The term "Luddite" historically refers to bands of skilled English textile workers in the early 19th century who destroyed machinery they believed threatened their livelihoods during the Industrial Revolution.

Contrary to popular misconception, these original Luddites were not inherently opposed to technological progress itself; rather, their resistance targeted technological changes that undermined wages, work quality, and job security.

They protested exploitative labor practices associated with new machines, seeking to protect their rights and maintain their standard of living .

In the 21st century, the label "Luddite" is frequently misapplied to individuals who oppose any form of technological change.

Modern-day Luddites, however, typically do not reject technology wholesale.

Instead, their opposition or resistance arises primarily from labor-related concerns similar to those of the original Luddites.

They object to how certain technologies are implemented—especially when these technologies threaten job security, degrade working conditions, or diminish workers' autonomy and wages.

This form of resistance is a labor movement against poverty, unfair treatment, and exploitative practices rather than a fear or rejection of innovation itself .

Resistance to new technology in modern workplaces often stems from multiple legitimate factors.

Anxiety about job security is paramount; employees may fear they will be replaced by automation, artificial intelligence, or digital platforms.

Alongside this is the fear of incompetence or inadequacy in navigating unfamiliar technological systems, which threatens self-efficacy and status within their field.

Other psychological factors contributing to resistance include loss of control over workflow, defensiveness about prior work methods, concern about increased workload, and uncertainty about the future.

Resistance can also result from organizational issues such as inadequate change management, lack of employee involvement in technology adoption decisions, and a mismatch between technology features and the real needs of its users .

In addition to personal and organizational causes, there are broader social and ethical concerns that influence resistance.

Workers may worry about the ethical ramifications of technology companies’ practices, concerns over digital privacy, workplace surveillance, and the socio-economic impact of automation, including increasing inequality and precarious employment.

These issues contribute layers of distrust and apprehension, making some employees reluctant to embrace new technological tools without clear organizational policies and support that address these concerns .

Examples of 21st century technological resistance manifest in various ways in the workplace.

Labor unrest continues in sectors affected by automation and AI, for instance, among unionized autoworkers or professional groups like writers, who collectively raise concerns about job displacement and demand influence over how new technologies are integrated.

Workplace resistance may also surface as difficulty adapting to rapid digital transformation initiatives and hybrid work models, causing friction and productivity loss.

Some employees may openly reject new software or tools, while others may express subtle forms of resistance through disengagement or vocal criticism.

These behaviors highlight the ongoing negotiation between technology’s pervasive advancement and workers’ needs for security and fairness .

Digital transformation itself has altered workplace communication significantly, often increasing stress due to communication overload, lack of emotional cues inherent in digital exchanges, blurred boundaries between work and personal life, and expectations for immediate responsiveness.

Such conditions can exacerbate resistance or dissatisfaction with new technologies that are intended to improve productivity but instead contribute to cognitive and emotional strain .

To build a positive working rapport with colleagues resistant to new technology, a number of effective strategies exist.

It is crucial to demonstrate compassion and empathy toward their concerns, ensuring they feel heard and understood through active listening.

Maintaining professionalism while avoiding gossip or negative labeling helps preserve trust.

Seeking common ground and collaborative problem-solving encourages shared ownership of technological changes.

Being open to feedback and recognizing colleagues’ achievements can alleviate anxieties and foster a more cooperative environment.

Clear, respectful communication that establishes boundaries and shows willingness to adjust approaches supports ongoing constructive dialogue .

Further, research shows that involving employees and stakeholders early and meaningfully in decisions surrounding technology adoption greatly improves acceptance and reduces resistance.

When IT and management make unilateral decisions without integrating user input, poor adoption and wasted investment often result.

Hybrid workplaces, specifically, benefit from evolving training methodologies like video-based, interactive, and equitable remote training, along with digital employee experience platforms that identify adoption struggles and enable targeted support.

These approaches help smooth transitions and mitigate resistance by addressing users’ real concerns and equipping them as confident users .

In summary, 21st-century Luddites are less anti-technology ideologues and more advocates for humane, equitable workplaces in the face of rapid technological change.

Their resistance highlights fears of job loss, diminished work quality, loss of autonomy, ethical and privacy concerns, and the need for more inclusive decision-making in technology introduction.

Understanding these legitimate foundations of resistance is essential for anyone seeking to build rapport and collaborate effectively with colleagues who are wary of new technologies in the corporate environment.

Employing empathy, clear communication, inclusion, and supportive training can create a positive, productive atmosphere despite differing views on technological change.

The term "Luddite" historically refers to bands of skilled English textile workers in the early 19th century who destroyed machinery they believed threatened their livelihoods during the Industrial Revolution.

Title:

Content: Andrew Luck Finally Upgrades His Flip Phone … To Another Flip Phone

Intro: Andrew Luck has made it clear that he’s not interested in joining the world of smartphones. He’s just fine with his flip phone, and he finally got an upgrade this week.

INDIANAPOLIS — Has Andrew Luck finally turned in his ancient flip phone for a smartphone?

No. No he has not.

But, he did get a new flip phone this week.

The Indianapolis Colts quarterback on Thursday shared on his Facebook account that his mobile carrier had hooked him up with a new phone.

In June, Luck became the recipient of the most lucrative contract in NFL history, and many wondered if the fifth-year Stanford product was going to splurge on the newest smartphone for himself.

"One, I like it. It's a comfort thing," Luck said of not giving up the flip phone lifestyle. "I think anybody can appreciate that, if you're used to that. … Two, I don't think I want to be connected 24/7, and this phone is maybe sort of a reminder that you don't have to be connected. And it's nice to get away. It's nice to turn your phone off."

Luck's phone at that time — and his new one, we assume — can send and receive text messages, and for all the newest crazes in apps and technology, he says he has an iPad.

"What else do you need?" Luck asked. "I'm not a Luddite."

Luddite | Ludd·ite | Noun: "One of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protest; broadly :  one who is opposed to especially technological change." Thank you, Merriam Webster.

Nice word choice, Andrew. Looks like his "Andrew Luck Book Club" is paying huge dividends.

While many of us (including the author of this article) remain glued to their smartphones, Luck is obviously content with what's gotten him to this point in life.

Smartphone or flip phone — or rotary phone — he's back on the field and healthy for the Indianapolis Colts, and that's all that should matter to his fans and his organization.

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Contrary to popular misconception, these original Luddites were not inherently opposed to technological progress itself; rather, their resistance targeted technological changes that undermined wages, work quality, and job security.

Title:

Content: Brian Merchant, author: “Luddites are more dangerous to the rich than Robin Hood”

The Luddites have been a great historical resource. Any showy enemy of anything that looked like technological progress has been called a Luddite. Today with generative artificial intelligence and its critics, the word has been revived. The author and journalist Brian Merchant (Iowa City, USA, 1983) saw it coming and has written a book that reviews the Luddite revolt in England at the beginning of the 19th century and its similarities with current technologies: Blood in the Machine (Blood in the Machine, currently without a planned edition in Spanish) thus explores the origins of the current revolt against big technology.

Although the book has appeared in the midst of the AI hype, Merchant began his research a decade ago: “Uber was growing and it was beginning to be seen that it was having a hard impact on taxi drivers, I heard the term Luddite from the pro-Uber sector and wrote an article titled You don't understand anything about Luddites”. Now in his book he remembers that the Luddite revolt was a labor struggle, not anti-technology, at a time when unions were prohibited. In a conversation with EL PAÍS from his residence in Los Angeles, Merchant clarifies the historical impact of the Luddites and the possible similar struggles that are being played today in Silicon Valley.

1. The Luddites were not against progress

The labor revolt over the loss of rights was more important than the destruction of textile machines: “The biggest mistake about the Luddites is to say that they were against technology and progress,” says Merchant. “They were against certain technologies because they recognized the way in which they were going to be used in their context against them as workers. It was a labor movement, against poverty, not anti-technology. The British Government began to mold them in this way almost immediately, it was keen to mock the Luddites and present the argument that they were against progress. It is very similar to how today people in positions of power in technology companies accuse those who complain about poor working conditions. It's the same story for 200 years.”

The book quotes a phrase from historian Eric Hobsbawm that explains this stage: “It was collective bargaining through riots.” According to Merchant, this tactic in a workers' struggle was very powerful for two reasons: “First, it was symbolic because everyone understood that what they were destroying was not just a machine. It was also the specific machine used to transfer wealth from the workers to the employer. Second, it was useful because they destroyed the equipment that businessmen needed.”

2. Why Robin Hood is better accepted than Ned Ludd

Ned Ludd was a legendary character. No one knows for sure if he existed. It was the legend of a teenager who would have broken the first machines at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In 1811, rebellious workers used his legendary name to sign letters and further scare: “Ludd probably never existed. But the incarnation of it would become a mascot, an organizational tool, a wink: a powerful 19th-century meme,” Merchant writes.

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Ludd lived near Nottingham (United Kingdom), like another legendary figure who has been better treated by history. There must be a reason, says Merchant: “The Luddites organized a popular and powerful rebellion. People wrote popular songs about them. They were like Robin Hood. But it is interesting that Robin Hood has endured as a positive light, while the Luddites have not. He suggests that the myth of Ned Ludd is in some ways more dangerous to the elites and the wealthy than that of Robin Hood, which is a little more nebulous and open. The Luddites say: go ahead and break the machines of your oppression. Robin Hood says: steal from the rich and give to the poor. “I think that’s a little more tolerable.”

3. How are they similar to today's problems?

The background of the book is that the history of the Luddites is similar to what happens today in Silicon Valley, where a small group of corporations dominate new technologies. “The way technologies are developed has basically not changed. You have a handful of people with access to enough capital or political influence to be able to build a factory and use automation technologies. “Back then, the most aggressive owners didn’t ask anyone how to find a way to make this a win-win.”

Merchant has received criticism for equating the great businessmen of 19th century England with 21st century America. But there are details that he does not see that far away: “The technology development process is in some ways even more undemocratic today than then. There is this immense pool of capital available to Silicon Valley innovators through venture capital. Uber wasn't profitable for 10 years, but they had access to that capital. Did anyone really like that? Did it work for workers and delivery people? Nothing mattered, they just had more money and moved on.”

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They protested exploitative labor practices associated with new machines, seeking to protect their rights and maintain their standard of living .

Title:

Content: The new is the old well forgotten.
Where in the Network there was a fashionable insult to the opponents of AI
In the Internet discourse, deep in the study of sarcastic comments of anonymous persons, you can find the term "Luddite".
This label is often referred to as people who dare to express the slightest inclination to inhibit the constant development of artificial intelligence (AI).
Related video
Interestingly, such prominent figures as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have been awarded the Luddite Award, which is recognition of their cautionary position regarding the potential dangers associated with artificial intelligence.
During the ceremony, Robert D. Atkinson, the organizer of the award, noted: “Unfortunately, luminaries such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have contributed to the feverish refraction of hands about the impending apocalypse of artificial intelligence, ” writes IFLScience.
In Focus.Technology appeared its own Telegram-channel.
Subscribe not to miss the latest and exciting news from the world of science!
Atkinson also explained: "Do we consider any of them personally Luddites?
No, of course not.
They are pioneers of science and technology.
But they and others have done a disservice to the public — and undoubtedly have helped and comforted the increasingly common neo-Luddist impulse in modern society — by demonizing AI in the popular imagination.
But how did the term come about?
Its roots can be traced back to the early 1800s in England.
Before the industrial revolution, skilled craftsmen who knew a lot about textile production made clothes using their own machines and specialized tools.
However, a situation arose when new technologies and methods of mass production appeared, as a result of which artisans were unable to compete.
The result was a movement whose purpose was the destruction of the textile industry and the destruction of new machines.
Although there is some truth to this story, it does not reflect the whole essence of the Luddite movement.
Their actions were not driven solely by a reaction to new technologies; rather, they were a response to the profound transformations taking place in their professional activities.
While it is true that they often attacked a knitting machine known as a stocking frame, as well as other mechanized fixtures, their main concern was the labor practices associated with these machines.
Kevin Binfield, editor of the Luddite and Compassionate Works, explained their motives: "They simply wanted machines to produce high-quality goods, and that these machines employed workers who had been trained and received fair wages.
It was their only concern. ”
The nickname "Luddites" comes from the nickname "Ned Ludd", an apocryphal figure who allegedly sabotaged a textile factory in 1779, although historical evidence suggests that this man was most likely a fictional one.
In a 2007 paper, researcher David Linton explained: “Some say that a young man, possibly with cognitive impairment, named Ned Ludd once misunderstood an order and accidentally broke his frame machine.
Others argue that this was done deliberately, in a fit of anger.
Whatever the motive, it seems to have become a joke phrase that whenever the machine breaks, for whatever reason, you can say something like, "Ludd must have been here."
From this construction, it is a short step to the ironic application of the name Ludd to vandalism for political purposes. "
Between 1811 and 1816, the Luddite movement held sporadic and somewhat unorganized protests, characterized by the destruction of cars and the burning of factories.
In response, the mill owners resorted to extreme measures, using deadly force against the Luddites.
In April 1812, there was a grim turning point in Huddersfield, where at least four people died at the hands of the mill owners.
In retaliation, the Luddites killed the owner of the mill, William Horsfall, who boldly declared his intention to "smear himself with Luddite blood to the saddles."
Horsfall was shot while sitting on his horse.
Faced with these uprisings, the government immediately sent thousands of soldiers to quell the protests.
Moreover, they adopted a law according to which the breakdown of cars was subject to the death penalty or sending to colonies.
Subsequently, the movement dissipated, but the stable expression "Luddite" could not accurately convey the ideals and goals of the Luddites.
Previously, Focus wrote about the first IPSO in the history of mankind.
It turns out that it was invented in Babylon and it concerns the Flood.

