The Other Side
Grim industrial-age style work processes
may well be part of the future of the information age. Knowledge rules;
knowledge workers serve. A harbinger of a future that could be...
By R.
Sukumar
 4567 is
shutting down ...KW 4567 is shutting down ...KW 4567 is shutting down ...Raj
tried to shut the ...KW 4567 is shutting down ...voice out of his
head as he strapped on his ...KW 4567 is shutting down ...recharge
kit. Years of conditioning kicked in and the voice had receded into a thin
buzzing sound somewhere in the back of his head by the time he wheeled his
light-weight fibre glass scooter from its docking station. He could walk
to the KW work bay and try to fix the problem from the meta-server, but
Raj had a feeling that 4567 would require more than that. Sen, Raj's
predecessor as stable in-charge had noticed this. ''I am putting down a
recommendation that you take my place when I retire thirteen months from
now,'' Sen had said. ''You seem to know just what these *@#*%!! will do.''
Well, Raj hadn't known Sen was walking into a trap when the announcement
about the rogue KW had come. ''You carry on home. It must be another nerd
going through a mid-life crisis,'' Sen had said. And so Raj had left for
home, and Sen had gone and gotten himself blown up by a KW who'd
over-ridden the safeguards on the meta-server and accessed a 1980's
directory on making landmines that the sweepers had overlooked. ...is
shutting down. The voice broke through again and Raj snapped out of
his reverie: he was getting soft. Sen had been gone eight months.
From the look on the faces of the people in
the work bay, Raj knew he was right. This wasn't a problem that could be
fixed through the meta-server.
''4567 has gone offline, sir,'' the
harassed-looking maintenance woman at the console said. ''We can't seem to
get him back on.''
''Medical history,'' snapped Raj, and
someone handed him a visi-pad.
''I checked,'' said the woman at the
console. ''He's clean. There are no previous aberrations.''
There never was.
''Then I'll just have to go in and find out
what's wrong with him, shouldn't I?'' said Raj, to no one in particular
and headed for the door that led to the KW farm.
About Raj
As he
heard the air-lock hiss into place behind him, Raj felt a familiar calm
descending on him. This was what he was trained to do. He kept his eyes
shut-he'd closed them before stepping through the door-and counted to 25
in his head, all the while drawing up images of what he would see when he
opened them. The sound was all around him-a million jackhammers working up
a deafening rhythm. He checked to see if his earplugs were firmly in place
and opened his eyes.
He was in cubicle hell. Miles and miles of
cubicles stretched out in front of him (it was actually only 3.17 miles
but seemed more). The million jackhammers were actually 5,300 KWs
(Knowledge Workers) tapping away at their keyboards. From where he stood,
Raj could see the KWs in the first few rows: physically, no two were
alike. Some were young; others old. Some were dressed in smart business
suits; others, in jeans and sweatshirts. Some wore anti-glare goggles;
others didn't. Still, all had the same glazed look in their eyes and
sported a tiny electrode-patch over their left eyebrow.
The patch housed a complex miniature
circuit that connected the nervous system of a KW to the meta-server,
adding human-intelligence to its vast computing power. It also served as a
control mechanism: the meta-server could send out electrical stimuli
through the patch to the KWs, controlling their behaviour. Now, somewhere
towards the end of the farm, one KW's patch had ceased to work or he had
pulled it off.
Not a face looked up at Raj as his scooter
zipped silently down the narrow aisle in the middle of the hall. Nor were
they meant to: all KWs worked eight-hour shifts, with a 20-minute break
for lunch, and two five-minute breaks for coffee, all of which were served
by an army of steward bots in the cubicles itself; there was a chemical
toilet for every 10 cubicles; and smoking wasn't allowed, but although
nicotine patches were frowned upon they weren't on the proscribed list
yet.
It was the same everywhere. Huge knowledge
factories like the one Raj worked in, churned out, 24x7, the vast amounts
of intelligence required to run everything from soap factories to
armies-all manned, not by humans, but by bots. Humans were still in
demand. They worked in the stables that looked after the well-being of KWs
and bots, in services like retail and banking that required a tactile
interface with other humans, in businesses like entertainment (no one was
willing to pay good money to watch tin cans sing and dance-at least, not
yet), and in the top-floor of companies where they could plot and scheme
and strategise and revel in megalomania as only humans could (and can).
