A STRANGE SORT OF ADVANCE

Some years ago with the advent of advanced technology many workers were promised that the working week would be cut drastically, but capitalism just doesn't work that way. "Workers in the digital era can feel at times as if they are playing a video game, battling the barrage of e-mails and instant messages, juggling documents, Web sites and online calendars. To cope, people have become swift with the mouse, toggling among dozens of overlapping windows on a single monitor. But there is a growing new tactic for countering the data assault: the addition of a second computer screen. Or a third. This proliferation of displays is the latest workplace upgrade, and it is responsible for the new look at companies and home offices - they are starting to resemble mission control."  (New York Times), 7 February) For many office workers the advance of technology has meant more arduous working conditions, not easier ones. RD