In the 21st century, the label "Luddite" is frequently misapplied to individuals who oppose any form of technological change.

Title:

Content: Does AI make the arts poorer?
The real difference between the rich and the poor is the human mind.
▲ Since we have AI tools, we can do things quickly and well with a simple prompt, and the cost is low. (Illustration / Reuters)
2nd / Podcaster
I had a friend who had been unemployed for a while and asked me if I had a job for him to do, such as simple things like keeping an account and sorting out documents.
I said, if you asked me two years earlier, there must be, but unfortunately not now.
In the past, those chores took time, since the AI tool, as long as the simple prompt can be completed, the monthly fee is only a few hundred yuan, two or three hundred hourly wage students may not do so well.
He listened to me, didn ’ t believe it, and was curious to ask me how I use AI now.
In fact, the application is too broad and too complicated. To make him understand it as soon as possible, I cite my entire workflow as an example.
For example, when writing an article, in the stage of collecting materials, AI helps me to make notes of books / meetings / lectures / courses with speech, and the content is accurate and the grammar is strict. It can also be converted into various forms of charts, different lengths and various articles.
At the writing stage, I will discuss with AI what different topics can be cut into perspective, such as this article I want to know how AI is changing our society, ask it to help me summarize the main views on the Internet, and I will continue to ask for some details, and also ask it to grab the latest data for me.
Next, before po comes to the community, ask it to help me modify the typos and punctuation, the correction only takes a few seconds, and the text creation is basically completed.
I asked my friend, do you think you can do better, faster and cheaper than AI?
▲ AI can help users to take notes with voice, and the content of speech to text is accurate and the grammar is strict. It can also be converted into various forms of charts, different lengths and various articles.
(Chart / CFP)
Next, the image creation.
Now many devices, including WebCam and Monocular, the camera can lock the portrait to move in small amplitude, and even deliberately create a natural hand shake, self-portrait images are becoming more and more dependent on others.
Before the oral video, mainly rely on improvisation or reading, the former plays subtitles until the hand is broken, the latter has to get a reader to adjust the speed, now AI recognition subtitles are very common, the reader also evolved into the script will follow my words run (used readers will know how convenient this is), greatly speeding up the efficiency of recording videos.
It is also a technology derived from AI speech recognition: AI editing. Although it is not completely free from manual work, the editor is now editing by reading the text, without the need to listen with ears, which saves a lot of effort.
Music and images can be generated by AI, saving a lot of time to find materials and reducing the risk of copyright infringement.
As for the job that my friends are looking for, such as document processing and answering e-mail, I just write a SOP file to feed the robot, and it can do it flawlessly, and there is no need to rest for 24 hours.
It doesn ’ t matter if what is said above is not understood, in simple terms, I used to find two or three more people to deal with the process of chores, and it was replaced by AI, and AI did well and fast.
After all, it was all simple work.
▲ Document processing, e-mail and other things, as long as you write a SOP file to feed the robot, it can do flawless, and 24 hours without rest.
(Chart / CFP)
My friend is angry after hearing it.
I said, but I still need someone to help me, because I ’ m saving a lot of time now, have more capacity, and have the opportunity to make more money.
Do you do business sponsorship? Do you write creative scripts that are popular with young people? Do you have experience in IP marketing?
He was frustrated and said that he would not be those, as if he could only be eliminated.
Then he complained to me, saying that Taiwan's industry is serious, only the technology industry can make money, and other people live in deep water.
In fact, every technological innovation is like this, the British textile industry in the 19th century industrialization, a group of textile workers are also very angry at their loss of work, in the factory to destroy the loom.
These people are called Luddites. Now Luddites have become synonymous with opposition to technological progress. Most people also know that Luddites are marginal beings who will eventually die.
But it is obviously not accurate to attribute the fierce competition to the struggle for literature. In the example above, I am also a writer, but my property has leapt with the industrial revolution.
The difference is that I did two things: the first is the investment trend, and the second is that I treat AI as extremely cheap capital and use it to make money.
But I have taken advantage of resources, like I do not mix badly, will mix better, and mixed badly, will only mix worse.
Times change too fast, now this environment can not guarantee that you listen carefully to the classroom to teach those textbooks out of the society to eat, talent needs a flexible brain, as well as a variety of information judgment, to keep up with the pace of faster and faster technological development.
Then it is true that some people can not do, some people from the past to the present, all want to do the simplest job, they either can not find a job, or they have to get a lower salary than the robot.
▲ In the era of rapid technological changes, the advantages of language have been greatly weakened.
(Image from Google Translate)
In fact, education must be reformed as soon as possible, we need new departments, abolish some old departments, and now it seems like the pure language department of the college is really harming students, ensuring that they graduate and lose their jobs. (This sentence is easy to be misunderstood, it seems that I am belittling a particular department, I am not necessary.) And...
In my experience as a minor in Japanese at university, although I can also study culture and history, the advantages of language have been greatly weakened, and the teaching syllabus must be adjusted.)
The gap between the rich and the poor is inevitable, and policies can only try to avoid too many poor people, otherwise there will be social unrest.
Put on the beautiful idea of science fiction, before the civil unrest of mankind, I hope that robots will take care of our food like mothers.
Can you think about it? – I love this post.
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Modern-day Luddites, however, typically do not reject technology wholesale.

Instead, their opposition or resistance arises primarily from labor-related concerns similar to those of the original Luddites.

They object to how certain technologies are implemented—especially when these technologies threaten job security, degrade working conditions, or diminish workers' autonomy and wages.

This form of resistance is a labor movement against poverty, unfair treatment, and exploitative practices rather than a fear or rejection of innovation itself .

Resistance to new technology in modern workplaces often stems from multiple legitimate factors.

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The Right Way To Evaluate A Technology Solution For Your Organization

Founder and CEO at Ludi, Inc., a healthcare technology company making it easy for hospitals to pay physicians.

Selecting a new technology for your company can be daunting. Organizations usually begin this process with a desire to either streamline or solve specific pain points. Regardless of your specific needs, implementing new technology will involve change. For your organization as an entity, change can be great. Change can reduce inefficiencies and errors, as well as usher in new opportunities. But for the people who work for your organization, change can trigger anxiety and ultimately resistance to the new technology. Here are six things to keep in mind when evaluating new technology:

1. Identify your problem. It sounds simple, but many organizations jump straight to the solutions they find appealing. If you focus on the true problem you’re trying to solve, you will stay goal-oriented while searching for a vendor.

2. Keep an open mind. You may have seen a solution you find appealing, but remember that you don’t know what you don’t know. The technology partner you choose should be an expert in the field and may offer you products that you didn’t even know existed. Stay open to new ideas and solutions. One of the things I’ve noticed is prospective clients saying, “We can’t buy this product unless it handles this exact case we’re trying to solve for.” That’s not always the most effective approach because it doesn’t take all the variables into consideration. For example, my company works with hospitals to streamline complex physician payment structures. The hospital may have had the doctor recording their time one way because they were using a paper system and approvals needed to be checked in a certain manner for that doctor to get paid. Once you eliminate paper, though, in that particular scenario, everything is up for discussion – not just the way doctors record their time, but the entire physician payment process at the hospital. Rigidity will not benefit you when evaluating new technology.

3. Get your people on the same page. Meet with department heads to pull together all the pain points that need to be solved. You must be comprehensive during your internal review because needs come out differently across different departments. You may not be able to solve everyone’s problem with the new technology, but it’s important to align your team before you bring in a vendor. Then prioritize your needs. Once your departments agree on the priorities, be clear with your team on who is making the final decision. Departmental input is important, but knowing who the purchaser is within your organization is equally important. Remember: Don’t lose sight of why you're buying this technology. Keep the ultimate purpose in mind.

4. Consider internal change management. Change is difficult for many of us, so it’s important to stop and consider the people who will be affected by this change. Resistance to change can originate from any of the following: loss of control, insecurities about competence, feeling defensive about past work, concern about more work and general uncertainty. Be proactive in preparing your staff for a change, because all of these responses tend to have a ripple effect in corporate cultures.

5. Focus on the future. If you’ve ever bought a house, you know that there are things you didn’t know you needed until you lived with your investment for a few years. Technology is no different. You may have a list of goals for your business, but there is no telling what you’ll need 10 years from now. The best technology partner will be flexible enough to support your organization as it grows. How can you find a partner with this type of future-focused outlook? See point number two.

6. Listen and be patient. The people delivering technology solutions in the market are experts and can offer you insights into the industry. I suggest finding a solution that can handle 90% of what you need out of the box. Work with your solution provider and try their out-of-the-box solutions for 90 days before you decide what you need next. Make sure the product you choose is flexible enough to grow with your business, but resist over-customizing the product because that can back you into a corner.

Technology solutions truly can help you streamline and standardize your business. Time spent organizing what problem you are trying to solve will make the search much more efficient. While there may not be a solution out there that does everything you hope to accomplish, keep an open mind and you'll find a solution that's right for your specific needs.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?

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Anxiety about job security is paramount; employees may fear they will be replaced by automation, artificial intelligence, or digital platforms.

Title:

Content: Can AI Bring the Labor Movement New Power?

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Liz Shuler was standing inside a university lab one day a few years ago when she saw the future of everything — in a cutting board.

At the time Shuler was secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, one of America’s most storied labor organizations, and she’d come to Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University with a delegation that included members of Unite Here, the union representing hundreds of thousands of workers in the hospitality industry. Their mission: to get a glimpse at how technology might impact the workplace in the years ahead. It didn’t take long before that impact became clear, at least in the kitchen. One of the professors at CMU, a school known for its prowess in technology and design, was demonstrating a cutting-edge cutting board that was able to measure how fast someone sliced vegetables, as well as the quality of their motion.

“It was easy to see we were basically one step away from having the technology cut the vegetables,” Shuler remembers. “That was kind of a wake-up call where we thought — this isn’t just about industrial kitchens. It’s about every setting you can imagine.”

Fast forward a few years, and the world has evolved. Shuler is now the president of the AFL-CIO, having moved into the top spot in the summer of 2021, following the death of the organization’s longtime leader, Richard Trumka. Thanks to artificial intelligence, anxiety about technology’s impact on job security has only increased — not only among kitchen workers, but also white-collar professionals who long saw themselves as immune from disruption: writers, lawyers, health care professionals, marketers, financial analysts.

Meanwhile, the labor movement, after a decadeslong fallow period, suddenly seems to be having a moment, at least in part due to all that AI anxiety. The Writers Guild of America got much of what it wanted in its monthslong strike against Hollywood producers last summer. Union autoworkers not only won the support of Joe Biden in their walkout against U.S. car manufacturers last year, but scored historic contract gains that could ripple across other industries. And overall support for organized labor is at a 60-year high, with more than 70 percent of Americans saying they approve of unions.

The only wrinkle? For all the love labor is getting, actual union participation is at a modern low, with just 1 in 10 private-sector workers carrying a union card.

It’s a paradox, but it’s also a moment in which Shuler sees opportunity. Thanks in part to rising trepidation about AI, Shuler believes workers — including professionals who’ve traditionally stood outside the labor movement — need unions more than ever. And she’s determined not only to return organized labor to a place in American life that it hasn’t occupied for decades, but for labor to help shape our technological future.

“The Writers’ Guild got everyone’s attention because they were talking about the dumbing down or gig-ifying of their work based on AI,” Shuler told me when we chatted one day last summer. “They were being asked to just plus-up what Chat GPT writes for Hollywood. That is not only dehumanizing, but it’s taking away the creativity and the craft and dumbing it down to ones and zeroes. And it’s sort of woken up the entire country around the potential for this kind of technology and how it’s going to impact work.”

Shuler’s main goal — not easily accomplished, given the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and the hurdles that unions still face — is for labor to have “a seat at the table,” as she puts, in the roll-out of AI, meaning she wants workers to have a voice in everything from how technology is developed to how it’s regulated to how it’s deployed in individual companies. Among the companies is AI innovator Microsoft, with whom the AFL-CIO recently inked a new partnership that gives workers the kind of input Shuler talks about.

Of course, in some respects what Shuler is pushing for symbolizes something even deeper. Two of the most disruptive events in American life over the past 40 years — deindustrialization and the rise of digital technology — were more or less imposed on the American public without average people having much say in what happened. When it comes to the AI revolution that’s now upon us — a revolution that could be very good or very bad — Shuler wants to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

If the world — and potentially the labor movement — are entering a new era, Shuler herself is also something new: She’s the first woman ever to lead the AFL-CIO, the consortium of more than 60 unions that represent more than 12.5 million workers across the country. (Its member organizations range from the Communication Workers of America to the NFL Players Association.) Shuler, who’s 53, has arguably been prepping for the job her entire life. She grew up in a union household in Oregon, and she tells a story about successfully negotiating equal pay for babysitters in her neighborhood — when she was 11. While she studied journalism at the University of Oregon (her dream was to be the next Nina Totenberg), after graduation she instead found an even deeper calling in the labor movement, going to work for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and then, in 2009, for the AFL-CIO.

