Subtitled 'An Inquiry into the Value of Work'. An interesting book that pursues several threads:
- the mind-numbing inutility of most work in our society at both the top and the bottom end - at the bottom because it is repetitive and mindless - at the top because it deals in nebulous concepts and half-baked ideas that don't actually produce anything, and that focus on a process that often seems to go nowhere
- the intellectual value of work that focuses on engaging with things, whether it be motorcycles or children - he explores some of the same concepts as Taleb in the idea that knowledge is born of experience and working with things, not of formulae and abstract reasoning
- the relation between mindless, repetitive work and consumerism
- the contradiction of the pursuit of freedom while living in a society where we have little agency and depend completely on technology and experts to build and maintain our 'stuff'
- he also explores how university education has been perverted by its relationship with the corporate world, both in its teaching and in its very structure
To find: The Electronic Sweatshop: How Computers are Transforming the Office of the Future into the Factory of the Past - Barbara Garson
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