Law of Unintended Consequences Rules the High-Tech Office
In its antitrust trial against Microsoft Corp., the government has relied heavily on a witness with flawless memory, unimpeachable motives and unfettered access to the thoughts and schemes of the company’s top executives.
That witness, of course, is the software giant’s own e-mail system, which has dutifully provided the government with millions of documents to bolster its case. Some come from Bill Gates himself, such as one in which he asks underlings, “Do we have a clear plan on what we want Apple to do to undermine Sun?”
It’s hard to imagine that Gates ever expected technology, of all things, to betray him, of all people. But the history of technology in the workplace is one of unintended and unexpected consequences.
From the typewriter to the copy machine to the local-area network, new office technologies have often done what they were supposed to do--boost efficiency by one measure or another. But as the e-mail example demonstrates, they rarely stop there.
“Inventors and manufacturers never know what users are ultimately going to make of their technology. Often, less anticipated uses turn out to be more important,” said Edward Tenner, author of “Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences.”
Ushering women into the office work force, for instance, was probably more than what Christopher Latham Sholes had in mind when he began designing the modern typewriter in the 1860s. But that is exactly what many historians say his invention accomplished.
Women were trained in typewriting and “sold” along with the new machine so that it would not become an expensive luxury, according to “Machines in the Office,” a history of office technology by Rodney Dale and Rebecca Weaver. In time, women came to be regarded as particularly suited to the task because of their “delicacy of touch.”
Though the circumstances were hardly enlightened by modern standards, women entered the office workplace in droves, often escaping domestic work or factories. The number of female clerks in Britain, for instance, surged from 279 in the 1861 census to 124,843 by 1911.
The pace of technological change in the office has been accelerating ever since. And every new device is put to use in unexpected ways that range from the frivolous to the profound.
The fax machine, for instance, has certainly speeded up the delivery of critical documents across vast distances. But many workers find it best suited to placing their lunch orders.
The copy machine revolutionized document duplication, replacing such inferior devices as the mimeograph. But it has also spawned a new generation of office pranksters fond of sitting on the machine in their skivvies, if not less.
Some technologies are unexpected consequences themselves. The Internet, for instance, wasn’t conceived as a global e-commerce engine, but as a research tool and hardy military communications network.
Thousands of companies have decided that the Net is an indispensable tool, but they continue to struggle with the time-wasting and sometimes offensive ways that employees take advantage of the technology.
A recent survey, for instance, found that 70% of transactions at online porn sites take place between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Such statistics have prompted hundreds of companies to begin using software to spy on their workers, creating new tensions between employers and employees.
In some cases, technology has enabled low-ranking employees to bring the giant corporations they work for to their knees. The tobacco industry, for instance, has been legally crippled in recent years partly because of the power of the copy machine.
Merrell Williams, perhaps the most important mole in the tobacco litigation, secretly copied thousands of confidential records while he worked as a lowly document analyst for a Louisville, Ky., law firm that represented tobacco giant Brown & Williamson. Williams surreptitiously delivered the documents to Congress and the press in 1994, setting off a legal firestorm that ultimately forced Big Tobacco to accept multibillion-dollar settlements.
It would have been unthinkable for Williams to inflict so much damage were it not for the copy machine. Hand copying so many documents would have been physically impossible. Stealing the originals would have gotten him caught. Besides, photocopies carry an imprimatur of authenticity that the media could not ignore and tobacco companies holding the original documents could not refute.
“The most democratic technologies in offices are also often the most subversive,” said Dirk Smillie, who, as director of the News Research Group, has followed media coverage of the tobacco cases. “They allow people to expose injustices in the workplace by redirecting the flow of information.”
Sometimes, technology does exactly the opposite of what is expected of it. The “paperless office” has been a gleam in technologists’ eyes for decades now. But since the advent of the personal computer, office paper purchases have surged from 4.4 million tons in 1980 to 7.3 million tons last year.
Without question, the computer and the Internet have enabled people to distribute billions of documents digitally. But for various reasons many people still prefer holding a hard piece of paper in their hands. The Net and PCs have just given us access to so much more material--Web pages, for instance--worth printing.
Technology is often credited with having a democratizing affect on the office, which is true for several reasons. It is common in many corporations, for instance, for even low-level employees to know the e-mail address of top executives, making it at least theoretically easier to reach them with complaints or suggestions.
But the fact that corporate chiefs even have e-mail addresses, and bother to check them, also underscores how technology has compelled many high-ranking corporate officials to handle correspondence and other tasks that were formerly the exclusive province of secretaries and assistants.
This has been enlightening to executives and, in some instances, embarrassing.
Judy McCoy, a lifelong secretary in Bellingham, Wash., said before the advent of e-mail, she was responsible for typing all of her bosses’ correspondence.
That includes what she called “hot letters”--reprimands or angry responses her bosses would sometimes dictate to her in haste. Often, she would type the letter as dictated but give her boss a few hours to cool off. Invariably, she would persuade her boss to compose a new letter in calmer tones.
But e-mail “doesn’t give you that cooling-down period,” she says. And she has never forgotten an episode that took place several years ago, while she was working at a university. One senior official wrote scathing remarks about another, then accidentally addressed the e-mail to the target of his tirade.
Another consequence of placing technology in everyone’s hands is that it often distracts people from their true talents. Tenner argues that rather than boosting productivity in offices, computers have turned everyone into part-time tech consultants.
Workers who used to focus on one task and executives who concentrated exclusively on matters of strategy now find themselves dealing with cables, interface cards and networking software.
Tenner chuckles recalling a newspaper article that described University of Chicago physicist Leon Lederman spending an entire afternoon crawling under tables and around corners trying to find which office printer was connected to his new computer.
“Here was the discoverer of the bottom quark and the muon neutrino,” the article said, “being paid to locate a 38-pound laser printer.”
But for all the travails of modern technology, few office workers would choose to go back in time.
Donna Baker, an executive assistant at Idealab Inc. in Pasadena, remembers the meager equipment she was provided with when she became a secretary after graduating from high school 30 years ago.
“I had an IBM Selectric typewriter,” said Baker, 47. “It had correction tape on it and it was like the wave of the future.”
Thanks to technology, she said, she now spends the bulk of her time doing more rewarding work, such as using spreadsheets to map out budget scenarios, preparing meeting presentations and using the Internet to gather information on suppliers, customers and competitors.
“Long gone are the days for secretaries when you used to get your boss coffee,” she said. “Now it’s almost like I get to run the organization without the responsibility.”