Since becoming AFL-CIO president in the summer of 2021, Shuler has built upon work started during Trumka’s 12-year tenure while also trying to modernize the organization. She’s emphasizing diversity — she wants to ensure unions are welcoming of all genders, races and nationalities — and trying to look around the bend at how the next wave of technology will impact the workplace.

At the forefront of the latter effort is the Technology Institute of the AFL-CIO, a unit launched several months before Trumka succumbed to a heart attack and that Shuler has championed. Its portfolio includes convening member unions to talk about the impact of technology, as well as attempting to influence policymakers as they wrestle with regulating AI. (Both Shuler and Technology Institute executive director Amanda Ballantyne participated in the Senate’s AI Insights Forums last fall.) Maybe most notably, the Technology Institute is partnering with universities, including Carnegie Mellon, to provide worker input on new technology as it’s being developed.

In one project with CMU, the Technology Institute arranged for union bus drivers to offer their perspectives on self-driving buses. In a subsequent white paper, CMU professors noted that while autonomous buses have the potential to improve safety, they’ll actually make operators’ jobs more complicated. What’s more, the report noted, self-driving technology is no substitute for the more human part of what bus operators do in attending to passenger needs (say, assisting an elderly person) and looking out for passenger safety.

“We’re really interested in the applied use of technologies — we want to make sure they work,” says Steven Wray, executive director of the Block Center for Technology and Society at CMU. “Often it’s going to be people who are using the technology who are going to give you the best insight into that. We want to make sure that we’ve thought about all the potential negatives that come about.”

For Shuler, such projects are an example of why it’s so important to get worker input before a new technology is deployed.

“Instead of [corporations] saying, OK, we’re going to tell you how the technology is going to be implemented, we need to actually be upstream in the development of the technology and have workers’ voices in those labs shaping what happens,” she says. “Unless you have the ability to come together with your co-workers and shape [technology], put guardrails around it, negotiate what your role is in it, then it’s not going to benefit us all in the way that it needs to.”

That’s the exact idea behind a first-of-its kind partnership the AFL-CIO and Microsoft announced in December. The new collaboration seeks to ensure that workers’ perspectives will inform the approach of Microsoft’s developers as they move forward with AI, creating a mechanism for labor to share insights and concerns with the people actually developing the technology. Equally important, the agreement also calls for Microsoft to remain neutral if any group of its U.S workers seeks to form a union and for the company and the AFL-CIO to work together on policy recommendations about AI.

In announcing the new initiative, Shuler talked about a “co-creation process” — with labor having a strong voice in how technology is implemented. It’s something she thinks has long been missing. As she put it to me during an interview, “I really do find that we talk about the future of work, and very few people talk to workers.”

Shuler’s focus on shaping the future is, to an extent, an attempt to avoid repeating the past. From both a public opinion and participation standpoint, the labor movement’s high-water mark was in the 1950s and 1960s, a period — not coincidentally, some would argue — when the American economy was booming and the middle-class was growing. But by the late 1970s, unions had begun what turned out to be a decades-long descent. One factor, ironically, was the rise of the middle class that organized labor had arguably helped to create. As more and more middle-class families were able to afford to send their kids to college, those kids increasingly ended up in professional or managerial jobs — occupations that largely fell outside labor’s footprint. (The number of MBAs awarded in America grew from fewer than 5,000 in 1960 to nearly 60,000 in 1980. It’s now around 120,000 per year.)

At the same time, the once-thriving U.S. economy began to struggle with high inflation and low productivity, and unions — with their demands for ever-fatter contracts — were blamed for hurting corporate competitiveness. By the time Ronald Reagan famously fired members of the federal air traffic controllers union in the summer of 1981 (a union that had actually endorsed him the previous year in his race against Jimmy Carter), the ground had shifted. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans supported Reagan’s actions, and unions were on the outs. By the time Bill Clinton was passing NAFTA in the early 1990s, even Democrats, long labor’s biggest defenders, were keeping their distance.

But the lack of labor voices at the table — both within individual industries and in public policy more broadly — has arguably had some harsh consequences. From 1979 to 2019, American manufacturing jobs, long an entryway to the middle-class for workers without college degrees, dropped from 20 million to 13 million, with positions either off-shored or automated out of existence. Meanwhile, even as the American economy expanded and white-collar professionals at the top of the pyramid grew wealthier — CEO pay exploded 1,400 percent between 1978 and 2021 — income for everyday Americans stalled. According to research from Pew, between 1979 and 2018 median incomes in America, when adjusted for inflation and buying power, “barely budged.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, 2018 was around the time that public support for unions began to inch back up. And it’s continued moving in that direction, as workers at high-profile companies like Amazon and Starbucks have launched — sometimes successfully, sometimes not — union-organizing efforts.

While closing the wage gap remains at the top of the labor agenda, it now sits side-by-side with having a voice in the technology that’s likely to only further disrupt the workplace. Shuler believes it’s an effort that will help unions gain even more support from the public, many of whom have grown uncomfortable with the power that Big Tech has exercised over the last decade.

“For the most part technology is just thrown out into the marketplace, and it just wreaks havoc,” she says. “There’s no thought process — or safety mechanism or, heaven forbid, regulations — that can actually assess and model what’s going to happen before it happens. Like Chat GPT — it just showed up one day because Microsoft and OpenAI were like, look at this great thing we developed!” She pauses. “We need, like, an FDA for AI. You don’t put a vaccine out there without testing and going through the rigors of the scientific community and forecasting what’s going to happen. You need the same kind of approach for AI because it’s going to be equally impactful, and people will be harmed if we don’t think about and aren’t intentional about how we’re introducing things into our economy.”

The big difference between today and the 1970s, of course, is that artificial intelligence won’t just affect manufacturing — it’s coming for everyone. That’s one reason public anxiety about its impact is palpable. Long-term, the concern is existential — could AI theoretically wipe out the human race? Short-term, it’s more practical — will AI take my job? In one survey of 2000 working Americans, 77 percent said they were concerned about job loss due to artificial intelligence. And the positions potentially at risk aren’t just blue-collar ones, but white-collar ones as well: coders and software engineers, financial analysts and traders, marketers and content creators, graphic designers and people working in the legal industry.

Is the anxiety justified? David Autor, an MIT economist who’s spent his career studying the labor-market impact of technological change, says … maybe. His position: While there’s no doubt that AI will disrupt the world of work, it remains too soon to tell exactly how.

Autor explains that what gives labor its value in the marketplace is expertise — a body of knowledge or a competence you possess that most people don’t have and that the world says is important. Expertise is what differentiates a crossing guard from an air traffic controller — both occupations regulate the flow of traffic, but the training and education it takes to keep a 7-year-old out of harm’s way is less than that required to stop two huge airliners from colliding. Hence, air traffic controllers earn more.

Part of the promise of AI, Autor says, is that it has the potential to give people greater expertise, which could increase their productivity and ultimately their value. He gives as an example a nurse practitioner or physician assistant who, thanks to the extraordinary power of artificial intelligence, could begin to make medical diagnoses that right now can only be done by an M.D. who has many years of intensive training. Indeed, Autor continues, the exciting thing about AI is that it could help people who don’t have elite educations — the type of workers left behind economically in the last several decades — expand what they can do and increase their worth in the workplace.

“The last four decades devalued the work of people who don’t have college degrees,” he says, noting the impact of both technology and deindustrialization. “They used to do skilled office work or skilled production work — now many of them do food service and security and cleaning.” Deployed the right way, AI could give such workers the tools to reverse that trend.

But there’s also the possibility that artificial intelligence could spin out in a different way. In making abundant certain types of expertise that are now relatively scarce — financial analysis, writing, graphic design, healthcare delivery, just to name a few — AI could allow companies to eliminate positions or pay people less, since what they do will have become a commodity. While such an approach might be more efficient and actually help the broader economy grow, it raises the question of whom that growth would benefit. Corporate bottom lines might improve, but we could simultaneously see an even more intense version of what we’ve seen over the last four decades — those at the top doing very very well, those in the middle or at the bottom struggling.

As with any new technology, Autor says the real unknowns about AI are all the ways people will use it that, right now, we can’t even imagine. He compares it to GPS, which was initially conceived and developed by the U.S. government as a way of guiding weapons systems. GPS does that, but decades later it does a lot more, from powering the geo-location functions in our smart phones to playing an integral role in the electrical grid.

“We often don’t know what the killer app of a new technology is because we think of it as a simple replacement for something we already have,” he says.

The good news when it comes to AI, Autor believes, is that nothing is yet determined. We can decide the tasks we want AI to do; we can control how it’s integrated into our jobs and lives; we can retrain people for new jobs AI will create. “I think we have agency in this,” he says. “It’s such a valuable tool, and there are many ways to use it.”

This is where Autor’s views come together with Shuler’s: The best course forward, both believe, is not to stop the development of AI or even the elimination of some jobs, but rather to include workers in the conversation so that we get the big upside of AI without a massive downside.

So what’s the best way to give people a voice in what’s coming?

Shuler, predictably, believes it’s through unions. “We think collective bargaining is actually the tool to manage this — labor and management sitting across the table, figuring it out together in partnership,” she says. “If we have the trust, and if we can look around the corner and see a better future, we’re going to be partners in that, rather than resisting it.”

Helping Shuler’s argument is not only the current momentum that labor has in the U.S., but also the fact that job anxiety is spreading to white-collar professions that never before felt threatened. “The level of insecurity that low-wage workers in manufacturing lived through now is coming after the professional class, who didn’t feel they had to face that level of disruption before,” says Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of The Worker Institute at Cornell University and a Democratic candidate for Senate in New Jersey. “I think you’re going to see more labor activity and more labor unrest in the professional class as they have to face disruption in their careers and lives.”

Indeed, white collar professions were seeing a small uptick in union activity even before Chat GPT was unveiled in the marketplace in 2022. Tech workers at Google and Apple have organized in the last few years, as have video game developers, museum workers and medical residents (including those at high-profile institutions like Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania and Mass General Brigham in Boston).

“People are starting to see unions in a new and different light,” Shuler believes. “Because many people forgot that unions were the way to achieve a kind of justice in the workplace. Or they had a certain stereotype or perception of what a union was: Oh, that’s for industrial settings. Or that was before we had labor laws. Well, no, actually, it’s this thing called a union that enables you to come together with your co-workers for fairness on the job.”

Despite Shuler’s optimism, there remain huge obstacles to unions regaining the position they once held in American life and to them being the vehicle that best protects workers against the negative impact of AI. One challenge is cultural. Will, say, a group of financial analysts, with zero history of union participation, suddenly opt to bargain collectively over which tasks AI handles and which remain done by humans? An even bigger hurdle is structural. As Shuler points out, under current labor laws, the path to forming a union is long and fraught.

“It takes an act of absolute heroism to form a union these days through the NLRB process,” she acknowledges. “Most companies will fire you, harass you, intimidate you — they’ll do anything they can to prevent a union coming into their workplace.

“If we really had a free and fair way to form unions without fear of retaliation and reprisal,” she argues, “we would see tremendous growth.” While more recent data is hard to find, a 2017 survey from the Economic Policy Institute appears to back Shuler up on that point, with 48 percent of nonunion workers saying they’d vote to create a union in their workplace if they could.

A final impediment is one that hurt organized labor so much in the 1970s and 1980s — the perception that greedy unions can undercut corporate competitiveness. David Autor says that’s a particular bug of the American approach to unions.

“The structure of collective bargaining in the U.S. is problematic,” he says. “It’s fundamentally adversarial. It’s establishment by establishment. It’s a kind trench warfare.”

That makes Autor somewhat skeptical that the union movement is necessarily the best way to ensure worker rights in the rollout of AI. “I think we need a stronger framework for worker protection in the United States,” he says. “But will our 90-year-old union structure do that very effectively? I don’t want to say it can’t happen. I don’t say I don’t want it to happen. But it doesn’t seem very likely to happen.”

Autor says what might work better is the type of sectoral bargaining that happens in many western European countries, where, say, all auto workers essentially get the same contract, no matter which company they work for. (He acknowledges there’s not much political will for this, though progressives and some populist Republicans support it, and the AFL-CIO sees it as one way for workers to have a seat at the table.) Such an approach levels the competitive playing field for businesses, making them more likely to view labor as a partner, not an adversary. Autor also believes government regulation should play a role when it comes to protecting workers.

Broadly speaking, AI is one area where, at least at the moment, there’s political bipartisanship. In Congress, four senators — Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.); Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.); Todd Young (R-Ind.); and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) — have taken the lead on the issue, meeting frequently and organizing the AI Insight Forums to gather input from a wide array of voices. Meanwhile, last fall the Biden administration issued a sweeping executive order about AI that touches on everything from national security to protecting workers. Rather than laying out specific rules, the order mostly asks various federal agencies and departments to begin developing guidelines for AI. The devil — and the bipartisan fights — will likely be in the details.

