Technology and Psychology - (Yair - Amichai-Hamburger) PDF
Technology and Psychology - (Yair - Amichai-Hamburger) PDF
Technology and Psychology - (Yair - Amichai-Hamburger) PDF
Edited by
Yair Amichai-Hamburger
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,
São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521885812
Figures page ix
Tables x
Contributors xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
1. Communication technology and psychological
well-being: Yin, Yang, and the golden mean of media
effects 9
G E O R G E R O D M A N A N D K AT H E R I N E G . F R Y
vii
viii Contents
Index 279
Figures
ix
Tables
x
Contributors
YA I R A M I C H A I - H A M B U R G E R :
The Research Center for Internet
Psychology (CIP), Sammy Ofer School of Communications, The
Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Israel
AZY BARAK: Department of Counseling & Human Development,
University of Haifa, Israel
CAROLINE BIRON: Lancaster University Management School,
Lancaster University, UK
RAE LESSER BLUMBERG: Sociology Department, University of
Virginia, USA
C A RY L . C O O P E R :
Lancaster University Management School,
Lancaster University, UK
S H E R RY C O U L S O N :
Department of Physical Medicine and
Rehabilitation, The University of Western Ontario, Canada
S U S A N C . E AT O N : Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University, USA
K AT H E R I N E G . F R Y :
Department of Television and Radio, Brooklyn
College of CUNY, USA
STEVEN L. GOLDMAN: Departments of Philosophy and History,
Lehigh University, USA
OSCAR I. GONZALEZ: Department of Psychology and Social
Behavior, University of California, Irvine, USA
PETER A. HANCOCK: Department of Psychology, University of
Central Florida, USA
J E F F R E Y W. J U TA I : Faculty of Health Sciences, University of
Ottawa, Canada
xi
xii Contributors
Without the help of a number of people this book could not have
come into being. My grateful thanks to the authors for their hard
work and excellent contributions. My gratitude to those whose com-
ments and encouragement were invaluable: Albert Auster, Susan B.
Barnes, Kent Campbell, Joanne Cohoon, Randall Collins, Lori Foster
Thompson, Shaul Fox, Efrat Gil, David Haken, Tsahi Hayat, Matthew
Kalman, Tal Katz-Navon, Meni Koslowski, Moshe Krausz, Ann Lane,
Gerhard E. Lenski, Ingvor Pettersson, Rivka Ribak, Jason T. Siegel,
Louise Sylvester, Keith Weber, Patrice L. (Tamar) Weiss, and Mina
Westman.
My thanks go to Andrew Peart and Carrie Cheek at Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, who helped me materialize my ideas into a book. And a
special thank-you to my beloved wife Debbie, without whose ideas and
support this book would never have seen the light of day.
xiii
Introduction
Today, it is hard to find a corner in our lives that is not affected by tech-
nology. We are surrounded by it at home, commuting, at work, and in our
leisure time. Given its dominant position, it should come as no surprise
that technology has a strong impact on our well-being. In recent years,
there have been some major studies into different aspects of technology
and its influence on our well-being. However, until now, no book has
attempted a wide-ranging appraisal of how the technology that is such a
part of our everyday lives impacts our well-being. This is precisely the
aim of this book.
The term “technology” has its origins in the Greek concept technologia,
which includes the ideas techne – “craft” – and logia – “saying.” Many peo-
ple have attempted to give this concept a definition. For example, Stein
(1966) defined it as the sum of the ways in which a social group pro-
vides itself with the material objects of its civilization. Rousseau (1978)
suggested that technology is the process used to transform raw materials
into end products. Kipnis (1991) defined it as the use of systematic pro-
cedures to produce intended effects. However, a definitive meaning of
the term “technology” is elusive: the term may be used to refer to mater-
ial objects of use to humanity, such as hardware, machines, or utensils,
but it can also encompass broader components, including methods of
organization or techniques. The term can either be applied generically or
to specific areas. Generally speaking, technology is the relationship that
society has with its tools and crafts.
Well-being is also a term that defies a single definition. It has been
used interchangeably with such concepts as happiness, health, welfare,
comfort, security, and safety. In addition, there are associated terms,
for example psychological well-being, subjective well-being, and so on.
Argyle (1992) suggested that when people are asked to define happiness,
they answer in one of two ways: Some describe happiness in terms of a
positive emotion, like joy, while others will describe it in terms of content-
ment and satisfaction with life. Helliwell and Putnam (2004) distinguish
between happiness and life satisfaction. They argue that: “Generally
1
2 Introduction
References
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Ben-Shahar, T. (2007). Happier. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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of well-being. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5, 1–31.
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Society.
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Sinnema, G. (2004). Quality of life: Patients and doctors don’t always agree:
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ness versus the pursuit of in-group obligations. Unpublished Master’s thesis,
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literature. Social Indicators Research, 61, 59–78.
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York: Random House.
Tatarkiewicz, W. (1976). Analysis of Happiness. The Hague, Netherlands:
Martinus Nijhoff.
1 Communication technology and
psychological well-being: Yin, Yang,
and the golden mean of media effects
9
10 George Rodman and Katherine G. Fry
media images, which has been blamed for eating disorders (David and
Johnson, 1998).
Another example: The Yin and Yang of media technology can be seen
in the way portable music players such as the iPod are used. Their huge
popularity testifies to the great pleasure they provide, but they also isolate
listeners by allowing them to tune out the world around them. Parents
today notice that their children no longer squabble about what station
the car radio should be tuned to. Each family member is tethered to
his or her individual earplugs, and the eerie silence has reminded more
than one dad of an invasion of pod-people. The absence of squabbling is
comforting, but one cannot help feel that opportunities for bonding are
being lost with each mile.
