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P. xxii
We have become willing prisoners in what Max Weber, the
German economist, called the iron cage” of consumer and
production-driven materialism.
P.xxiii.
For millions of working people the emancipation promised
by information technology has failed to materialise. Instead
they find themselves ensnared by the demands of communication.
Voice mail, e-mails, the pager, and the mobile telephone
are suffocating the working environment.
P. 308
Knowledge alone is no more attractive than an uncut diamond.
Knowledge is a commodity. The real value is in the way it
is applied.
When I look at the Internet I see an unquantified
mass of work, an unravelling of human minds, translated
into a hotchpotch of type and images, some of it stimulating
but much of it, like the labels on sauce bottles, of little
more than passing interest.
P. 309
Marshall McLuhan, who introduced us to the “global village,”
also declared that “the medium is the message.” Today the
medium is destroying the message, as the cuckoo Internet
absorbs corporate aspirations and the rest of us bow in
daily homage before the computer screen.
P. 310
The information revolution has buried the message. The message,
any message, has become a tiny insignificant voice in a
cacophony of communications, an e-mail maelstrom. Work?
The chance would be a fine thing.
P. 321
Social continuity transcends revolution, transcends geography.
It is not about kings and queens or despots or conquests.
It is about people making the best of their lives, looking
out for themselves and for those who come after them, and
work is so central to the human continuum. Where there is
humanity there is work. Where there is life there is work.
P. 322
Great work is not about ergonomically styled offices in
different shades of blue and green. It is certainly not
about all the processes of human resource management. It
is not about leadership—not leadership from above, anyway.
It is not about technology. It is about kindling the inner
human spirit that makes us the people we are.
Work has become the one-eyed monster that
invades our dreams, but we can learn to love it.
P. 323
In the commercial exploitation of the human genome, life
itself becomes a brand.
p.325
Not since the Industrial Revolution has it been so important
for individuals to explore the nature of their work. A poor
decision today can lead to a lifetime of unfulfilled ambitions.
P.326
The old ideologies are dead. Capitalism won and communism
lost. People prefer capitalism. They prefer the opportunity
to better themselves as individuals in the way they see
fit. But this does not mean that selfishness will abound
or that it cannot be directed at communal effort.
Work should be a means to an end. But work
has got out of hand for so many of us. Our attitudes have
become institutionalised by the secularised mindset of the
Protestant work ethic, transferred down the years in cultural
expectations and teachings of families and societies. Its
importance needs to be diluted in our perspectives.
The most freethinking civilisation the world has known was
a state wrapped in chains.
P. 327
Work and leisure are vital ingredients in the soup of life.
They can run together as a single fulfilling experience.
P. 328
In future work will need to earn its place in our
lives. We cannot live for work.
P. 338
I set out to write a book about something that has run through
human society like an unbroken thread from the dawn of our
history. It’s a book about work. It’s a book about the organisation
and the management of work. But most of all it’s a book
about people, the men and women who created the world we
live in and the inner soul-deep sense that pushes so many
of them ever onward.
Work is fascinating when you look at it.
But we shouldn’t become obsessed with it. We shouldn’t become
slaves to work.
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