When it comes to AI’s specific impact on the labor market, the politics seem particularly tricky for Republicans. Can they give the workers who are now part of their base protections from AI — while still appeasing a business class that’s focused on profits and wants low taxes and minimal regulation? It’s a challenging needle to thread. (Senators Young and Rounds didn’t respond to interview requests on the topic.)

Shuler says politicians and government officials have a long way to go before they can even become a voice in what’s happening. “These days I feel our regulatory environment, and our decision-makers, are so far behind the curve,” she says. It’s why she’s hopeful that, as people look for a kind of control they haven’t had in decades, they’ll turn somewhere else.

“Most people feel pretty scared and powerless when it comes to what’s on the horizon because there’s so much change happening,” she says. She mentions the ongoing impact of Covid-19, as well as climate change and now technology. “These are all big threats, and if you’re managing it by yourself, it’s pretty daunting. But if you’re coming together collectively in a union, you probably have a better shot at making it work for you.”

Alongside this is the fear of incompetence or inadequacy in navigating unfamiliar technological systems, which threatens self-efficacy and status within their field.

Title:

Content: There are no doubt that there are challenges facing us in life, in various aspects, including the practical aspect (job) where we face continuous developments, it is a very changing and constantly changing field of technology that continues to evolve, and the entry of new and modern technologies, at every stage of time, and this undoubtedly affects many aspects of life, from business, tasks and jobs, to trade, whether limited and emerging, or at the level of institutions and large companies.
Although we strive to be familiar with modern technologies, learn them, and even increase knowledge in various aspects, but their continuous nature, and the entry of continuous updates make what you have learned limited, and your knowledge of the management of this technology needs to be developed, it is not enough, or that dealing with those applications is flawed, which means that the technologies have changed completely, and this is a cumbersome process in the long term.
On the other hand, we find that modern technologies, and continuous updates, have a positive impact in the work environment, which is urgent developments keep pace with progress, and any delay or stop or lax to keep pace with them means that the train of development exceeds you, or that the new technology becomes more complex, and the lack of skill in harnessing and use, all of which means failure, or decline of your work, or low skill.
Therefore, the talk about the power of technology, and the entry of the digital world, is unacceptable, or words outdated, because we live in the digital age, and amid modern technologies, and seek to keep pace with technology, but we have reached the stage of artificial intelligence, mobility between information systems, cloud systems technology, and many others, techniques that must be learned and know their uses.
In our time, we have moved beyond email and instant chat, and we have new technologies that are constantly evolving.
Failure, regression, or slow understanding of modern technologies, or unfamiliarity with them, will affect your career, and soon it becomes clear what you suffer from, because tasks and work are not done efficiently or effectively, and you always suffer from a defect in achievement.
What is required is a quest for knowledge that does not stop, and ran towards enhancing and developing your information, keeping up with updates, and familiarity with new applications, hence the importance of attending courses held by employers, and entering workshops aimed at education, and training on modern technologies.
Although there are difficulties, professional and cognitive development can be continued to increase personal abilities and individual potential, and this is a personal investment that increases your abilities and your value in the labor market.
www.shaimaalmarzooqi.com

Other psychological factors contributing to resistance include loss of control over workflow, defensiveness about prior work methods, concern about increased workload, and uncertainty about the future.

Resistance can also result from organizational issues such as inadequate change management, lack of employee involvement in technology adoption decisions, and a mismatch between technology features and the real needs of its users .

In addition to personal and organizational causes, there are broader social and ethical concerns that influence resistance.

Title:

Content: Alert
Hualien strong earthquake helicopter rescued Datong Dali tribe 9 people grandmother: no medicine, can only eat wild vegetables dare not go out
Before you put it in your shopping cart, pay attention to the supermarket for raw meat.
Who ’ s Wrong with College Closure? Experts lament missed opportunities Lee Yuan-che ’ s book refutes doubts
I "Robot": How do theater text narratives imagine the relationship between AI and human organs?
【 Written by Hsieh Chen-yi (art critic) 】
“The theater is dead, Tony. ”
Don't you believe it yet? "
He thought, shaking his head.
It is not dead, it is only a change of form, and it may not be permanent … Some things are made of age, others are eternal.
The advent of this era is the result of a specific human culture, and eternity is the common result of all human culture.
The cultural person is the performer, creating a window for the human audience to display the culture, and thus to display its vision, ideals and purpose; and these displays are necessary for the continuity of culture and for the purpose of the species.
Dramatic art is as old as human civilization.
It transcends form, technology, and application, and is even longer than the modern worship of the god of machines. Although he is now temporarily worshipped by us, he is still misunderstood by the public.
The Darfsteller, 1955.
For the advent of the AI and man-machine era, theater art has long been demonstrated in its own history.
The theater space uses automaton and human performers to perform together, dating back to the ancient Greek theater era of the "deus ex machina" (robot god), with a suspended mechanical lifting device to allow the actors to play the role of extraterrestrial savior.
As a "non-human" prehistory of technology, in the humanoid robot's "bionic man" (android) entered the literary writing to decline, it began to enter the perceptual interface that separated from the traditional doll - not only about non-human objects increasingly towards highly imitating human attempts, but also about the physical value and drama of the real.
If you look back at the invention of the word "robot", it is derived from the Czech playwright Karel in 1920.
Karel Čapek's screenplay R.U.R.
Rossum, the inventor of the play, originally means "intelligent" (rozum) in Czech, and robota, the robot he created to replace human labor, means "hard work".
The robots that were originally slaves eventually wiped out humanity, becoming the rulers of the earth and launching a new wave of creation.
Since the establishment of the modern chemical industry society in the 20th century, there have been a large number of "human agency" propositions in art and culture in the past 100 years.
As the films Metropolis (1927) or Modern Times (1936) show, the advent of the age of automation has shown a strong distrust of machines as a modern product.
As a narrative setting of text propositions, the "robot against humanity" not only embodies the absence of subjectivity of the human spirit, but also expresses the existentialist crisis of the existence of "I".
American science fiction writer Walter Michael Miller Jr. ’ s 1955 novel “The Darfsteller ” tells the story of the 21st century theater in which there are no more real actors, but perfect and flawless robots performing on stage.
The protagonist, Tony, is an old-school actor who believes in the value of human body performance. He uses every means to interfere with and destroy the robot, in order to allow himself to stand on the stage once again to complete the final performance, in order to make the ultimate sacrifice to the theater art.
Interestingly, the author did not intend the reader to sympathize with Tony, but instead created an image of a preachy, old-fashioned old man, to justify and reflect on the sense of crisis brought about by the so-called “technological progress ”, based on what kind of ideological and value judgment.
The collaboration between AI and generative technologies and humans in the performing arts over the past half century has largely provided a new level of creativity.
However, as human beings as machine users, how can we more specifically imagine the narrative and problem consciousness of human agency in the performing arts?
Science Fiction Imagination and Ethics of Human Organ Relations
Although the famous "three laws of robots" (Note 1) in the novel "I, Robot" seems to have a major shift in the current AI era, but we are often exposed to many films and TV works, the general understanding of the "human agency relationship" is the first ethical problem, but also from the hidden concern of the three laws: robots will not develop human emotions, and then the opposite. Replacing and replacing humans?
The use of machines and data to reconstruct avatars of the dead has been a common theme in science fiction texts.
The ethical issues involved are also based on physical values and spiritual levels.
Tainan Opera Company "Solo Date" (2016) and the singing collective "Love (AI) Wife" (2022) also use AI as a substitute for the deceased lover. Is the intimacy of digital virtual enough to make up for the unfinished regret?
Xu Jiafui ’ s “Dark Dark ” (2018) uses digital technology combined with supernatural imagination to try to demonstrate the performance collaboration between real people and ghosts / non-humans by summoning the soul of the late dance master Tu Fangxun.
From “human-machine coexistence ” to“ being replaced by robots ” in the sense of civilization crisis, Louis Woggart Theatre ’ s “Fairy Tales and Legends ” (2019), or the“ Future Prescription ” (2019) of Qiqiao Theatre and Yu Theatre Taiwan (2019) explore what human values have been preserved and lost under the exchange of principal-subordinate relations after the change of technology.
Playwright Lin Meng-huan ’ s “Ark Trilogy ” (2017-2019) series (Note 2), on the basis of this, continues to investigate the regeneration of civilization, what should post-human and post-civilization do?
This foreboding of the collective human existential crisis, operated by Rimini Protokoll ’ s “Valley of Terror ” (2018), while providing the audience with a centralized robotic rationale as a starting point to reflect on themselves, also potentially ignites our political reflections on the human otherness.
The fear of dissent involved in the "Valley of Terror" theory, compared to the "human agency relationship", the ethical problems it brings to the future are probably more related to the exclusive problem of human beings.
At this point, we can not help but ask is that the common theater text in dealing with the AI and human agency narrative, is prone to our cognitive misunderstanding of the concept of "robot"?
Will the long-term focus on the “robot ” anthropomorphic crisis limit the physical life we imagine in the future, resulting in the misbridging of science fiction propositions?
"Human Organs" as Theatrical Methods and Aesthetic Experiments
“Science fiction ” and“ future ” have never been the same in literature.
As a science fiction text, there are already types of disasters, viruses, or plagues that are common in the narrative tradition. What are the differences and points of emphasis between "human agency" and these propositions?
So, how do we avoid making it easy on imagining AI propositions?
New media artist Wang Liansheng ’ s theatrical creation “Living Room ” (2022) combines AI, experimental sound, motion capture, interactive devices, and real-time generated images to simulate the daily lifestyle of future people.
However, behind the narrative of human agency relations, Wang Liansheng has not only applied AI and generative digital tools as a creative means for a long time, but also continued his creative method of thinking about media or organizational systems to combat the current mechanism.
In addition, the three main aspects of his past creative work: installation, audiovisual performance, and cross-field performance, are integrated in the Living Room.
Japanese director Hirata Oriza ’ s “Robot Five Parts ” (Note 3) is the result of his collaboration with robotics scholar Hiroshi Ishiguro at Osaka University to develop the“ Robot Theater Project ” in the form of robots as AI.
However, Hirata has been exploring the relationship between scientific activities and near-future society since the 1990s with the “Science Trilogy ” (Note 4), in which the relationship between humans and apes is also based on the core of“ human and non-human ”.
In addition, Hirata also put into practice the scientific method of directing “modern colloquial drama ” that he has always advocated, and consciously made a dialogue with Brecht ’ s“ alienated theater ” to make a viewing relationship, which in the macro view is more related to the dialectical return of Japanese realistic drama.
In other words, from the "science trilogy" to the "robot five", Hirata since the 1990s, the Asian concern and mass consciousness has a clear context, so that his later robot theater series is not only a simple "human machine relationship", but also a theater method set into practice.
In addition to focusing on propositions of AI and human-machine narratives, testing the boundaries of human agency relationships in aesthetic experiments has become particularly critical.
If it is said that the digital era has brought about any major changes, the trend of perceptual forms and sensory patterns should not be underestimated.
Lin Yihua ’ s “One by One ” (2021) was premiered in the era of the epidemic, and the creative results promoted by the limitations of reality have made the narrative effectiveness canceled by the virus, and they can only be forced to return to the real physical and technical problems – media conversion, instrumental application, and the validity of the physical body.
The fragmented and fluid performance structure and character actions in the play can be used to verify the perfect metaphor for the existence of the human subject as opposed to contemporary technology.
“City of Sin ” (2013), a collaboration between artist Wang Junjie and“ Luxurious Mechanic ”, is Taiwan ’ s first tech-media unmanned theater, using power installations, robotic arms, images and sound and light effects to replace live performances.
Later, Sodom Nights (2015) at the North American Pavilion used a fully automatic robotic unmanned theater to complete the creation experiment of high-density narrative but abstract aesthetic output.
In addition, due to the relationship of cross-disciplinary teamwork, it is possible to overcome the simple imagination of human agency relations on paper, and the straight-ball responds to the relationship of human cooperation, and also faces the future of contemporary technology theater.
In fact, AI artificial intelligence is a highly technical and logical computing digital tool, strictly speaking, the type of science fiction with AI as the subject should be more inclined to refer to the technical details and logic of the "hard SF" (hard SF).
However, most of the existing human-computer narratives in theater still use "science and technology narratives" as the sociological code of "soft SF", perhaps also related to the human-computer narratives we have received from popular culture for a long time. Although the soft and hard parts of the sci-fi genre may be fake issues, we may wish to ask: How can we continue to advance the premise of "theater art" The radical idea of human agency?
Perhaps, we can separate from "the practice of human organs exploring as a theater method" and "the practice of aesthetic experiments of human organs" as the first step forward.
(Note)
1.
"Three Laws of Robotics" by Isaac.
Isaac Asimov ’ s “Runaround ” (1942) in the I, Robot novel set out three basic rules of behavior for future robot science fiction texts: first, robots must not harm humans, or watch humans suffer harm; second, robots must obey human orders, unless orders and the first law occur. Conflict; Third, the robot can protect itself without violating the first or second laws.
2.
Lin Meng-huan's "Ark Trilogy" series includes "Let's Move Forward!"
The Ark (2017), Earth Self-Defense Force (2018), and Alfredo (2019); followed by three integrated versions of Ah!
Forward, Earth. ” (2021).
3.
Hirata ’ s “Robot Five Parts ” are“ Working Me ” (2008), “Robot Deep in the Forest ” (2010),“ Goodbye ” (2010), “Three Sisters – Humanoid Robot ” (2012), and“ Transformation – Humanoid Robot ” (2014).
4.
Hirata's "Science Trilogy" is "The Spirit of Science" (1990), "The Arctic Apes" (1992) and "Balkan Zoological Park" (1997).
[See PAR Performing Arts Magazine March 2024 for full content; subscribe to PAR Performing Arts e-Edition
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Tools or adversaries? — The exploration and struggle between artificial intelligence and the performing arts
If there is a parrot that can answer any question, I will not hesitate to claim that it is an intelligent creature.
— Denis Diderot Believe it or not, artificial intelligence (AI) and the performing arts have been entangled for more than a century — in the Czech playwright Carrel.
In Karel Čapek ’ s 1920 work Rossum ’ s Universal Robots, the term “robot ” is used for the first time to describe a humanoid machine with the same thinking and action abilities as humans. From HAL 9000 in Space Odyssey 2001 to Skynet in Terminator, the destruction of humans seems to always be their top priority once machines start thinking.
The Loss, Disappearance and Vibration of the Body: A Review of People / Institutions in the Dance of Technology
In recent years, the creative axis commonly used in the "technology dance" (Note 1) has often focused on the boundary between technology, machines and the human body, and the entanglement and pulling of the two.
Unfortunately, the body and subjectivity issues involved in the works have not been fully discussed and studied.
I "Robot": How do theater text narratives imagine the relationship between AI and human organs?
“The theater is dead, Tony. ”
Don't you believe it yet? "
He thought, shaking his head.
It is not dead, it is only a change of form, and it may not be permanent … Some things are made of age, others are eternal.
The advent of this era is the result of a specific human culture, and eternity is the common result of all human culture.
The cultural person is the performer, creating a window for the human audience to display the culture, and thus to display its vision, ideals and purpose; and these displays are necessary for the continuity of culture and for the purpose of the species.
Dramatic art is as old as human civilization.
It transcends form, technology, and application, and is even longer than the modern worship of the god of machines. Although he is now temporarily worshipped by us, he is still misunderstood by the public.
The Darfsteller, 1955.
Zhu Luhao: From Monkey King to Ghost King is not just another challenge for the performance
From a period of anecdotes, the late Western theater theorist Brecht in his bedroom in Berlin, hanging a painting of the Qing dynasty painter Gao Qipei, according to speculation, and what is his relationship with Zhong? Why is he living with this painting in the final stage of his life? In 1997, when he was about to go to Berlin and Hamburg, Germany to tour "Zhong Kui", he accidentally suffered burns before his tour in Taiwan - they exchanged words with each other, and then intertwined and entangled.
I thought I was going to talk about Brecht and Zhong Kui, but in fact, Zhu Luhao, who is at the center of the story, how to play and how to interpret the story that he no longer talked about?
"Kagami" and "Time" Ryuichi Sakamoto Far Away, So Close
Awe always causes people to draw a line and keep their distance, as if worrying that if they come closer to His Holiness, the sacred will be violated.
Therefore, it is difficult not to talk about “Professor ” Ryuichi Sakamoto with a posture of looking up outside the fence, although the name“ Professor ” was actually taken out by Yukihiro Takahashi, a friend of his former band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), with a bit of humor, which is more like a nickname, because Takahashi deeply admires Sakamoto ’ s ability to explain music theory.
Phenomenon of the Year 03: The belated # MeToo moment changes the look of performing arts production
Search the PAR Performing Arts magazine database, excluding plot introductions, historical events or rhetorical metaphors, the earliest record of the keyword "sexual harassment" is a 1995 article on the development of national music (which happens to be the annual review).
At the time of the establishment of the Department of Traditional Music at the National Academy of Arts (now the National Taipei University of the Arts), the article mentioned the establishment of a case of alleged sexual harassment by a professor of ethnic music at another school (Note 1).
Once again, this is the New York report of Urban Art Wave 2017.
This time it has a loud name "# MeToo" - the hashtag represents the push of social media, and the word "MeToo" makes personal experience no longer just a case, but a collective experience and a social movement.
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Workers may worry about the ethical ramifications of technology companies’ practices, concerns over digital privacy, workplace surveillance, and the socio-economic impact of automation, including increasing inequality and precarious employment.

