Computers and automation are pervasive in the workplaces of the last half of the twentieth century. Sociologists of the workplace often view technology in one of two ways: either as destructive of the traditional skills that once gave meaning and control to craft-based work, or as a potentially liberating force that can relieve the burden of backbreaking or tedious labor. The first viewpoint that romanticizes the past; the second romanticizes the future. But neither deals with the specific context in which new technology is introduced. All too often cybernetics are used as a cost-saving device, freeing industrial, commercial, and professional workers from toil, but hardly in a liberating way, since their livelihood is lost with the loss of work.
