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.

Additions on I.A. Goncharov’s Service in the Foreign Trade Department

The article summarizes the data of many years of research on I.A. Goncharov’s service activity in the Foreign Trade Department of the Ministry of Finance as an official, but not as a translator and a secretary of Admiral E.V. Putyatin aboard the frigate Pallada. The time period is from May 1835 to November 1838, from 1843 to October 1852 and from the spring of 1855 to early 1856, when Goncharov took the post of censor. The character of Goncharov's service in 1843 –1845 is emphasized. The author investigates the case of the Foreign Trade Department on the construction of furniture in 1846 –1849, in which, in addition to the already known list of documents (for depositing in the archives), compiled and signed by Goncharov, his notes on separate sheets were revealed. The documents allow to make a reasonable conclusion that Goncharov, in addition to his official duties as a translator, participated in other affairs of the department. It is possible that, at the request of his superiors, he sometimes performed some errands when his colleagues were on vacation. But his officially undisclosed return to the duties of a clerical worker on a permanent basis is also possible. For this service, Goncharov was presented with several gifts.

Is the White-Collar Worker the Forgotten Man ?

The "White-Collar" class composed mostly of office workers although not too much known or spoken of constitutes an interesting group in our society, but unfortunately, has not kept pace with the cost of living or wages of plant workers. From this situation serious problems arise which can be studied by the employers themselves; they can be solved if the principles applied to the ordinary worker are also applied, with some little differences, to the clerical worker himself. This is what the author wants to explain briefly in giving some suggestions.