These issues contribute layers of distrust and apprehension, making some employees reluctant to embrace new technological tools without clear organizational policies and support that address these concerns .

Examples of 21st century technological resistance manifest in various ways in the workplace.

Title:

Content: This content is part of the Conference Coverage: Everything Enterprise Connect 2021: News, trends and insights

UC user adoption training must evolve for hybrid work

Learn why industry leaders at Enterprise Connect said user adoption training is key to UC success in the hybrid workplace -- and how employee experience platforms can help.

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed how people work. The adoption and use of unified communications tools, for example, skyrocketed to support remote workers. But, as workflows have changed, organizations must alter their approach to supporting end-user adoption of new tools.

At the start of the pandemic, organizations rolled out whatever tools they felt necessary to support remote work. As a result, employees learned how to use the tools on the fly as the traditional methods of user adoption training -- such as classroom-style trainings in the office -- were no longer possible.

Now, as organizations have become more strategic about their unified communications (UC) investments to support a hybrid workplace, they must also consider employee training to ensure adoption success. There is a direct correlation between preparing end users before deploying a new tool and user productivity post-deployment, COMMfusion LLC President Blair Pleasant said.

Most end users who felt they were well prepared with training before a deployment believed the new tool made them more productive, according to a BCStrategies survey of end users and IT leaders. Of those end users who said they weren't adequately trained, only 17% said they felt more productive.

Pleasant and other industry analysts and leaders spoke at the Enterprise Connect virtual conference. One key topic was the importance of supporting user adoption in a hybrid workplace to ensure UC deployment success and employee productivity, regardless of location.

Hybrid work means new training models

As organizations think about user adoption programs in a hybrid workplace, they have to ensure training is equal for both remote and office-based employees, said Eric Hanson, chief marketing officer at cloud-based communications provider Fuze.

Some user adoption training methods, like classroom-style instruction, will be set aside as employees work remotely. Other training strategies will emerge, like Yammer community forums, to create more of an online discussion, said Alan Shen, CTO at IT management software provider Unify Square.

Video training will also be key, especially to recreate the feeling of in-office training. For more successful video training, organizations should consider virtual events that combine real-time activities with asynchronous, on-demand content, Hanson said.

Training structured with synchronous and asynchronous content can address the different ways people learn and create a more engaging experience, he said. On-demand materials can also be used for reference after a training session.

"Adoption isn't something that happens right after deployment," Hanson said.

However, using video for training can be challenging, despite the overall growth of video across organizations, Pleasant said.

"The problem is end users can do it on their own time, but it doesn't mean they're going to," she said.

Training goes beyond business workflows

Organizations need to remember that UC tools are not just for business workflows and communication.

"When deploying new technology, we just think about the technology," Pleasant said. "We don't think about the organizational changes, the cultural impact and change management."

Rolling out a new application or system is not the main and end goal. The deployment needs to help employees collaborate more effectively, she said.

For example, many employees have used UC tools not just for collaboration workflows, but to maintain company culture and personal connections with their co-workers during the pandemic. User adoption training could include educating employees on how to use a new tool for social communications, like virtual happy hours, to support team cohesion, Shen said.

Employee experience platforms support user adoption

While training is key to boost user adoption, a major roadblock to adoption is the actual experience when using the tools. According to a global Omdia survey on the future of work, the biggest barrier to achieving successful outcomes with digital workplace technology is employee resistance.

"It's not a surprise as employees and line-of-business decision-makers have an idea of what tools they need to be successful, and IT isn't listening to them," Omdia analyst Tim Banting said.

According to the survey, 45% of companies said the IT department determines the need for workplace tools and makes the final recommendation. Only 15% of companies involve other stakeholders in the business when making buying decisions.

The result of not including employees and lines of business in buying decisions is not achieving ROI because employees aren't using the tools, he said.

Employee experience platforms can help highlight where user adoption is faltering and where more training may be necessary.

Addressing the gap between performance and experience

The operational data and application performance metrics that IT sees do not always reflect what employees are experiencing, said Johnny Russ, general manager of employee experience management at Qualtrics, a provider of employee experience tools.

IT may see data about the tools employees are logging in to or the number of help desk tickets filed, but they don't see data around situations where employees are logged in to an app but having frustrating UX.

"We're often missing appropriate understanding of why this is happening," Russ said.

Employee experience platforms, such as Qualtrics and Microsoft Viva, can provide greater insight into how employees are engaging with tools through features such as training effectiveness surveys, pulse surveys and AI-driven analytics. Without these metrics, IT could have a hard time addressing UX.

Or, as Pleasant put it, "You can't fix what you don't measure."

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Labor unrest continues in sectors affected by automation and AI, for instance, among unionized autoworkers or professional groups like writers, who collectively raise concerns about job displacement and demand influence over how new technologies are integrated.

Workplace resistance may also surface as difficulty adapting to rapid digital transformation initiatives and hybrid work models, causing friction and productivity loss.

Some employees may openly reject new software or tools, while others may express subtle forms of resistance through disengagement or vocal criticism.

These behaviors highlight the ongoing negotiation between technology’s pervasive advancement and workers’ needs for security and fairness .

Digital transformation itself has altered workplace communication significantly, often increasing stress due to communication overload, lack of emotional cues inherent in digital exchanges, blurred boundaries between work and personal life, and expectations for immediate responsiveness.