Raj had heard that things had been
different in the early part of the century. Then, companies had believed
that flexibility, freedom, and fun increased productivity. The discovery
of the patch had changed all that: for eight hours a day, an army of KWs
allowed themselves to be patched to a server in return for money (lots of
it, actually).
Raj was close to 4567 now. He decided to
carry on by foot, stopped the scooter and leaned it carefully against the
outside wall of a cubicle; it wouldn't do to alarm an unstable KW. He ran
through the details he had gleaned off the visi-pad in the worker bay,
searching for some fragment of information that could give him a clue
about 4567's behaviour. The KW's name was Sandeep, he was 33 years old
with no previous history of non-conformity, and married to a sales-clerk
at a garment store. Nothing there, thought Raj, as he carefully stepped
into 4567's cubicle.
Sandeep greeted him with a cheery wave.
He'd taken off his patch and placed it on the table. ''I was wondering how
long it'd take them to send some one in,'' said 4567. ''Come in, and make
yourself comfortable. I can't give you a seat, because that'd mean I have
to stand, and I am quite comfortable as I am. I'd offer you a coffee but
these metal men come around just twice a day. And while you're at it, tell
me your name.''
About Sandeep
Speeding
back home in the cab Raj had called for him, Sandeep couldn't understand
what had made him behave the way he had. He hadn't resisted when Raj had
offered him a ride to the KW work bay. That was after they'd chatted for
some time. Raj was a nice guy, he thought. Actually, Raj was a nice guy
for a stable incharge, he corrected himself. He'd been unable to tell Raj
what had gone wrong. All he knew was that he didn't feel like working...,
didn't feel like patching himself to the meta-server... no more. Fine, Raj
had said, and offered that ride.
A few minutes later they were in the bay.
''I'd just like to take a few days off,''
Sandeep had told Raj.
''I understand,'' Raj had said. ''I'll
inform the supervisor.'' And then he had called that cab.
Deserted inner-city roads gave way to the
parks and shopping arcades of the suburbs. Sandeep rolled down the
windows: the buzz of voices was a welcome relief; he was tired of working
in a cubicle where the only thing he could hear were his neighbours going
clickety-clack on their keyboards. Hell, he'd been in the cubicle five
years and he didn't even know the names of 4566 and 4568. Now, where did
that notion come from, he wondered.
The decision to be a KW, though, was his
own: his father had been a shop-floor worker in a cement plant who'd lost
his job, along with hundreds of his colleagues to a collection of
versatile bots. Sandeep had grown up hating the metal contraptions that
had rendered his father redundant: he blamed them for his unhappy
childhood. Early in life, he'd decided that he would try and find himself
a job that couldn't be taken away from him by some machines. ''They can't
think,'' he'd told his father and proceeded to become an expert code
cruncher.
The job with Intelligent Infotech was his
second. The first had been at a company where a rogue KW had blown up the
stable in-charge and five of his colleagues. He'd then escaped and was
halfway home when the enforcers caught up with him. Unfortunately, he had
already entered the suburbs by then and took a young woman and her
daughter out on a walk hostage. In the resulting shootout, the KW, both
hostages, and an enforcer had died, and the company hadn't quite been able
to live down the incident. Three months later it had been acquired by an
asset-stripper.
That was when companies dependant on KWs
had installed air-locks on knowledge-farm doors. Sandeep hadn't minded
that: rogue KWs were a threat to everyone. And you could never tell when a
KW would go bad.
Why, he remembered an incident less than a
year back when a KW had learned how to wire up a landmine and blown a
stable in-charge and three other KWs up in Intelligent Infotech. But the
woman hadn't been able to leave the knowledge-farm-the air-lock had seen
to that-and a calm stable hand had got her down with an industrial-grade
tranquilliser dart as she charged at him down the aisle.
Sandeep liked his job: he was expected to
work (and do nothing else) for eight hours a day, five days a week; the
rest of his time was his own. The company worked seven days a week, but as
a married man Sandeep automatically qualified for the first shift on
weekdays. The pay was good. There was security in anonymity and 4567 was
as anonymous as a job title or employee number could get. And there was
stability in writing code for the machines: there had been a few attempts
to create machines that could, in turn, write code for other machines, but
the experiments hadn't worked.
