Technology and Work in the Virtual Organization

Abstract

With the proliferation of industrial manufacturing plants in the United States during the first half of the 20th century, work was traditionally understood not only as something you did to earn a living, but someplace you went. The industrial revolution fundamentally changed the nature of work as it tied the practices of manual laborers to specific technologies such as the assembly line and the printing press, which were located in specific factories, plants, and offices. Today when we talk about work as a place we go rather than a thing we do, our rhetoric is a remnant of an image of manual work that dominated the 20th century.