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Content: Elon Musk fired his staff with a letter.
This is how online communication has made the job market tougher.
During the 1998 film “You ’ ve Got Mail, ” starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, the tone of the e-mail alert was very comforting for the two protagonists, as they knew they would read pleasant sociable words from the sender.
But contrary to what the scenes of the romantic film showed, the tone of the e-mail alert in real life may carry a bad surprise news that you did not expect.
This is what happened to Twitter employees this month.
An employee who has been working for years somewhere, on his daily way to work, hears from his phone an alert telling him that he receives an e-mail, quickly passes his eyes on the shocking message that the company he works for is going through “the difficult process of shrinking the global workforce, which will affect the number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to the company, ” and that he has to check his email again at a specific time. He'll be fired.
That was what actually happened with Twitter employees after billionaire Elon Musk took over the site, according to the Washington Post.
After receiving the email, some workers have already lost access to internal systems such as email service and the Slack messaging app, one of the company ’ s employees told the newspaper that in the hours after receiving the message, the number of employees began to dwindle in Slack channels, people were falling like flies.
Imagine years of your life and hard work ending up for somewhere with a dry, direct email.
You won ’ t see a grateful look in your manager ’ s eye for your efforts, you won ’ t hear the sorry tone of voice that tries to ease the decision and tells you that no one wanted this but it was forced against everyone, there is no human contact here and you don ’ t even get the right feelings of gratitude and regret from your workplace after years of effort, there is only electronic communication, and dry language that tells you specific information and actions to do.
Harsh work environments
It can be considered that electronic communication has contributed - in some way - to the increase of the severity of the different labor markets, not only dismissal through the electronic space, the severity of electronic communication imposed itself and tightened its grip even on the steps of the business cycle itself, after changing the way companies communicate with employees, customers and suppliers.
More recently, the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has accelerated this huge shift in communication towards the point of no return.
During the epidemic, many organizations reimagined their communication systems with their employees, replacing them in favor of flexible working from home in whole or in part.
Digital communication has become the leading force in this new way of working.
The definition of electronic communication at work includes all forms of online communication of an organization or company, from the use of electronic messages to the transmission of information via digital media (2).
As electronic communication has become prevalent in many organizations and companies, there is therefore more dealing with video conferencing tools such as Zoom, and messaging channels such as Slack or WhatsApp, which also means a shift in the culture of communication and communication between the workplace and employees.
Good workplace communication ensures employees have the information they need to perform well, build a positive work environment, and eliminate potential deficiencies.
Effective communication must convey information accurately, while maintaining or improving human relationships.
This year, an expert market survey found that 28% of employees cited poor communication as a reason for not being able to finish projects on time (3).
The Inbox That Changes Our Lives
Well, email in particular has had a profound impact on communities by changing how humans communicate.
It has significantly reduced the use of traditional mail, with a 2013 study finding that email has achieved 92% replacement of written messages as a means of personal communication.
A simple observation of the reality around you now can see that it may not be limited to traditional mail, e-mail has replaced social visits and phone calls as well.
At work, companies and large organizations use email systems as an important communication link between management and employees and between employees and each other. Your manager does not need to come to your office or call you or even call you on the phone to ask you for a task.
It is true that business messages can now be received via various chat apps available on smartphones, but email is still the most prevalent form of electronic communication within organizations, and the increasing use of mobile devices in business has given the email experience a new dimension (5).
Thanks to email, employees can interact and collaborate without having to have a face-to-face conversation, which is not entirely positive: according to a paper published by Cyber Psychology, a lack of direct communication often leads to misunderstandings, especially when it comes to humor or sarcasm, which can reduce communication effectiveness.
Although one of the most important advantages of electronic communication is speed in the completion of tasks and work, rapid communication is not necessarily a good communication, as the excessive use of e-mail in communication leads to many losses.
A company with 100 employees can expect to lose approximately $450,000 a year or more due to serious email errors, inefficiencies, and misunderstandings.
Poor writing skills are one of the biggest problems with email.
A recent study by the National Writing Commission found that U.S. companies spend as much as $3.1 billion annually to address the writing deficiencies of their employees.
These shortcomings constitute ambiguity in the required statement, incomplete information and excessive information, as well as among the most prominent errors that the mail is written in a harsh or demanding tone.
On the other hand, sending departments dozens of emails is a growing problem for many workers.
Sometimes employees are overwhelmed with follow-up emails, which may force them to ignore other important job duties.
On the flip side, managers who spend a lot of time reading and responding to emails from partners, suppliers, employees, and customers have less time to train and motivate their subordinates.
But the costs of email ultimately fall disproportionately on the recipient, who has to deal with excessive amounts of messages and requests as quickly as possible (5).
Less communication and more stress.
Workplace communication may have been a source of stress and anxiety for employees and workers long before the digital age.
Imagine your boss coming out of his office and telling you to catch up with him in his office, or calling you to get a status report on a particular project, these types of situations always generate stress and anxiety.
You may think that electronic communication has eased the severity of this because it is no longer required to be direct communication, and you no longer have to control the emotions of your face and the tone of your voice and body language if you hear from your manager what bothers you, because all he will get from your reaction, in the case of electronic communication, is a few words he will read from behind his screen.
With the shift to new technology to facilitate conversations, communication has become easier and faster, but its effectiveness has been significantly reduced.
After the boundaries between our professional and private lives collapsed, the employee ’ s communication with the manager or employer is no longer limited to official working hours, the employee may be eating dinner or putting his children to bed while receiving a work letter from his company; creating a sense of the need to work 24 / 7.
Additionally, the speed of digital communication can make employees feel that every message they receive requires an immediate response; which in turn creates more stress.
The researchers found that when employees receive an email after working hours, they tend to overestimate the speed at which the sender expects a response.
This phenomenon is known as "email urgency bias" and has been linked to lower well-being and higher levels of job stress (7).
Also, there is an additional level of anxiety represented by those three small points that indicate that the person opposite you is writing a message to you at the moment, when these points appear next to the name of your boss, they give you time to imagine and analyze what he may be saying excessively, and because they know you are connected to the Internet, there is pressure to respond as quickly as possible, even if you are doing something else.
It can be said that electronic communication has managed to create a whole new layer of complexity in dealing during the work, instead of direct communication that allows to explain the intended meaning and communicate it more smoothly and allows to ask questions and get a direct and quick answer to them, it turns into a long series of messages on professional communication platforms.
(8).
Morning messages screaming at you!
Let's give you more hair, Beta.
Imagine waking up in the morning to an email in your inbox written entirely in capital letters, that message excites your senses, and makes you pay attention much faster than the cup of coffee you sip.
By using the “Caps Lock ” key and putting an exclamation mark at the end, your co-worker or boss has done the equivalent of yelling at you during a direct communication.
These “glaring ” emails are on the rise dramatically in different work environments (9).
In a 2009 study, more than 90% of professionals surveyed said they had experienced abusive and possibly abusive email exchanges at work.
During the same study, research was conducted into the impact of cyberbullying in the workplace on employee job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intention to quit.
The survey results showed that e-rudeness was negatively associated with employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and employees who experienced e-rudeness were also more likely to quit their jobs or engage in negative behavior against their organization (10).
Studies have also shown that dealing with rude emails at work can create long-lasting stresses and affect the recipient ’ s well-being.
In a simulation experiment, participants who received such messages from their boss experienced more negative emotions, and found it difficult to continue participating in work tasks and answering questions correctly.
During the study, 84 participants completed a series of math tasks while interacting with a non-supportive supervisor via email.
Data was collected on energy, mood, ability to perform tasks and participate.
The results indicated that participants reported higher levels of negative impact and lower levels of energy after working with a non-supportive supervisor, compared to the group that did the same things while receiving an email from a supportive supervisor.
In addition, participants who received negative mail performed significantly worse on math tasks (11).
The stress associated with email rudeness can also pass into family life, where the employee ’ s family bears the brunt of the stress caused by email rudeness.
A study of couples indicated that employees conveyed their stress to their partner over the weekend.
(12)
Finally, let ’ s point out that email rudeness doesn ’ t just mean outright insult, it also includes ignoring you from the other party.
A special study in this regard suggests that there are two distinct forms of impolite emails: the first is insulting remarks or active rudeness, which are messages of an aggressive, overt nature.
The second type is ignoring or silent treatment, which some consider negative rudeness, which in turn leaves people stuck and struggling with their negative thoughts and uncertainties (13).
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Sources:
Source: The Island

Such conditions can exacerbate resistance or dissatisfaction with new technologies that are intended to improve productivity but instead contribute to cognitive and emotional strain .

Title:

