Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation

by David F. Noble

Book Overview

Focusing on the postwar automation of the American metal-working industry--the heart of the modern industrial economy--this is a provocative study of how automation has assumed a critical role in America. David Noble argues that industrial automation--more than merely a technological advance--is a social process that reflects very real divisions and pressures within our society. The book explains how technology is often spurred and shaped by the military,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195040465
• ISBN13: 9780195040463
• Release Date: February 1986
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 427 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Technological change and how it effects society

That science and technology are accepted as forces that improve life is a central precept of American culture but in Forces of Production, Noble argues against the notion of technological determinism as a bell weather of progress. Noble's is a Marxist critique: if workers see progress as inevitable and automatic, it "absolves...[them] of responsibility to change it and weds them instead to the technological projections of those in command."(xiii) Unless control is redirect away from "technical enthusiasts" and "neo-progressive politicians,"(353), he is skeptical of what the second industrial revolution portends for society and what advantage technology holds for the future. In making his point Noble analyzes the development of numerically controlled (N/C) machine tools in the post WWII era. Wartime necessity and the subsequent Cold War centralized research and development into what became known as the military-industrial complex. In Part I of his volume, titled "Command and Control," Noble argues that scientists lost their sense of independence and came to "resemble closely their military and corporate brethren."(20) Labor, as a component of the production matrix, was changed as well by a defense establishment which emphasized performance over cost to counter the (Noble would say perceived) Soviet threat. Increased union membership during the war augmented labor's power and heightened labor/management conflict on the machine shop floor. Who controlled the shop; who controlled the pace of production? Automation, on the one hand, seemed to offer management a means of maintaining control, but labor saw this as a threat to their jobs. Scientist and engineers, more closely allied with those having social power, were predisposed to adhere to the wishes of their patrons, rather than shop stewards, to help make the automatic factory possible. Noble presents various methods of N/C and explains how the "Darwinian" potential of N/C was stymied when John T. Parson's N/C project was co-opted by MIT in close alliance with the Air Force. The record-playback (R/P) option may have been easier to program and more accurate in that it captured a machinists skill, but it would have "lent itself to programming on the shop floor, and worker and/or union control of the process."(151) This was unacceptable to managers who wanted to maintain control and keep decision making off the floor. The prevailing cultural thus had more influence in developing N/C than did technical or economic needs. The Automatically Programmed Tools (APT) system that was developed, while sophisticated was expensive. None-the-less it became the industry standard. Noble challenges the ideology of technology as the key to social and human progress. Instead he sees a system of political, moral, and cultural "domination which masks as progress."(351). Indeed, it is Noble's social interpretation of technology that is the major contribution of the book. Unfortunately what also is apparent i

A very important, underpraised book

The infantilism of American culture that started with Reagan appears in many guises. For example, Ron Grossman in the Chicago Tribune pointed out last Sunday that the United States Postal Service has a stamp for Bugs Bunny but none for John Brown, the rebel of Harper's Ferry.The Smithsonian Institution recently thought fit to exhibit Daisy's shortened Levi's from the 1970s television series The Dukes of Hazzard.The infantilism is that the author of Forces of Production, David Noble, was a serious and pro-labor voice who worked at the Smithsonian in the 1970s and was forced out under Reagan...in favor of Daisy's shorts, it appears.The subject of Forces of Production may seem to be specialized for overtly it is on numerically-controlled machine tools, nowadays a very small application of computers. Nonetheless this book can be read in the context, not only of machine tools but also of computerization in general.Noble's book is an account of management folly. Machine tool automation was implemented to eliminate not the unskilled but men like my great-grandfather: machinists who had the nerve to set their own pace, and to design as they saw fit tools to accomplish their job.The machinist occupies in the world of physical tools somewhat the same space as is occupied by the advanced programmer since the machinist has the choice, in a well-run shop, of deciding not to fashion the part that management wants, but instead to fashion a tool that will in turn make the part that management wants...faster, more accurately and in the long and short run cheaper.Like Harry Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital, Noble shows how this economic rationality was subverted by the high priests of economic rationality: the CEOs. Ultimately preferring control over profits, the managers of machine shops imported programmatic numerical control NOT to make the skilled machinist's life easier but instead to eliminate the skilled union men.Noble shows how a rough compromise was hammered out because the unskilled machinists, and the alienated skilled machinists, stood by (under management's direction) as the improperly programmed machine tools produced "scrap at high speeds."Union negotiation then restored the skilled men to their positions to get the technology under control.There is a striking parallel here with the situation in white-collar computer programming, for it has been the consistent discovery of skilled programmers that the computer itself can be used, NOT to "focus on the bottom line goals of management" (as goes the management songbook) but instead to fashion tools...that accomplish, in a laughing and almost scornful way, the goals of the management.For example, in 1974 I was confronted in a computer center with 50 different programs to scan and to print mailing lists. Being a lazy hippie I suggested to my boss that I write ONE program that would read and parse the format and the logic rules. My manager approved and as

Superlative

I read this book as part for a course in "Philosophy and Technology" when I was an undergraduate. It is a detailed exposition of how the technologies we adopt are not inevitable, but are instead the consequence of specific choices made by specific people in power (or seeking to be in power). One of the books that fundamentally changed my worldview. Together with his "America By Design," a dull but exacting analysis of engineering education in the U.S., this book should be read as a cautionary tale for the course higher education is taking in its current romance with corporate sponsorship and collaboration. . .

I endorse Chomsky's recommendation.

I certainly wouldn't have heard of this book if it weren't for Noam Chomsky citing it. David Noble dared to break ranks and suggest that maybe all was not right with machine tool automation. My favorite chapter,entitled "Who's running the shop" describes GE's aircraft division's "Pilot Project" in the 60's. It is first of all a damn good tale--rivaling the arabian nights as a never ending fascinating tale. Secondly, it is a sobering tale of labor-management relations. One suspects that GE management would rather the incident was forgotten. Here is a rough summary: The Air Force gave GE super-expensive numerically controlled (i.e. computerized) machining tools and local GE managers used these as a weapon to deskill workers and lower their pay, but it backfired because without the good will and understanding of the workers it produced only scrap metal at a fantastic rate. The "Pilot Project" was a compromise that enabled the incompetant management to save face, and the workers and union essentially ran the shop during this time. Understandably the union and workers wanted the pilot project to go on forever, and equally understandably the higher corporate management wanted this example of worker control to end as soon as possible even though it worked extremely well.