Technology has removed craft from occupations. This is true in assembly line jobs... [and] in most service positions (store clerks,fast food attendents)... But it's also increasingly true in such skill-dependent work as house construction, where majority of parts come ready-made from factory and the carpenter merely assembles them, or automobile repair, which consists largely in replacing one throw away part with another. Nor is the reduction of skills limited to manual work.
Memory, once the prerequisites skill of the white collar worker, has been rendered superflous by computers, teachers, who once needed dramatic skills, now depend on mechanical aids such as slide projectors and video machines; in politics, oratory has been killed by the thirty second sound bite....
For many, weekend free time has become not a chance to excape work but a chance to create work that is more meaningful... in order to realize the personal satisfactions that the workplace no longer offers
We see the lost meaning of work happening in a rapid rate even in more prosperous society and this is changing the landscape of the meaning of work. We see the acceleration of skills devoted to leisure as a sign that reflects what was supposed to happend in the workplace.
- Rybcyznski, Waiting for the Weekend,223-224
Do you see such phenomenon happening in your work place.