Content: Technology in the face of democracy
In September 2021, data scientist Frances Hogan resigned her position at Facebook and then revealed tens of thousands of pages of the company ’ s documents, research and correspondence, which were submitted to Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The documents, which sparked a storm of hate and lawsuits against Facebook and its CEO, indicate that the platform not only affects the mental health of adolescents, enables the spread of populist hate speech, and enhances the work of human trafficking gangs, but the company is aware of these drawbacks, and is either satisfied with them or unable to reduce them; contrary to what Mark Zuckerberg says about the platform ’ s ability and algorithms to provide a safer environment for teenagers. To contribute to the promotion of democratic values and the reduction of hate speech.
In this article, I do not want to try to prove the company ’ s intention or claim, but rather to trace the reasons that made such phenomena possible, whether on Facebook, Instagram or other social media platforms; which will lead us to the conclusion that this case does not apply to Facebook alone, and it is not related to someone ’ s intention or disability, but it is a fundamental characteristic of all the tech giants and determine how they work and dominate their business model. This is what the American economist Shoshana Zuboff calls “behavioral surplus value. ”
In Zuboff ’ s view, the tech giants of today ’ s world are operating on a single business model that Google established after the dot-com bubble in 2008 — one that doesn ’ t stop selling consumer data, information, and surveillance — what Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism, ” but rather establishes what Zuboff calls the“ prediction goods market, ” a market that relies on collecting user information from social networks and converting it into algorithms. able to predict their behavior.
These algorithms and their results are then sold to marketers, contestants in election races, or authoritarian governments to monitor consumers more broadly and make their control more monopolistic in the market.
Zuboff ’ s analysis will be very useful in understanding the phenomenon, which leads us to trace its historical roots in the first section of the article.
It seems that we will be facing a fundamental thesis that we will have to criticize, and this criticism is the first objective of the article.
There is a thesis led by Zuboff herself and shared by many of the top technicians in these companies, and a number of commentators and democratic politicians, all of whom argue that the phenomena revealed by the Hogan documents and other similar phenomena are real, but they seem to see it as a tax to be paid for the promised fruits of the technical world, and that algorithms are able to correct its course by themselves, especially Zuboff. Inside it is led by the “top minds of the business world. ”
The second argument the article will address is that a mere commodity such as the “prediction market commodity ” is hostile to democracy, the rule of law, equality, and privacy.
It is true that “surveillance capitalism ” is part of monopoly capitalism, but I would argue that it goes beyond this, and that its effects extend from the economy to all spheres of social life, especially its negative effects on the future of democracy.
The third thing we focus on is that falling into a pessimistic vision of humanity ’ s future under technology is just another facet of the rosy narrative promoted by tech giants of the story of the inevitable rise of technology, but in its pessimistic version.
The emergence of the forecasting market and behavioral surplus value
After the rise of neoliberal capitalism following the waves of inflation and recession in the 1970s, the authors of neoliberal programs decided that the policies of state intervention in the economy and the extension of social protection for the people were no longer profitable.
Neoliberalism retained the core elements of classical economic liberalism, such as freedom and individualism, but the role of the state in social protection and welfare programs was hotly contested by policymakers and legislators.
While some countries in Europe have pursued so-called systemic liberalism aimed at maintaining and expanding social protection programmes, notably Germany, Britain and the United States have gone the other way, reducing the role of the state in the economy and expanding market freedom, trade and international lending institutions at the expense of social spending.
Hence the story of monopolistic technology as we know it today began, coinciding with the collapse of the value of the shares of major technology companies in the so-called dot-com bubble in 2001, which was followed by severe frustration with the future of technology and its promise and ability to develop capitalism.
After that, Google took a step that will henceforth define the future of tech companies and their practices; the move is to abandon its hostility to advertising gains due to shareholder pressure.
Google has decided to increase advertising revenue through hell, which has opened the door for the rest of the companies to follow suit by monopolizing access to its users ’ data and using it in online promotion and marketing services, which has long been known as “data exhaustion. ”
Using its superior analytical capabilities, Google has adopted a new way of making money by building algorithms that can predict consumer behavior; from monitoring your online activity, for example, the algorithms recognize your buying habits and preferences and ways of diversifying your sources of consumption, and of course, the level and types of spending, and even your reluctance to buy a particular product when you receive an ad for another.
These algorithms provide sellers with not only real-time information about consumer preferences, but also predictions of consumer preferences in the near future.
With this behavioral revolution, excess data has become the basis for new prediction markets that we now know as targeted advertising.
This is what Zuboff calls “behavioral surplus-value, ” where a user ’ s online behavior, obscene and monopolized data, becomes a mine for value extraction and profit.
Google does not care about the consumer and his decisions, and this data is often taken without consent or acknowledgement from the consumer.
This new type of “prediction goods market ” quickly became a role model for all major Silicon Valley companies, and advertising became as important to Google as the development of the search engine on which the company was founded.
When Google went public in 2004, the company revealed that after adopting the plan, it increased its revenue from 2001 to 2004 by more than 3,500 percent.
Zuboff points out that Google CEO Sheryl Sandberg ’ s move to Facebook represented a magical, contagious transition to this new plan based on behavioral surplus value extraction, or “prediction goods trade, ” which is no longer limited to Silicon Valley companies since 2008, but has moved to sectors such as insurance, retail, healthcare, finance, entertainment, education, transportation, and so on, creating a“ new production pattern. ” Zubov is a whole “new environment ” of suppliers, producers, customers and market makers.
In that market, every product or service starts with “smart ” or“ customized, ” every device connects to the internet, and every “digital assistant ” is simply an interface for a supply chain of behavioral data that helps predict the future of what Zuboff calls the“ surveillance economy. ”
The “prediction goods market ” merges three categories into one:“ user, consumer, and consumer data, ” and this triad is henceforth just multiple facets of a single phenomenon, which Zuboff calls “indigenous people ” in the style of the colonial invasion and exploitation model.
Today we do not lack a plethora of expressions that attempt to describe what the technological market has changed the structure of global capitalism.
We will find “algorithmic capitalism, ”“ cognitive capitalism, ” “communicative capitalism, ”“ data capitalism, ” “digital capitalism, ”“ information capitalism, ” “platform capitalism, ”“ surveillance capitalism, ” and “virtual capitalism, ” to name a few.
Recently, then, capitalism is abandoning itself and retreating into a world of “data emperors, ” which is why this phenomenon has been called“ digital feudalism, ” “technological feudalism, ”“ information feudalism, ” or simply “new feudalism. ”
But if tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are not accumulating their wealth through capitalism ’ s old exploitative mechanisms of labor itself, and while today ’ s production process is not based on manufacturing, but on monopolistic control over data sets and algorithms to extract advertising revenues generated elsewhere in the capitalist economy, is this a new stage of capitalism?
The big companies that rely on technology do not make a profit, but their market value continues to rise due to speculation in the markets, representing what is known as the model of "selling growth", is this model considered a transgression of capitalism?
Is it a new form of “digital expropriation ” that fuels a new logic of accumulation that can be seen as a structural change in the structure of capitalism, similar to the model of“ accumulation by plunder ” posited by David Harvey in The New Imperialism?
Or is it, as Cedric Durand put it in his book “Technical Feudalism, ” that the tech giants are effectively subjecting us to their rule by controlling information and knowledge in a“ knowledge monopoly, ” thus creating ever more sophisticated means of seizing surplus value without getting involved in the production process?
Darwinism and counter-Darwinism
The main problem of technology today, and the way it extracts value through monopoly, is not merely that it is a monopoly, not that it leads us to a social reality similar to Big Brother ’ s world, but that it is based on a structural transformation of the labor market.
The merging of knowledge with technology and markets means that everyone who has nothing to sell will be despised, and a new kind of individualism will triumph, not the “liberal individualism ” promised by the liberal project, but a technical individualism that cares so much about the“ user-consumer-data ” triad. Achille Mbembe: “The Nasi ” who will be every day the firewood of a new“ trend ”, a new empty battle, incitement against minorities, or the fire of populism that has become the hallmark of our time.
What matters is that the individual is a vessel of data, a catalyst for more consumption of this class struggle that denies its nature on the Internet, for more gain, the Hogan documents published by the Wall Street Journal tell us.
It will now seem to every user aware that “contempt ” is the basic commodity of the Internet, as the statistics contained in the documents indicate that the most popular and promoted materials are the materials inciting hatred and intolerance against minorities and insults and self-generated nonsense every day, which are most able to acquire interested people who volunteer their data to participate in battles for gains, as leaked studies from Facebook Labs tell us. A humanistic library containing the most accurate information of community members that is updated in real time for the purposes of censorship and social regulation, as China ’ s experience tells us.
So it doesn ’ t stop at monopoly, it doesn ’ t break down into a pessimistic picture as terms like “feudalism ” or“ big brother ” are trying to tell us.
The problem with such critical attempts is that they confront conflict-based technical Darwinism with a counter-Darwinism stemming from what American businessman and writer Alvin Toffler in the 1960s called the “shock of the future, ” a disappointment in the ambition of resisting capitalism.
These thinkers now present technology to us as a new stage in our human history, as if it were irrelevant to the recent capitalist past.
Technology and its hostility to democracy
The philosophers of the Enlightenment preached historical progress, a linear time on a straight path to better and higher, but the irony of the history of progress is that every historical frustration we have experienced has turned the idea of progress against itself and portrayed history as an ominous march towards further degeneration and ugliness.
The present of technology is no exception: the fleeting hopes of the rise of technology, which heralded a future in which machine and man are allied against evil, have been transformed into an antithesis that foreshadows the merging of machine and evil into a tragedy in which man becomes the victim.
We just have to start by accepting that every sinister scenario we invent to terrorize ourselves is only a part of our history, built by human beings like us, and can be transcended.
Western intellectual traditions have traditionally explained and understood the modern political world through a dichotomy between the private and the public, with the private sphere centered on the family, personal life and self-reflection, and the public centered on public morality, communion, governance of the state, administration, and institution.
But there is a third scope proposed by the famous German political thinker Hanna Arendt that mediates these two arguments: the “social ” sphere where collective feelings, feelings, and preferences are concentrated among connected groups of people — a set of values that people share without agreement that express their hopes, moral biases, and vision for the future.
When democracy defeated Nazism in World War II, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s coincided with the rise of globalization, a set of public values had settled in the West, with the private between the values of conservative Christian families and the values of generalized individualism, dominated by capitalist values, the state of institutions, the free economy, and the decline of the welfare state.
The social sphere is dominated by the values of democracy, individualism, scientific appreciation, technical optimism, and other values that neoliberal capitalism reluctantly shared with democracy under the pressure of labor movements and social participation.
However, a greater aspiration is emerging within the institutions of neoliberalism, which has tended increasingly to abandon democratic values, with greater emphasis on reaping the benefits of globalization and wealth accumulation, and withdrawing from the industrial to the financial economy.
At the height of this ambition, technology and its investments waited for the attention they deserved.
Technology today is taking over human history, and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger once warned us that the problem of technology does not stop at the fact that our perception of the future is always linked to technology in a way that prevents us from imagining any future at all without thinking about it, but goes beyond that to the essence of technology itself, the social motivations behind its creation, reliance and attachment to it.
If it is the case that we are looking at technology as a savior who will arrive in the future to solve our tragedies at one time, and seeing it as a catastrophe that drags the present into an ominous future at another time, the tragedy here is not due to technology as a set of machines or tools to extract value, but rather to what led us to turn between these two extremes.
There are several reasons why the technical age is not a transgression of neoliberalism, not even a transgression of the worst.
One of these reasons is that the crisis of neoliberalism has manifested itself in a set of chronic problems that technology does not overcome and replace with other problems that require new thinking, but rather radicalize, expand and transfer to other spheres of social and individual life; or simply generalize them.
The Norwegian-American economist Thorstein Veblen argued more than a decade ago in his book The Theory of the Luxury Class that the capitalist class by its very nature tends to withdraw from the burden of engaging in the productive process, which culminates with the expansion of monetary capitalism and the increasing transformation of relations between the capitalist and other producers, producers and workers into creditors and debtors. Technical "user-consumer-consumer data", in which the debtor himself becomes the user, the worker, the consumer and the data miner that feeds the forecasting market.
This brings us to a second crisis caused by neoliberalism, the crisis of employment, which is usually presented as a problem independent of the rest of the productive system that gave rise to it.
It goes without saying that the tendency of capital to invest in debt products will attract a large amount of assets that were previously earmarked for investment in commodity production, which will have a negative impact on employment opportunities.
But if we look at the essence of this technological triad, we find that technological transformation is at the heart of this process: less reliance on labor, less wage labor, because the very existence of the triad “user ” on the Internet produces value by itself through an algorithm that works in a vacuum of its own, which is originally a set of programming phrases written by one or more people.
The programmer ’ s income may rise to unprecedented levels, and indeed this is happening, but on the other hand, the chances of employment will be very low.
Most importantly, it brings us to a third dilemma: social inequality will increase dramatically, as “knowledge workers ” will have all the opportunities, while anyone who finds nothing to sell in the commodity market relationships of forecasting will be shamed.
We shall live, or rather we shall live, in a new division of social positions in which knowledge becomes, by definition, logarithmic knowledge, and there will be no value left for any other profession that is unable to transform itself into the language of zeros and ones.
One of the most important characteristics of the modern technical sector is that it operates, to a significant extent, outside the framework of the law governing the rest of social life, in a situation similar to that of the medieval church of independent rule.
Technology ’ s work outside the law is due to two things: the “computational ambiguity ” inherent in the very nature of its work.
Western critics and philosophers of the law have long complained about the ambiguity of the law, about the multiplicity of cases of application of the law, and about incidents of social and human life, but now we are faced with a phenomenon so vague that the legislator is unable to understand the subject to which he will be asked to enact a legal framework to regulate his work.
We have all seen the expressions of the congressional committee at the hearing of Mark Zuckerberg against the background of his accusation of misuse of Facebook subscriber data for political purposes, a scene not without the horror on Zuckerberg ’ s face, but the signs of surprise and misunderstanding that the members of the hearing committee, as people of the world war generation unfamiliar with the Internet, are unmistakable.
The second thing that surrounds the mystery of the technology is the topics it deals with and depends on its transformation into commodities, and the pace at which this rapid and unprecedented process took place in history, a process that has no legal precedent, of course.
Did Google, for example, have to obtain permits from countries around the world to photograph its streets and monitor its maps in order to develop the Google Maps app?
Did an algorithm to track phones to detect traffic jams on motorways and pedestrians need the approval of a constitutional court in a country?
The answer is no, of course.
Even the most democratic legal solutions, especially those that the EU is doing through its various institutions and are already appreciated, trying to reduce the opportunities and possibilities of the technical monopoly, and trying to protect the privacy of its citizens against the transformation of their data into resources for extraction of value; they all seem to remain worthless for two reasons: First, they are trying to legalize the extraction of data that should not exist in the first place. Second, political and authoritarian uses for security control are attractive to any country with borders and sovereignty, especially at the first intimidation of its political borders, the harm of refugees to its national unity, or the harmony of its social fabric, as the case of China clearly illustrates.
Finally, technology relies on undermining individual self-determination, individual autonomy, and decision-making rights in favor of the unfettered flow of behavioral data that feeds markets that are ours but not ours.
This anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian tyrant is best described as a market-driven coup from above: the overthrow of a people hidden within a digital Trojan horse, without finally being able to emancipate.
Based on the power of human inclusion within it, this coup achieves exclusive concentrations of knowledge and power, that is, it is a form of tyranny that feeds on people, but not people.
Paradoxically, this coup is celebrated as “personalizing ” things, while ignoring, transcending, and replacing everything that is personal.
Source: The Island

To build a positive working rapport with colleagues resistant to new technology, a number of effective strategies exist.

It is crucial to demonstrate compassion and empathy toward their concerns, ensuring they feel heard and understood through active listening.

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Content: Here are 10 effective tips for dealing with difficult coworkers
Published: 26 July 2023 - 08: 09
Source: Shutterstock
Every workplace will necessarily encounter difficult co-workers who will test our patience and see how well we can keep our cool under pressure.
Dealing with these people can be annoying and even counterproductive.
However, developing the skill of coping with difficult co-workers is key to having a productive work environment.
To help you deal with these difficult situations elegantly and efficiently, this article will review ten proven and reliable strategies.
Here are 10 effective tips for dealing with difficult coworkers
1.
Compassion and understanding
Compassion and understanding are two of the most important skills for dealing with difficult coworkers.
Try to put yourself in their position and think about their views.
Acknowledge that they may face challenges in their personal or professional lives, leading to their unwanted behavior.
Empathy can help build a good relationship and foster positive communication.
Source: Shutterstock
2.
Active Listening
Active listening is a vital skill when dealing with difficult co-workers.
Give them your full attention when they voice their concerns or complaints.
Believe their feelings and opinions, even if you disagree with them.
Often people just want to be heard, and attentive listening can relieve stress and improve communication.
3.
Maintaining Professionalism
It is essential to show professionalism at all times when dealing with difficult situations.
Avoid getting into heated discussions or letting your feelings govern your reactions.
Instead, respond calmly and specifically and focus on finding a constructive solution to the problem.
4.
Search for common points
Find common points with your difficult colleagues.
Identifying common goals or interests contributes to building a foundation for cooperation and understanding.
Discovering similarities may lead to more productive and collaborative discussions.
5.
Setting boundaries
It ’ s important to set and clarify your personal boundaries if your difficult colleague regularly crosses them.
Kindly let them know that certain behaviors are unacceptable and how they affect your ability to function effectively.
Stay consistent on these boundaries to maintain a positive working relationship.
6.
Avoid chatter and grumbling
Refrain from gossiping or complaining to other colleagues when you have difficulties because of your difficult colleagues.
This behavior can damage your professional reputation and increase negative energy.
Instead, talk directly with the person concerned and if necessary, seek advice from the HR department or supervisor.
7.
Collaborating on solutions
Shift your attention from problems caused by your difficult colleagues to collaborating on solutions.
Discuss issues openly and collaboratively to identify a solution that improves your relationship at work and overall team dynamics.
8. Be prepared to receive feedback
Being prepared to receive constructive nutrition is vital for personal and professional growth.
Gently accept your colleague ’ s criticism and use it as an opportunity to better understand their point of view and make improvements if necessary.
9.
Recognition of achievements
When appropriate, appreciate and thank your difficult colleague for his or her achievements and contributions.
Giving thanks for their efforts can contribute to creating a positive atmosphere and strengthening practical relationships.
10.
Know when to ask for help.
Some situations may be beyond your ability to resolve, and despite doing your best, problems may persist or worsen.
If difficulties persist, consider involving a supervisor, department, or HR representative to mediate the situation impartially.
Dealing with difficult co-workers is an unavoidable part of professional life.
However, with the right application of the right technologies you can turn these retrofit interactions into opportunities for growth and improved working relationships.
You can create a happy and productive work environment even among the most challenging coworkers if you practice empathy, active listening, and professionalism.
Remember that how you handle these situations reflects your personality and professionalism, so it ’ s worth investing the time and effort to develop good communication and collaboration with your colleagues.
Read also.
Topics you might like.

Maintaining professionalism while avoiding gossip or negative labeling helps preserve trust.

Seeking common ground and collaborative problem-solving encourages shared ownership of technological changes.

Being open to feedback and recognizing colleagues’ achievements can alleviate anxieties and foster a more cooperative environment.

Clear, respectful communication that establishes boundaries and shows willingness to adjust approaches supports ongoing constructive dialogue .

Further, research shows that involving employees and stakeholders early and meaningfully in decisions surrounding technology adoption greatly improves acceptance and reduces resistance.

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There’s More To Meaningful Work Than Shifting It To Workers’ Homes

The “Great Resignation” is real, and has been making a lot of headlines. The latest figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that 4.3 million employees — three percent of the workforce — left their jobs in August, the highest rate of attrition ever. Gallup reports that that 48% of America's working population is actively job searching or watching for different opportunities. The message: the workplace is ripe for revolution, requiring both forward-looking management and supportive technologies.

Time to balance the opportunities around digital technologies, both to improve the workplace experience, to connect people, and to supplant human talent for rote tasks. Just as important, it’s time to extend this new way of working to all levels of employees, from professional to frontline service workers.

To get a better sense of what it takes to provide a more meaningful work experience for employees at all levels, I asked two experts, Ravin Jesuthasan global transformation leader at Mercer (as well as a fellow contributor here at Forbes) and Phil Friedman, founder and CEO of CGS, for their thinking on what to expect in the new era now emerging.

The Covid crisis proved to be a turning point in how we think about work and workplaces, says Jesuthasan.  “I can’t recall a more challenging time in my lifetime but companies dealt with it incredibly well; sharing talent with other companies, finding ways to move talent from one part of the business to another based on where their skills were fungible and deploying collaboration tools at unprecedented pace,” he says.

