with drawing up a general map of the clarified borders of the French kingdom. The directorates of the State Secretariat were headed by professional diplomats who had received a good education and had practical experience working in embassies. Within the department, a well-thought-out system of clerical work was established. The difficulty in the work of the department, not mentioned in Hennin’s note, was the impossibility of career growth for ordinary employees. They could count on a seniority salary increase, but not a promotion. Thus, by the end of the Ancien Régime, there were two types of professional careers in the State Secretariat for Foreign Affairs of the French king: diplomatic one for high and middle echelons and clerical for ordinary employees.

Managing the Fears of Studying Technical Work

Technical work differs significantly from most other forms of work. This chapter explores those differences and how the differences pose important challenges for ethnographers who seek to study engineers, scientists, and other technical workers. The chapter summarizes the experience of thirty-five years’ of studying technical work to capture the social dynamics of technical worlds in the way that an earlier generation of scholars captured the social worlds of industrial, craft, and clerical work. The discussion revolves around how to handle six fears that ethnographers face when studying technical work: the fear of looking stupid, the fear of mishearing, the fear of failing to understand what technical terms mean, the fear of not capturing the complexity of the work, the fear of not finishing the study, and the fear of not being able to make sense of one’s data.

Constellation names in Ukrainian translations of the Bible

The article explores the names of The Great Bear, Orion and the star constellation of Pleiades in the eight full translations of the Bible into the Ukrainian language of XIX–XXI c. Besides the Introduction and the Brief summary of the Ukrainian translations history, the article is made up of three sections. In the first section we analyze the ancient Hebrew names, such as Ash, Kima and Kesil, which are found in the translation by Patriarch Philaret (Denysenko) of the Synodic Bible (1876), and also in the New World Translation, made by the religious society “Jehovah’s Witnesses”. The second chapter focuses on the folk Ukrainian names, also typical for the whole Slavic world, such as Viz, Volosozhar, Kvochka, Kosari, used in the first full translation of the Bible into Ukrainian — Kulish᾽s Bible, which, by its authority, has created a certain tradition, proclaiming the authenticity and comprehensiveness of the Ukrainian language, and has become the standard, later followed by Ivan Ogiyenko and Ivan Khomenko. The third section is dedicated to such Graecisms as Pleiads, Orion, Arcturus, being equivalents for the nominations, presented in the protograph Septuaginta, found in the translation by Father Raphael. The author comes to the conclusion that all the translators in their clerical work aimed to make the astronomic names available and understandable to the orthodox reader of the biblical texts, but for each period of time this aim was achieved differently: if for the XIX century such understandable ones were folk names, in XX and XXI centuries they have been forgotten and replaced by the more familiar Greek-originated and common The Great Bear, Orion and Pleiads. This concerns also the translation of the Ostrog Bible, whose astronomic names had been formed in the times of the first Slavic enlighteners Cyril and Methodius and have become too archaic for our times. The author states that different ethno-cultures have been reflected in the astronomical names: Judaic cosmonymy is more of the anthropomorphic character, while Slavic, including the Ukrainian one, reflects the villatic view to the world and the sky of stars.

A Forgotten Philosopher Juozapas Čepėnas: Ethic Insights

The article deals with ethic insights of the priest Juozapas Čepėnas (1880–1976), who published a study cycle on Nietzsche. This cycle is significant in the context of an early reception of Nietzsche’s ideas in Lithuania; however, the author himself appears to remain an undeservedly forgotten thinker of the national school of thought. The article attempts to bring back Čepėnas’ philosophical outlooks and analyse the factors that shaped his philosophical position such as his academic upbringing in German classical universities and Čepėnas’ subsequent activities overstepping the boundaries of a clerical work. The article offers a new interdisciplinary approach in reviewing Čepėnas’ dissertation thesis that earned him a Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Freiburg University. The thesis is analysed in comparison to other Čepėnas’ philosophical writings on Dostoevsky produced at the period of university studies and later during his clerical service in Lithuania. Ethical aspects of Čepėnas’ thesis continue to hold relevance until the recent period of philosophical development. Čepėnas’ writings are viewed in parallel analysis with a spectrum of the Lithuanian existential thought. Critical contemplations on ethical principles in the cycle of articles on Nietzsche’s philosophy are emphasised. The article attempts to clarify Čepėnas’ understanding of the egotism of the superhuman, the reasons and the content of supplements of Christian ethics, and the concept of the secular purpose of life.