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The Shape of Future Technology

The Anthropocentric Alternative

  • Book
  • © 1990

Overview

Authors:
  1. Peter Brödner

    1. Wissenschaftszentrum Nordrhein-Westfalen, Institut Arbeit und Technik, Gelsenkirchen 1, West Germany

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Part of the book series: Human-centred Systems (HCS)

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-viii
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  2. Introduction

    • Mike Cooley
    Pages 1-6

  3. The Factory of the Future

    • Peter Brödner
    Pages 7-14

  4. The Origins and Nature of the Factory

    • Peter Brödner
    Pages 15-39

  5. The Technocentric Route: Fossilized Taylorism

    • Peter Brödner
    Pages 41-80

  6. The Anthropocentric Route: The Return of the Human Being

    • Peter Brödner
    Pages 81-115

  7. Horizons New: Farewell to Necessary Work?

    • Peter Brödner
    Pages 117-129

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 131-136
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About this book

Mike Cooley One of the most remarkable features of modern industrial society, is the gap between that which technology could provide for society (its potential) and that which it actually does provide for society (its reality). We have for example, complex control systems which can guide a missile to another continent with extraordinary accuracy, yet the blind and the disabled have to stagger around our cities in very much the same way as they did in mediaeval times. There are advanced communication systems enabling messages to be sent around the world in a fraction of a second, but it now takes longer to send an ordinary letter from Washington to New York than it did in the days of the stage coach. Such a growing chasm between potential and reality, is giving rise to a thorough questioning of many of the orthodoxies in these areas and the priorities on which they are based. Similar contradictions, even if at this stage less obvious and dramatic, abound in the field of manufacturing technology. There, we find technologies which have the potential of liberating human beings from soul­ destroying, routine, backbreaking tasks and leave them free to engage in more creative work, but which in reality, often end up reducing the human being to a mere machine appendage, acted upon by the technology and becoming a passive, pathetic element in the productive system rather than a creative, dynamic human being.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Wissenschaftszentrum Nordrhein-Westfalen, Institut Arbeit und Technik, Gelsenkirchen 1, West Germany

    Peter Brödner

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