Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Mechanisation in the mechanisation of mental labour
- Forms of technology
- Industrial - Substitutes for human physical labour
- Productive - Subtitutes for human mental labour
- Definition
- Transfer of work from human to machine (over time)
- Example
- Doing numeric calculations in your head
- Use an automatic machine to add up prices
- Machinery which has the cost of slave
labour will displace human labour
- "We are now immersed in a new technological revolution concerned
with the mechanisation of intellectual processes" (Minsky, 1967, p2)
- Concerned with intellectual rather than the physical labour
- "The ultimate economic reason for software development
is the mechanization of mental labor and intellectual work."
(Nake, 1998)
- Idea of mechanization of human labour is very plausible and
examples can be found but it is still not developed as a theme.
- You can’t see it immediately = difficulties in understanding
- Difficult to perceive, that’s why there is limited references.
- "congealing of labour in the product"
- Difficulties posed by current computational technology
- Black box of technology
- Mechanisation of mental labour
- Replacement of human labour for machine process
- Late 20th century revolution in the
mechanisation of mental labour
- Strategy considerations
- Costs of mental labour and processes delegated to technology
are predominantly, determined by the costs of the direct human
labour required.
- Example
- Cost of lecture
- Powerpoint software
- Intellectual work (Main cost)
- Computer
- Database creation
- Mental labour of creating the
records in the database
exceeds the cost of the
physical database
- As soon as we reach a number beyond the
easy grasp of a human, it is cheaper to do it
by machine.
- Cost of mental labour may or not be
expressed as a wage and assoicated
employment costs
- Machine may cost less over time