Information Tokens and Reality: A Parable of the Internet

Abstract

In the preceding chapter I have been at pains to demonstrate to some degree of detail the manner in which the deepening involvement of information technologies in the workplace profoundly affects the nature of work and how it is exercised. The analysis has shown a wide range of tasks and operations that have traditionally been entangled in a considerably mechanized yet tangible production process to be increasingly transformed into an encounter with information tokens that codify the realities of production and steer and control its course. Reality is increasingly carried on the shoulders of information tokens and the rules (software) that govern their generation and dissemination.