Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

REGULATION SCHOOL THEORY
of assembly work, but also requires ‘a growing mobilisation and watchfulness that
arises from the imperfections, the discontinuities of cybernetic technology’.
Therefore ‘learning must be instituted in order to prepare workers for intervening
in moments of unexpected systems failure’, something which requires comprehension
of the overall system and a constant state of ‘preparation and learning’.
In this way we may foresee ‘the worker moving from being the controlled element
in the production process to operating the controls to controlling the controls’
(pp. 72–3). As such the worker becomes part of ‘educated labor’ (Block and
Hirschhorn, 1979, p. 369), impelled by information technologies to lead a ‘fluid,
flexible life course’ (p. 379).
More than this, flexible specialisation also encourages employee participation
in the design of work. That is, computerisation of production provides a
‘feedback loop’, ‘cybernetic feedback’ (Hirschhorn, 1984, p. 40) to the operative
that enables him or her to act by reprogramming the system in appropriate ways.
Here we have the worker depicted as informationally sensitive, made aware by
advanced technologies of what is happening throughout the production process,
and able to respond intelligently to improve that overall system. It is this to which
Soshana Zuboff (1988) refers as the reflexivity that comes from working with ICTs,
an ‘informating’ (p. 10) process that she believes generates ‘intellective skill’.
Scott Lash and John Urry (1994) take this reflexivity element to greater
heights, en route relegating the emphasis on ICTs in favour of information itself,
while also taking aboard concern for areas of work other than those involved with
production. In their view we inhabit an era of ‘reflexive accumulation’ where
economic activity is premised on employees (and employers) being increasingly
self-monitoring, able to respond to consumer needs, market outlets and, not least,
rapid technical innovation, with maximum speed and efficacy. In such circumstances
information occupies centre stage since it is this that is the constituent
of the vital reflexive process that guides everything and which is a matter of
continuous decision-making and amendment on the basis of ongoing monitoring
of processes, products and outlets.
In addition, production of things has become infused with symbols in so far
as design elements have become central to much manufacture while, simultaneously,
there has been an explosive growth of work that is primarily and
pre-eminently symbolic (for instance, the culture industries). These changes are
manifest, argue Lash and Urry (1994), in the motor industry (where a great deal
of innovation is a question of design rather than of narrowly conceived technical
refinement), but how much more have they penetrated the music business, television
production and publishing, fast-expanding cultural industries where
information soaks into every aspect of work (pp. 220–2).
The contention here is that work increasingly features ‘design intensity’ as
its informational dimensions move to the fore, whether it is in the manufacture
of ‘stylish’ clothing and furniture or whether it is in the area of tourism and entertainment.
Further, against the perception that work is largely a matter of
routinised factory production, Lash and Urry emphasise ways in which even
goods production has been influenced by wider developments which impel products
to incorporate cultural motifs (they have been ‘aestheticized’) and which
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