Computerization at Work :: Technology Computers Essays

Computerization at Work Work is a major component of many people's lives. Wage income is the primary way that most people between the ages of 22 and 65 obtain money for food, housing, clothing, transportation, and so on. The United States' population is about 260,000,000, and well over 110,000,000 work for a living. So, major changes in the nature of work - the number of jobs, the nature of jobs, career opportunities, job content, social relationships at work, working conditions of various kinds - affect a significant segment of society. Computer-based systems are organized to enhance the quality of working life for clerks, administrative staff, professionals, and managers. Computerization has touched more people more visibly in their work than in any other kind of setting-home, schools, churches, banking, and so on. Workplaces are good places to examine how the dreams and dilemmas of computerization really work out for large numbers of people under an immense variety of social and technical conditions. Office work has always involved keeping records. In the early twentieth century, the technologies and organization of office work underwent substantial change. Firms began to adopt telephones and typewriters, both of which had been recently invented. By the 1930s and 1940s, many manufactures devised electromechanical machines to help manipulate, sort, and tally specialized paper records automatically. Some of the more expensive pieces of equipment, such as specialized card-accounting machines, were much more affordable and justifiable in organizations that centralize their key office activities. Business such as insurance companies and banks, along with public agencies, adopted computer-based information systems on a large scale in the 1960s. Many of the early digital computer systems replaced electromechanical paper-card systems. The earliest systems were designed for batch operation. Clerks filled in paper forms with information about a firm's clients, and the forms were then perio dically sent to a special group of keypunchers to translate the data onto cardboard card. These card each stored one line of data, up to eighty characters. They were punched with a series of holes for each character or number. Keypunch machines were clanky devices with a typewriter-style keyboard, a bin for storing blank card, and a holder for the card being punched. There was no simple way for a keypunch operator to correct an error. Cards containing errors had to be completely repunched. The punched cards were then taken to a data-processing department for a weekly or monthly run, during which time records were updated and reports were produced.