Importantly, it forced a vision that has been long held — that many forms of work need not be confined to an office cubicle. “We challenged so many long held beliefs about work through this crisis,” Jesuthasan says. “Alvin Toffler wrote about electronic cottages in 1970. Yet prior to the pandemic, only about six percent of all work was being done on a full-time remote basis in the US. That number got to 56% overnight.”

Will that 56% number hold as Covid recedes? Perhaps somewhat, but there’s more to reforming the workplace than simply moving it out of office cubicles and into employees’ homes. For starters, Jesuthasan points to an irretractable shift in mindset: “We have shown our ability to innovate at scale and challenge the ‘when, where, what, who and how’ of work,” he says. “We have transcended many of our legacy ways of working and organizing work.”

The impact on the future of work “has been far more profound as the combination of digitalization and the democratization of work had probably resulted in a five-year trend being accomplished in five months,” Jesuthasan continues. “With the genie out of the bottle, the opportunity is to continue to innovate at pace and scale.”

The greatest risk ahead, however, is inequality. “The pandemic highlighted how differently work was being experienced,” Jesuthasan says. “It created winners and losers to an extreme. If business leaders don’t level the playing field, those left behind will not see the benefits of these innovations.”

The Covid situation exposed a two-class world of work: while professionals were able to work from the comfort of their homes, lower-paid blue-collar and service workers had to remain on the front lines. Technologies can help level the playing field for all classes of work, and help improve everyone’s working experiences. “The investments in these technologies has continued to accelerate and I do think they can have a significant impact on businesses and work as they substitute certain types of highly repetitive, rules-based work,” Jesuthasan says. Technologies can also serve to “augment other types of more variable work, increasing productivity; and transform yet other types of work, creating demand for new human skills and further accelerating innovation.”

A prime example of an opportunity for improving workplaces and skills is in the rise of augmented reality. “As social distancing and remote work took hold last year, companies accelerated the need for and use of emerging technology to support business operations, ranging from onsite consumer repairs to employee training,” says Friedman. “A recent survey we conducted found 95% of enterprise tech executives report that AR will help their organizations better keep up with rising customer expectations and 96% believe AR can boost connectivity between workers and subject matter experts while remote.”

Friedman points out that “while business was disrupted amid the pandemic, companies needed temporary remote assistance and augmented offered real-time support for a dispersed workforce. Most notably, the technology gave business leaders the opportunity to counter Zoom fatigue by engaging employees with more-immersive training and learning experiences.”

Augmented reality “continues to allow employees to be more efficient by using real-time learning and guidance through collaboration while limiting face-to-face interaction and unnecessary travel,” says Friedman. In addition, it “allows consumers more self-sufficiency by decreasing the need for a technician to come to their homes. An expert guides them through the steps to repair an item via their mobile device or tablet. At the end of the day, this leads to fewer onsite maintenance calls; thus saving time for all involved and money that is typically allocated to customer service.”

The lesson is that technology can be a powerful force for augmenting and improving work on many levels. With highly dispersed work now a reality, today’s and tomorrow’s forward-looking enterprises can look to innovative ways to deliver products and services.

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I am an author, independent researcher and speaker exploring innovation, information technology trends and markets. I am also a co-author of the SOA Manifesto, which

I am an author, independent researcher and speaker exploring innovation, information technology trends and markets. I am also a co-author of the SOA Manifesto, which outlines the values and guiding principles of service orientation in business and IT. I served on the organizing committee for the recent IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing, and was active on the program committee of the International SOA and Cloud Symposium series. Much of my research work is in conjunction with Forbes Insights and Unisphere Research/ Information Today, Inc., covering topics such as cloud computing, digital transformation, enterprise mobility, and big data analytics. I am also a contributor to CBS interactive, authoring the ZDNet "Service Oriented" site. In a previous life, I served as communications and research manager of the Administrative Management Society (AMS), an international professional association dedicated to advancing knowledge within the IT and business management fields. I am a graduate of Temple University.

When IT and management make unilateral decisions without integrating user input, poor adoption and wasted investment often result.

Title:

Content: Work Skills ｜ 10 Ways to Communicate More Efficiently than Drawing a Graph
Author: The Manager
Published: Updated:
In the workplace, the most important thing to achieve your goals accurately, let others understand your ideas and complete the plan is definitely good communication.
Good communication is mainly based on transposition thinking, if you are a colleague who can understand the difficulties and needs of others, you can stand in the perspective of others to persuade others to help you, will do more with less.
In addition, there are 10 communication tips that can help you communicate your ideas more clearly!
To make the work more efficient, understanding good communication methods is the most basic and most important: (Click on the picture to understand)
+ 22
1.
Hard to say, just paint it!
If your information is difficult to explain verbally, you can look for reference drawings or draw your own sketches to paint more details.
Business executive coach and author Art Petty offers several scenarios that are best suited to pictorial communication:
... and...
When the idea is constantly being questioned, try to frame it so that others can understand your thinking better.
． When team members disagree, draw a table to compare the strengths and weaknesses of both parties to choose the best solution.
When colleagues don ’ t know much about what you ’ re delivering, ask them to draw a picture of what they ’ re imagining to see if they really understand.
2.
Not only to keep track of revisions, but also to give comments
If you modify a document, be sure to keep track of the revisions, and try to comment on each change, explain your intentions, direct the attention of others to your concerns, you will find a lot less communication costs, and the product is more predictable.
Related Article: [Email Template] Is Well Received Wrong?
Must learn 8 business email knowledge
3.
Provide a link when there is a reference case
Instead of saying that a bunch of good cases you see can be copied from, it is better to attach a link directly to save the time of the other party to check the data.
4.
Make more use of PDF files
If you can 't use your own computer during a meeting or proposal, there may be format incompatibility issues across devices. Please remember to use PDF files to avoid font omissions and typography.
Related article: Can you say, “You ’ re too bad ” to be a sinner?
Pay attention to 3 common words to avoid disrespect in the workplace
5.
Edit documents with or without modification
In real time, your colleagues may not modify your document, but you can still provide an original document that can be edited from the beginning, saving the other person from asking you for the file and increasing the communication round-trip time.
If you need help, remember to set permissions for them to edit.
6.
Use email to make important decisions.
Have you ever encountered a situation where it is clear that a consensus has been reached within the team, but then a member turned his face and refused to acknowledge the account, saying that he did not agree with the decision?
In fact, it is not necessarily a colleague who turns his back, but it may also be a misunderstanding in the communication process, resulting in differences in understanding between the two sides.
Therefore, all important decisions are clearly written in the email, such as:
“As discussed earlier, the next step is … ”
In the light of the above, we have decided to...
If the person sees a document for the first time, they can explain the background, how they need help, or what decisions they make.
If it is the follow-up progress of a business, remember to summarize the latest situation and the current resolution.
So that the other side does not understand the situation, make a wrong judgment, waste each other's time.
Related article: Email Tips | How to Use ASAP to Infuriate People at Any Time?
Business email is more important than short.
7.
Make sure you bring your ideas into the conference room.
Efficient meetings are for communication and discussion, not for information.
So when you have a large amount of information, be sure to send it to the participants before the meeting, and tell them what items will be discussed at the meeting, so that everyone is ready to bring their ideas to the meeting room.
8.
Complicated matters need to be resolved at a meeting.
It ’ s important to have fewer meetings, but it ’ s best to meet and discuss issues that require multiple discussions, controversies, or very complex issues in order to clearly communicate each other ’ s ideas.
Think you ’ d rather write 10 emails with details or spend 10 minutes focusing on ideas with your team members?
Related article: Don ’ t be blackmailed by your coworker ’ s habitual emotions, default “tell him he ’ s dead ” list, and refuse others no more guilt
9.
Invite the meeting to clearly inform the time, place, purpose, agenda
Inexplicable meeting invitations will make participants feel confused, and even wonder why they were invited, unable to prepare in advance.
10.
For issues that require multiple approval, it is best to consult each individual first
If you have a proposal or issue that requires multiple endorsements, you might think that getting everyone to vote in the same meeting is the most time-saving way.
But when people first encounter an issue at a meeting, it is likely that they will not immediately express support, but will first observe the actions of others, and even follow the flow.
In order to avoid this, it is best to consult everyone individually before the meeting to make sure that there are enough people to reach a consensus with you.
This may sound like a good idea, but it can help you achieve your goal.
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[This article is reproduced with the permission of the "Manager".]

Hybrid workplaces, specifically, benefit from evolving training methodologies like video-based, interactive, and equitable remote training, along with digital employee experience platforms that identify adoption struggles and enable targeted support.

These approaches help smooth transitions and mitigate resistance by addressing users’ real concerns and equipping them as confident users .

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Fighting The ‘Big Brother’ Fallacy In Workplace Tech

Michael Moran, author and award-winning documentarian, is Chief Marketing, Risk & Sustainability Officer at Microshare, Inc.

With the world taking another crack at a “return to work” this autumn, a spate of stories have appeared warning of a byproduct of the global pandemic: A reset of societal norms when it comes to privacy expectations in the workplace. In recent weeks, everyone from The Wall Street Journal to The New York Times to The New York Review of Books has weighed in. There’s even been some action in the U.S. Senate, where Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., is asking the Labor Department to take a fresh look at what has become known as “surveillance tech.”

The best of these pieces carefully parses the advantages and disadvantages of technological innovations born of the pandemic emergency. But the general tone has been disappointingly alarmist and without context: The transformed worker-employer relationship is also a byproduct of the pandemic, and one I would argue will make most workplaces more rather than less humane.

There are indeed instances of companies that have used the pandemic as an excuse to push into clearly unethical (if not illegal) frontiers of surveillance. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an NGO that monitors data privacy matters, breaks these so-called “bossware” products into two broad categories: those that employees know about and can possibly control, and those that secretly snoop on employees, in the office or remotely, with no consent. Some of this stuff is dastardly; others dangerous and evil. The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow documented the story of NSO, an Israeli software firm that produced a deep-link surveillance software called Pegasus sold to governments to track dissidents.

It’s one thing to insist that people turn on their cameras for Teams or Zoom meetings, or insist they clock in when they arrive at work. It’s quite another to deploy software that secretly photographs or videotapes a remote employee, or which reads keyboard strokes and assumes that a lack of such activity equals goofing off.

But many of the technological innovations borne out of the pandemic are in no way akin to “Big Brother.” Across the world, the need to monitor the health of indoor spaces and the wellness of those within them has spawned a new push to outfit buildings with Internet of Things sensors measuring everything from CO2 and particulate matter in the air to the density and usage of conference rooms, labs and washrooms. Marketing such products should emphasize that these technologies do not collect the personally identifiable information so dear to the ad-fueled business model of Facebook and Amazon.

This new workplace tech mostly responds to well-established risks that have been underscored by the pandemic. Lead with the importance of privacy and transparency front and center in any such marketing, and be sure to stress the firm’s record of compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation and its American variants. Admit when identity is necessary for the product to function. For example, desk booking software is useless if you can’t prove you booked the desk. Don’t shy away from this conversation. Meet it head-on and, ideally, with a forthright admission that any trade-offs will be done transparently and with full consent.

The key for both marketing and human resources professionals is to embrace transparency when deploying these products and preparing the company to patiently explain the rationale for things like desk booking systems or push-button feedback stations without dismissing employee concerns as just so much griping.

The situation becomes more complex when the goal of new technology is risk mitigation and safety rather than convenience or efficiency. Sometimes, the ability to know the identity of a person is necessary. But even here, consent should be obtained and the process made transparent.

For example, one of my company’s clients deployed a wearable contact tracing system to protect factory staff around the world from major Covid-19 outbreaks as the pandemic took hold. Our client deployed Bluetooth-enabled wristbands active only on the worksite and which had no ability to store PII. The data remained anonymous until someone reported a symptom, at which point our client’s HR department did a reverse database query and informed anyone who recently had been within six feet of the person in question to test for Covid-19. The company addressed employees’ privacy concerns and was transparent about its reasons for deploying the technology.

The ability to be transparent about how technologies like these work is precisely why tarring all the new workplace technology with Orwell’s brush is counter-productive. “Snooping” or “invasions of privacy” by definition involves subterfuge and secrecy. Context is important. The right to privacy in a workplace is a moving target, and it’s worth noting that, ever since email became a standard business tool, U.S. courts have held that employers can read messages composed on company equipment or transiting company domains. This strikes me as far more invasive than a sensor that warns that CO2 levels are spiking, or allows employees to know which conference rooms are available for booking.

Sunshine, they say, is the best disinfectant. Shined in the right places, it can also allay fears in the post-pandemic workplace.

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In summary, 21st-century Luddites are less anti-technology ideologues and more advocates for humane, equitable workplaces in the face of rapid technological change.

Their resistance highlights fears of job loss, diminished work quality, loss of autonomy, ethical and privacy concerns, and the need for more inclusive decision-making in technology introduction.

Understanding these legitimate foundations of resistance is essential for anyone seeking to build rapport and collaborate effectively with colleagues who are wary of new technologies in the corporate environment.

Employing empathy, clear communication, inclusion, and supportive training can create a positive, productive atmosphere despite differing views on technological change.