“The fact is the sweetest dream that
labor knows. My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.”
-Robert Frost, from Mowing
In Martin Kenney’s essay, Value Creation in the Late Twentieth
Century: The Rise of the Knowledge Worker, he touts the inevitable rise of
the machine: the computer. He states
that, “The expenditure of human energy in physical activity is becoming less
and less important as a source of value” (87). While much of today’s work is
automated there is still a need for a worker to build the machines, to connect
the machines, and certainly to repair the machines. There is also the need for
an infrastructure to house these enterprises.
While the computer was supposed to make
manual labor redundant, it has instead created industries in support of the
machine. The need for man to work has created a scenario, for the sake of
survival, in which the worker must come up with creative ways to exploit the
exploiter; he must harness the computer before it harnesses him. The worker
must learn to outthink the computer. The path to this solution is education.
Kenney relates that,
It is the ability of human beings to use
their intellectual capabilities to create new solutions that is the transformative
force of the contemporary period…Marx captured the essence of this capacity, which
is at the core of capitalist mode of production, but which has remained cloaked
by fetishistic thinking of work as a fundamentally physical process (88).
The old thinking was to create a line of
production that would require minimal thought from the workers. The new
paradigm requires maximum thought from the workers, usually in a group (social)
setting. The production line has been reformed into the production circle: organizational
group thought to create products and services, many of which, in some way, are
in service to the computer. While some tout that the computer will solve many
of the needs of the human, the human worker needs the foresight to educate himself
on what the computer needs to survive: shelter, electricity, and the input of
data. The computer needs us more that we need it; we just want it.
It seems, though, that the knowledge
worker, while commanding a larger sector of the workforce, is still lagging
behind manual and physical labor. According to a report by boston.com and
monster.com titled Top 30 fastest-growing jobs by 2020, the top five fastest growing job markets
are:
1. Personal care aides,
2. Home health aides,
3. Biomedical engineers,
4. Brickmasons, blockmasons, stonemasons, tile and
marble setters, and
5. Carpenters.
Based on this information it is clear that we, the
United States, are still involved in a physically labor-intensive epoch that
will keep the knowledge worker in its shadow for a while longer. Again from
Kenney, “More than ever it is explicitly based upon the power of humans (as
part of social groups) to create value by constantly reconfiguring the work
process and / or developing entirely new products to create new needs” (89). We
have not lost the race to computers and have yet to realize the demise of the
physical laborer. The gap is closing but we still seem to possess the ability
to keep the dignity of labor within the realm of the worker.
Works
Cited:
Kenney,
Martin. “Value Creation in the Late
Twentieth Century: The Rise of the
Knowledge Worker.” Cutting Edge: Technology, Information Capitalism and
Social
Revolution. Jim Davis,
Thomas A. Hirschl, and Michael Stack, eds. New
York: Verso, 1997. 87-89. Print
http://www.boston.com/jobs/galleries/fastest_growing_jobs_2020/
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