Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
to semantic labor. While the judgment has independent interest, its imme-
diate value in this context is as a wider public analogue to the distinctions
of syntactic and semantic mental labor and of human labor from machine
process, thus supporting their validity.
We can now summarize the understanding of the conditions for mental
labor. Human labor, including mental labor, can be transferred to technol-
ogy, undergoing transformation into a machine process. Human mental
labor can be semantic or syntactic in character, directly motivated by con-
siderations of meaning or reduced to pattern-governed transformations.
Only syntactic, not semantic, labor can be transferred to information
technology. As forms of mental labor, description labor and search labor
participate in the conditions for mental labor.
Description and Search Labor
The historical separation (and current reconvergence) of description labor
and search labor from selection labor supported the proposition that
selection labor can be distributed significantly between description labor
and search labor, but its overall sum could not diminish below certain
theoretically established limits. The understanding of description labor
and search labor as forms of mental labor supports the further proposi-
tion that the syntactic aspects of description and searching, but not their
semantic components, can be transferred to technology.
Description Labor
Thus, description labor is understood as one component of selection
labor. As mental labor, description labor can have a material and exo-
somatic aspect and semantic and syntactic components. We will consider
description labor in a more directly empirical and contemporary fashion
than selection power and selection labor, but the historical emergence of
description labor in information systems with the emergence of written
literacy is acknowledged here. We also acknowledge equally the possibil-
ity that description labor can be reduced, transferred to technology as
process, and absorbed by selection labor (with selection labor becoming a
more substantive category). The labor embodied in documents described
is accepted largely as a given and not fully explored, but the contrast
