In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power

by Shoshana Zuboff

A noted Harvard social scientist documents the pitfalls and promises of computerized technology in business life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Research, History, Economics

496 pages, Hardcover

First published May 30, 1988

About the author

Shoshana Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor emerita, Harvard Business School. She is the author of In The Age of the Smart Machine: the Future of Work and Power and The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and her BA from the University of Chicago.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

You have to look back the dated nature of many of the observations this book makes to see its real contributions, however there are many. First off, Zuboff completed an extensive ethnography of three organizations over the course of several years in the late 70s/early 80s -- integral moments in varied workplace environments in terms of adopting computerized systems. Zuboff interviews and interacts with people at various levels of the three companies -- a paper mill, a global bank, and an insurance office. From both her interviews and participant observation, she aims to identify how technological changes influence the patterns of work and feelings toward work of various employees. Given the proclivity to making grandiose claims about technology that pervades much business scholarship of this time period, this ethnography offers a refreshingly different account. In her conclusion, for example, she becomes one of the first people to note that, though technology "redefines the possible, it cannot determine which choices are taken up and to what purpose" (p.398). Therefore, she argues, "it is necessary to consider both the manner in which it [technology] creates intrinsically new qualities of experience and the way in which new possibilities are engaged by the often-conflicting demands of social, political, and economic interests in order to produce a 'choice.' To concentrate only on intrinsic change and the texture of an emergent mentality is to ignore the real weight of history and the diversity of interests that pervade collective behavior. ...Moreover, these two dimensions of technological change, in intrinsic and the contingent, need to be understood not separately, but in relation to each other" (p.389). Here, Zuboff is at her best -- balancing her evidence to make clear, worthwhile claims. At other times, her arguments seem more tedious as she trods through seemingly endless examples from her own work as well as extensive details about attitudes toward work in the past. Despite these limitations, however, her work is still relevant and worth reading, particularly by those interested in workplace dynamics.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stupidity blended with a good dose of tantrum: if Zuboff can't control it, nobody should have access to it.

[TΞΞL❍CK Mith!lesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zuboff's 1988 book, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power, is a study of information technology in the workplace.

Major concepts introduced in this book relate to knowledge, authority, and power in the information workplace. These include the duality of information technology as an informating and an automating technology; the abstraction of work associated with information technology and its related intellectual skill demands; computer-mediated work; the "information panopticon"; information technology as a challenge to managerial authority and command/control; the social construction of technology; the shift from a division of labor to a division of learning; and the inherently collaborative patterns of information work, among others.

[Keith Swenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a particularly key book in understanding the basis for collaborative software back in the 1990's. I have given many presentations on collaborative software technology, and almost every one has included a quote or two from Zuboff. I read it so long ago I don't have a full review at this time, but I do consider it one of the seminal books in the field.

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

So THAT'S where Nikil Saval stole a lot of his research from for CUBED. No dis against NIkil, who proved to be a sharp guy when I interviewed him back in 2014 and who has managed to build a respectable political career in the intervening years. But I understood from a few academic pals of mine that this book is a cornerstone when it comes to understanding and unpacking strains of Taylorism that have led to the late-stage capitalist hellscape we are all wrestling with today. So I picked up this book, having NOT read Zuboff's volume on surveillance capitalism, and was quite surprised by how forward-thinking Zuboff was (in 1988!) about corporations seeing smart machines and automated systems as methods of psychologically manipulating the working stiffs! After all, you have to live up to the Taylorist ideal, folks! No wiggle for room for life, living, and the general felicity of conjuring ideas completely separated from the vile vise that locks all of our heads and hearts (and even extirpates them altogether! that is, if the "fuck my life" look you see on certain people over forty is any indication!). This process is known as "informating" the worker, according to Zuboff. Oh, look at this razzle-dazzle of new tech that will allow you to be more efficient at your job! Except that it's quite literally a Trojan horse, a pretext to squeeze more productivity out of you and not raise your pay! The same old song and dance. And Zuboff was warning us in 1988! My only real complaint about this book is that Zuboff loses her way in the end just as she's setting up a giant systematic critique of all this. But for those who want to track the scrofulous and incorrigible "thinkers" who have created the deeply manipulative system we all have to live under, this is a solid volume!

[Chiara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading “In the Age of the Smart Machine” by Shoshana Zuboff felt like opening a time capsule that speaks directly to our present. Though written in the late 1980s, this book captures the structural and psychological shifts that come with introducing intelligent technologies into organizations; insights that feel eerily precise now, as AI becomes more agentic and embedded in how we work.

One image that has stayed with me is her discussion of the information panopticon. It’s difficult not to think of today’s AI tools that monitor, track productivity, and predict performance. These systems can offer clarity, but also risk reducing people to data points. As Zuboff warns, when machines mediate work, we must take care not to erode the very things that make us human: ambiguity, dialogue, trust, and presence.

Zuboff invites us to consider that technological progress is not inherently liberating or oppressive, it’s shaped by the choices we make. And as we build more intelligent tools, those choices matter more than ever.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zuboff is the best writer on implications of technology for our time. Sadly, this and her subsequent book, "The Support Economy," are her only two book-length works (to my knowledge; if someone knows more, let me know?).

Read particularly the chapter on "The Laboring Body: Suffering and Skill in Production Work." Workers were not accustomed to being cogs in a machine, a utilitarian "human resource." Quote: "The owner of a Pennsylvania ironworks complained of frequent 'frolicking' that sometimes lasted for days, along with hunting, harvesting, wedding parties, and holiday celebrations" (p.33).

Oh, yeah. That's right. We aren't supposed to do any of those things. Just work.

[Kevin jones]

good book on information and behavior change, set in a pulp mill in the south.

[Michael Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive history of work and the dynamics of working environments

[Rene Schlegel · Rating 4 out of 5]

His foresight was astonishing. E.g. the pace different of our and technologies development. Still recommended for all CIO.

[Mary Karpel-Jergic · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about the alternate futures of an information world