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Digital: What is 2.0 colonization?

Technological progress, following its phenomenal acceleration tied to the invention of modern scientific methods, should gradually free us from work. This happens in two stages: First comes motorization, which frees us from the physically most demanding tasks related to production. Then comes computing and robotics, which free us from the repetitive tasks related to this production.

At the collective level: 2.0 colonization

Nevertheless, it can be observed that in the current capitalist system, computing is also widely used for completely different purposes.First, within companies and administrations, it serves as a support for the proliferation of bureaucracy in the form of indicators that management (non-directly operational) imposes on production personnel (operatives) to enter and report.Second, between companies, as well as between administrations and citizens, it is observed that the stronger tend to transfer their workload to the weaker without any financial compensation, and without moderation, in the form of: You must connect to my computer system and enter such and such information. I call this 2.0 colonization.

At the individual level: the role of management

Let's go back to the question 'How to succeed in life?', and reframe it in the specific case of a manager in a company or in an administration, and his relationship to computing.

If his goal is to succeed in life, then he is primarily seeking to progress on the social ladder. For this purpose, he seeks to move away from the production (which constitutes the lower level) and to progress up the management hierarchy. For this purpose, he focuses on the most effective tool, which is the game of alliances. As a result, he practices 2.0 colonization and outsources computing to the IT department. The IT department progressively becomes a sort of clergy that uses increasingly complex tools to ensure increasingly significant revenues. The main quality of the selected products is notoriety, with no real connection to the needs of field users.

Conversely, if the manager's goal is to succeed in his life, then his goal is to be supportive of real production, i.e., on the ground. Adopting Epictetus' principle of separating what is within one's control from what is not leads him very quickly to understand that the choice of computing tools will largely determine what is within his control. He then chooses a computing tool that can be mastered at his level, such as Storga. The price to pay is a personal effort to learn.

The ERP myth

ERP is the acronym for Enterprise Resource Planning. It is a generic software for tracking production, more or less readapted to each sector, then to each company or administration. The most famous of them is called SAP.

Capitalism has its myths, such as trickle-down. Computing has its own myths, such as the possibility of satisfactorily adapting a huge generic software to a particular organization. ERP is generally chosen on a herd-based basis, without precise measurement of the consequences on real production and the limits of adaptability. Hence the recourse to hierarchical pressure to limit the reporting of problems one does not want to face.

Go deeper

Refer to the question 'What do good practices represent in the world of work?'.Read the article Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony published by John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan in American Journal of Sociology in 1977. This article precedes the massive arrival of computing in organizations, but clearly shows the pitfalls linked to the effect of social ambition in companies, which computing has only amplified.

Read chapter 15 'The technological revolution of digital and robotics' of the book From capital to reason.

The question 'What is Lean production?' presents a more satisfactory organization for companies and public services, and its computing aspect.