The New Division Of Labour

The advent of artificial intelligence calls for a rethinking not only of humanity’s relationship with machines, but of how we, as a society, define and reward the fruits of human labour.

- Peter Evans-Greenwood, Robert Hillard, Alan Marshall

When the computerized word processor supplanted the typewriter, responsibility for producing day-to-day business correspondence shifted from typist to manager. This made document production much more efficient as it eliminated the round trip from Dictaphone through typing pool and back to the author for approval. This increase in efficiency didn’t occur overnight though. Word processors may have promised to make managers more productive, but many initially balked at using them because it didn’t suit their personal work habits, nor did they see it as a task fit for their station.

Crafting their own documents meant that managers needed to acquire composition and proofreading skills, as well as the more technical skills (such as typing and functional digital literacy) required to operate a word processor. But perhaps the most fundamental change they had to make was in their mindsets. To effectively use a word processor, they had to build a relationship with this new technology, trusting that colorful squiggly underlines actually indicated errors, that saved documents could be retrieved at will and that the machine wouldn’t crash (well, not too often anyway). Building this trust — integrating the new tool into their personal work habits — took time, as people were naturally loath to abandon old attitudes and behaviors.

Most managers did come to embrace word processors, with the result that these types of a machine not only became widespread but fundamentally changed the way business correspondence is produced. Along with this change came a shift in social norms. Typing is now considered an important skill to be taught to children in school, while executives no longer see typing as beneath their role.