From Machine Man to Mechanized Worker: The Legacy of La Mettrie and Taylor

From La Mettrie to Taylor: the human as a machine, from concept to practice How has the mechanistic view of humanity shaped modern industry? Exploring the profound impacts on work and society. #IndustrialPhilosophy #MachineMan #Taylorism #HistoryOfWork The mechanistic view of humanity, initiated by Julien Offray de La Mettrie in the 18th century and put into practice by Frederick Taylor…

https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/01/03/from-machine-man-to-mechanized-worker-the-legacy-of-la-mettrie-and-taylor/

There we go:

"Woolworths said it was engaging with Victoria Police over the alleged blockade."

And in this whole wretched ABC "news" article, not one word about the composition of today's picket line. Pretty heavy journalism there. But they did manage to include a bunch of Woolworths talking points.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-07/woolworths-industrial-action-victoria/104697608

@decryption Cory Doctorow has article for this.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/26/hawtch-hawtch/#you-treasure-what-you-measure

A new philosophy of work, management and leadership is born from innovative ideas and practices in different fields, professions and industries. A paradigm shift that goes beyond Fordism and Taylorism.

=> Video Short Part 3: The new paradigm beyond Fordism and Taylorism

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lucaminudel_taylorism-fordism-posttaylorism-activity-7267092246464770048-gqCg

#Taylorism
#Fordism
#PostTaylorism
#ComplexityThinking
#LightweightMethods
#NewParadigm
#NewPhisolophy
#Agile
#PostAgile
#Agility
#Complexity

I really like the analysis in this podcast of how #TheToyotaProductionSystem is more efficient overall than #Taylorism because it optimizes labour value time for the entire system rather than for each individual worker. It's a great example of how #marxism offers abstractions over economics that demystify the process of production.

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/fromalpha2omega/episodes/2024-10-03T12_00_00-07_00

Ben Affleck got PBS to cover up the fact that an unnamed-in-the-article ancestor was a slave owner. I wonder if it was Thomas Affleck, whose publication The Cotton Plantation Record and Account Book was a major influence on the use of the pushing system which, through unspeakable violence, allowed cotton planters to rapidly and continually increase the productivity of their slaves.

Thomas Affleck's work figures prominently in Caitlin Rosenthal's breakthrough work Accounting for Slavery, which traces the origin of modern management techniques, including Taylorism, back to methods employed on cotton plantations.

#BenAffleck #ThomasAffleck #Slavery #Cotton #PushingSystem #Plantations #Capitalism #Management #Taylorism #CaitlinRosenthal #AccountingForSlavery

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/25/417455657/after-ben-affleck-scandal-pbs-postpones-finding-your-roots

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Affleck_(planter)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Plantation_Record_and_Account_Book

https://search.worldcat.org/title/1090005373

https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/slavery-under-the-pushing-system-why-systematic-violence-became-a-necessity.html

Something ideologically super-sketchy about a medieval agriculture sim that’s insanely difficult because it assumes farmers don’t know what the fuck they’re doing unless explicitly instructed by the lord of the manor to do it, like how much farther from the reality of the medieval economy could you get if you tried #taylorism #tacitknowledge #wtaf https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/05/manor-lords-medieval-micromanagement-means-making-many-messes/

Early management theory stemmed from studies of factory assembly line efficiency.

#ScientificManagement #Taylorism https://open.substack.com/pub/jamesrichardson/p/job-satisfaction-peaked-with-the?r=4hxgy&utm_medium=ios

A wonderful comic about Luddites, working class history and AI.

By @tomhumberstone

https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/

#TheNib #TomHumberstone
#Luddism #Ludites #AI #AIRegulation #WorkersRights #Taylorism #WorkingClassHistory

John Naughton joins the dots between 'boss ware' #office #surveillance of #workers and the logic of scientific management or #taylorism.

In this sense, as is so often the case the new shining #informationsociety is just capitalism enhanced via #technology (which was the central argument of my book The Information Society: a sceptical view, 2002, if you'll forgive the self-publicity!).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/18/if-you-think-bossware-surveillance-culture-in-the-workplace-is-new-think-again

My trigger: people who vocally advocate for “automation” and also have no idea who was Frederick Taylor.

You don’t even know what you don’t even know, my Nietzschean brother in Christ, incapable of grokking oxymorons.

I hope this was an innocent typo and not some kind of Freudian slip hoping to squeeze more efficiency out of students #taylorism

Shout out to @hiredthought for the great talk shared on adopting the principles by adapting the thinking and the practices: https://youtu.be/5KmeLa-BH-Q
Clarity is definitely one of the qualities Ben brings to the table. #agiletransformation #agile #taylorism

True:

"The Gamification Of Everything Is No Fun" [2022], The New Republic (https://newrepublic.com/article/169340/gamification-everything-no-fun-adrian-hon-review).

"Email didn’t dismantle the culture of interoffice memos and workplace correspondence, but it did make them readily accessible all the time. Slack, the corporate email killer, hasn’t unclogged our inboxes. Instead, it is merely another workplace channel workers must tend to—another way to be productive and available to our colleagues and bosses, instantly, at any time. Why should we expect generative AI to free us from this familiar cycle?"

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/ai-chatgpt-productivity-work/674090/

In Defense of Inefficiency

https://youtu.be/7-_rK0KkB6k