Designing Digital Futures - Informing Digital Futures: Strategies for Citizen Engagement - page 19

job design (e.g. Davis and Taylor 1972). Work is paced by the computer
and performance is closely monitored - an unwelcome return to the princi-
ples of Scientific Management developed by FW Taylor at the beginning
of the 20 th century (Taylor 1911). The need for security and protection of
our personal information and systems brings other kinds of drudgery -
such as the need to enter (and remember) numerous passwords and logins
and registrations and PINs whenever we interact with a system; or the need
to make backups and store copies of our digital data, in case of system
failure; and the need to contact helpdesks when we find it has all gone
wrong. We may find we cannot retrieve money or information from our
own bank accounts because we have entered the wrong sequence of num-
bers, or we can't access all the work we did yesterday because the system
has locked up. Computers have also given us 'information overload' -
wading through 'spam' emails, throwing out junk mail, trying to find the
right document in vast databases or even in the mountains of paper which
we have too easily printed out - these are all chores that we can do without
and which impact on our quality of life.
Sackman (1967) also envisaged a future where we would expand our
creativity. Certainly digital technologies can offer us this. Not only can we
store and access vast quantities of music, games, TV programmes, films
and radio, but we can create and manipulate them too; we can make our
own recordings, produce our own films, create our own radio shows, make
our own digital artworks, build our own websites and write our own blogs
- and make them available to a potential worldwide audience through the
Internet. He also envisaged a world where we would have more leisure
time (possibly even excessive leisure time) as computers took over aspects
of 'work'. Indeed, we have automated vast swathes of traditional activities,
with computer controlled production, office automation, etc. This has of
course led to excessive “ spare ” time for some - i.e. those who have lost
their jobs as a result of automation - but it has changed the nature of work.
Service industries have grown, and in the information age, knowledge
work and computer support have become important. The demand for these
skills never stops - and thanks to computers and telecommunications,
workers can be reached at any time or any place. For many people in em-
ployment, the work/life boundary has become blurred and the idea of ex-
cessive leisure time is pure fantasy.
Finally, Sackman (1967) envisaged a world of human-computer sym-
biosis. And yes, we have this too. Microtechnologies, embedded technolo-
gies, immersive environments - the future promises even more pervasive
technology. Current research and development is making it possible to
embed intelligence in our surroundings and in the objects or artefacts that
surround us, which has led to the term “ smartifacts ” being coined to describe