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techno[f83,jmc]		What technology can do for labor


	In the last hundred years, the advance of technology has
greatly improved the life of the worker.  People don't work such
long hours, many dangerous jobs have been eliminated or redesigned,
and many subtle hazards have been discovered and ameliorated.
However, most of this has come about without any systematic
research effort to develop such technology - except recently in the
area of detecting environmental hazards.  The improvements have
come about throught increases in productivity which make the
pie larger, union efforts to increase the worker's share of the
pie, competition among firms for workers when the labor market
is tight and professionalism and good will among engineers and
managers.  Competition has also caused reverse effects when
firms try to cut costs.

	The object of this note is to explore what could be done
by a systematic research effort aimed at discovering ways to
improve work.  We will not concentrate on eliminating dangers
and hazards, because lots of people think about that, and it
will more difficult to think of things that haven't already
been proposed.  Instead we will concentrate on positive improvements.
This is more rare, because public policy discussion seems to
suffer from a kind of Gresham's law to the effect that the only
way to get people's attention is to threaten them with death.
The main thing that counteracts the gloom is advertising.
Advertisers threaten death when it suits their purpose, but mostly
they find that promises sell more soap than threats.

	Before we get to the technology itself, we will state
our policy goal.  We want to create research support institutions,
however small, governmental or private, that will emphasize
projects that promise positive improvements in working life.

	In technology good ideas aren't always easy to find, so
the rest of this article is rather speculative.
Here are some ideas.

1. Increase remote operation beyond what is presently dictated
by economics.  Miners can work above ground, going underground
only to make repairs and this less and less as remotely operated
machinery becomes capable of making the repairs.

2. Give people whose jobs involve computer terminals more
power over the work environment.  Instead of designing the
programs to control the user, design them to give their users
more discretion.

3. Develop agricultural machinery specifically designed to ease
the job of the seasonal worker.

	These ideas are off-the-cuff.  If more people would think
about it, I'm sure better ideas could be found.  The best way to
start would be a conference.  However, the agenda of the conference
must very specifically be "How to improve the quality of life at
work".  Otherwise, it will be like the Arden House
conference and will merely recruit those scientists whose
political ideas correspond to those current in the labor
movement and will merely elicit political sympathy from these
scientists.  Patience is required, because people don't change
the direction of their scientific work very quickly and only
a few will change at all.  If several conferences produce
two or three good projects, their success will attract others.
Money for projects is always a problem, but there are many sources
of money, and it is probably best to begin by expecting the
scientists motivated to work on improving work to seek support
in the usual places.