PC Magazine - USA (2020-02)

(Antfer) #1

YOUR AI SUPERVISOR WOULD LIKE A WORD
Though the technology has changed, employee monitoring is nothing new.
Measuring employee performance by surveillance was originally left to
humans, with later assistance coming from the structure of the workplace
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open-plan, circular building that made constant observation its priority—as a
way to watch everyone, including the watchers, in prisons, factories, hospitals,
and schools.


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ire of philosopher Michael Foucault nearly 200 years later. He viewed the
structure of the building as symbolic of the decentralization of power and the
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modern-day equivalent of technology that monitors employees) trades the
“traditional, ritual, costly, violent forms of power,” Foucault said, with a
“subtle, calculated technology of subjection.”


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workplace monitoring that has become pervasive and invasive in other ways.
Swipeable badges have replaced time clocks; software handles jobs previously
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them accordingly.

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