The cab passed by the shopping area where
his wife worked, but Sandeep was loath to drop in unannounced. He was sure
the supervisors wouldn't understand and Sita would get into trouble at
work. Besides, she would see him and imagine the worst and he didn't want
to try and explain something even he didn't fully understand to her. He
couldn't feign illness either: the booster shots most KWs got from their
companies could combat even a concentrated lab-strain of anthrax. It would
have to wait till she got home.
About The Book
May be
it's the book,'' said Sita after listening to Sandeep's story. The
previous weekend Sandeep had come across an old book while clearing out
the attic. It didn't have a cover; the first few chapters were missing;
but the first chapter head Sandeep had come across had said Work Is Fun,
and he was hooked.
Now that Sita had drawn his attention to
it, Sandeep realised his behaviour could well be a fall-out of reading too
much into the book. Having found the solution to her spouse's problem,
Sita got down to the business of cooking their evening meal. A good hot
meal, she decided, was what Sandeep needed. ''And throw that book away,''
she said. Sandeep knew he could do that, but what of the ideas he had
picked up from the book.
A fragment from the book came to his mind:
''All great companies create a shared vision, which they communicate to
all their employees.'' Sandeep didn't know if Intelligent Infotech even
had a vision. All he knew was that the company expected him to complete
discrete computing tasks. As to how the code he wrote was used or the
identity of the users, he had no idea. Worse, the book said something
about teams being the fabric of the organisation. To his knowledge,
Sandeep had never been part of a team. These weren't ideas that could be
smothered easily.
''Anyway don't do anything rash now,''
advised Sita from the safe confines of the kitchen. ''You're due for a
raise next month.'' That was true, but Sandeep knew it was going to be
another of those unilateral in-your-envelope kind of raises, not a patch
on the performance appraisal techniques the book spoke about. He'd never
met with his supervisor-they communicated through e-mail-leave alone the
CEO of the company. So things like 360 degree feedback-that had a good
ring to it, now-were out. Still, Sandeep was a practical man: he knew he'd
be a fool to give up a great job in pursuit of what had been. He couldn't
find a job that paid as well, and he wasn't trained to do most other
things either. Why, he doubted he could do his wife's sales clerk job:
he'd always been a little awkward around people.
''Perhaps,'' a voice from within his head
whispered, ''the companies mentioned in the book died simply because of
their work practices.''
''You're probably right. It must be the
book, and I think I got carried away,'' Sandeep told his wife as he helped
her set the table for dinner.
About The Other Side
The
transition of work from the realm of the physical to that of the cerebral
is cited by most management mavens as reason enough for those companies
that haven't already woken up, to do so and institute great work
practices. ''Every business is a knowledge business,'' say some. ''You
can't treat KWs like shop-floor ones and get away with it,'' say some
others. The first is probably an accurate assessment of the way most
businesses are evolving. The second, for our own sakes, better be right.
It isn't too hard to visualise a world like
Raj's and Sandeep's. The singular factor that catalysed the industrial age
was the ability of companies and entrepreneurs to break work up into
discrete tasks that were one, not very difficult to complete, and two,
repeatable without any loss in efficiency. The two made it possible to
remove complexity from most work practices and make them things that could
be taught easily to workers.
If some company or individual were to hit
upon a way to do the same thing to knowledge-the reigning deity of this
information age-where would we be? Perhaps in a world where a knowledge
worker serves the same purpose as a cog in a huge and complex piece of
machinery aware merely of its own role but not of the larger one of the
machine itself.
If that commoditisation of knowledge were
to happen, companies would have no reason to try and make work a
pleasurable activity, the workplace, an ergonomic haven, and workpractices,
things straight out of the good book. The physical and mental well-being
of employees would cease to matter to organisations. As would things like
helping employees create wealth, ensuring that the work is fun, and
helping ordinary people do extraordinary things.
Most companies, after all, create great
places to work simply because they have to, not because they want to.
Circa 2001, the only way an organisation can attract the kind of knowledge
worker who'll make a difference to it is by creating the sort of Work El
Dorado that the rest of the articles in this magazine talk about. C 2020,
who knows?
Is a world like Sandeep's difficult to
imagine? May be. Is it an impossibility? May be not. Today, the only
remaining vestige of the industrial age, in terms of work practices, is
the sweatshop. And body-shoppers have proved that they are as adept as
sweat-shop owners in exploiting workers-only their play is restricted to
KWs. To paraphrase Cringley's law: in the near future the world around us
will change much less than the most radical futurists have predicted; in
the long run, it will change much more than anyone could have ever
imagined. RIP Great Workplace.
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