Wednesday, October 20, 2021
More from the inflection point
From Computers and Automation Feb 72, an article claiming that computers will "empower" secretaries. Oops.
In this case I'm sure the author is not a poor prophet. She's starting up a new company, and the article is basically an advertisement.
The way things stand now, many women making their way up in business and industry face the formidable liability of their own secretarial skills. The better their skills, the more they are categorized as secretaries, effectively precluding their promotion into more responsible positions. Many smart women are keeping themselves ignorant of such skills in order to avoid that trap; this is passing the burden on to office managers, who find good secretarial help harder and harder to come by.Keeping themselves ignorant? I doubt it.
The editing typewriter is very useful for a secretary for it does a lot of repetitive work for her. Not the kind of work she might enjoy or profit from, but the jobs of retyping, revising, and correcting that go with the rest of the job.True for TYPISTS, not for secretaries. The distinction between a typist and a secretary was perfectly well known at that time. This school film from the '40s defines the two jobs clearly.
Second, she will find herself with time on her hands -- and energy. A smart secretary can use her newly-found time away from the typewriter. She can take on new jobs that will put her in closer touch with the decisionmaking levels of the corporation she works for. She will be able to attend meetings, do the first drafts of reports, coordinate and keep records, follow up past activities, handle questions, and solve problems.Actual secretaries were already doing those tasks. I was in academia from the mid '70s through 2003, across the transition to computers. Department secretaries didn't change their job. Unlike what you see on TV, a real secretary is more like a mother than a hot babe. She knows where everyone is and what everyone is doing. She knows who has the real power, and knows how to shape the power. Computers did eliminate typists, who were generally students on work-study in academia. The executives and professors now have to do their own typing, which is a waste of their skill and time. In short, computers didn't empower secretaries, they wasted the talents of executives.
Labels: AI point-missing
¶ 6:26 AM