In this chapter we will take a look at the Yin, the Yang, and the golden
mean of communication technology both from a historical and a social-
science point of view.
Historical perspective
The social connections one experiences are formed through communi-
cation, which is, very generally, a process of symbolic exchange. Com-
munication among humans takes many forms, and is achieved through
many different symbolic means. These include spoken language, written
language, physical gesture and other forms of body language, visuals,
Communication technology and well-being 13
ways that helped them to remember, since memory was vitally important
as there was no way in which to record information. Ong’s terms to
describe the oral mind, such as additive, aggregate, and redundant, are
all terms that describe the ways that information was taken in, under-
stood, and stored (1982: 37–57).
In these nonalphabet societies, the world was conceived of as a whole,
composed of meaningful interrelations, fluid interactions, and cycles, as
opposed to discrete, abstract, and hierarchical ideas and pieces of infor-
mation – the artifacts of literacy. Face-to-face communication and the
immediate social and natural environment are of primary importance in
an oral culture. In such a specific social organization, a sense of well-being
would no doubt be linked more to the cohesiveness of the social collec-
tive than to separate individuals. Privacy would not be understood as an
individual value, if it would exist at all. The sense of oneself as an indi-
vidual did not resonate with primarily oral people. Personal autonomy
in a psychological sense did not exist. Teske (2002) explains that notions
of privacy and individuality did not become important until after about
AD 1500. In an oral society well-being would be determined by the social
body in terms of complete interconnectedness. A separation between the
social and the individual begins with the inventions of alphabets and
writing.
(Ong, 1982), the way they understand their relationship to the rest of the
world, which is to say, how they perceive reality.
Since it is not until literacy that there is individualism, privacy, and
autonomy – ways of thinking of individuals as separate not only from
others in the same social collective, but also from the rest of their envi-
ronment – then we can say that with writing systems come the beginnings
of thinking in psychological terms. Using our present-day concept of psy-
chological well-being, perhaps we can say that, in the second communi-
cation epoch, psychological well-being is in fact a sense of self, of being
separate from the rest of society, while also belonging to the society. It is
the very beginning of finding balance between belonging and separating.
While there was concern in the early days of literacy in some societies
that this type of separation could only be negative (Socrates worried at
the time about how writing would be the downfall of civilization as he
knew it), it did not concern the intelligentsia and general citizenry to
the extent that new communication forms preoccupy us today. While the
change from orality to literacy resulted in major social and psychological
shifts, these became more pronounced with the invention of the printing
press in the age of typography.
e-mail, and the digital re-making of visual images possible with today’s
computers.”
While notions of privacy, place, and fixed identity are challenged, and
may be eroding, what it means to be an individual and part of a larger
social system is changing. The balance of psychological well-being con-
tinues to shift. Increasingly it may be that psychological well-being will
hinge on our ability to keep apace of the changes, to digitally or virtually
connect with others in a world where the rules about what it means to
be human and to communicate with humans have changed. While this
world has not changed overnight, the changes have been increasing at the
rate at which electronic communication technologies have been adopted.
Since the turn of the twenty-first century the change has been rapid.
Theories about communication and the effects of media and content
have reflected the changes.
Social-science perspective
What follows is a discussion of our current state of theorizing about
communication technologies and psychological well-being, from a social-
science perspective. This perspective is exemplified in its basic considera-
tion of the importance of interpersonal communication to mental health.
Early research
Concerns about the impact of media are as old as the media themselves.
Systematic research into these effects, however, did not begin until the
1920s, when the film industry and radio broadcasting had begun to make
major inroads into American and European culture. Major research stud-
ies are generally directed toward the newest, and most popular, media.
These are the media that tend to have parents, teachers, and church
officials most concerned, especially in terms of their effect on young
people. That is the case today, and certainly was the reason for the intro-
duction of systematic research in the early twentieth century. However,
psychological well-being was not on the radar screen for this research –
the researchers were concerned with beliefs, attitudes, and, most of all,
behavior. This early research was a reaction to the mediated propaganda
used during the First World War. During the war, propaganda had been
so blatant, and apparently so useful, both on the part of the Allies and
their enemies, that people feared newspapers, but especially film and
radio, had become powerful enough to “brainwash” an innocent public
by influencing them in ways that they did not realize (Lasswell, 1927).
Experts in media research have identified a number of early studies that
made major contributions to the understanding of media effects (Lowery
and DeFleur, 1995; Rodman, 2007), and two of these provided insights
that could be extrapolated to better understanding the effect of media on
mental health. The first of these was the Payne Fund studies.
on teenagers. In fact, the researchers pointed out that sex scenes “blew
the sixteen-year-olds off the graphs” (Lowery and DeFleur, 1995: 38).
Some of the Payne Fund studies used survey methods, in which young
movie viewers, their parents, and their teachers were asked to recall the
effects that movie viewing had on them. The results of these surveys
suggested that movie viewing was harmful to a child’s health (in that
it disturbed sleep), contributed to an erosion of moral standards, and
had a negative influence on the child’s conduct. Movie fans were seen
by their teachers as badly behaved when compared with their classmates
who did not attend movies frequently. Heavy moviegoers also had less
positive reputations, did worse in school, and were not as popular with
their classmates. The surveys that asked teenagers to recall if movies
had affected their behavior showed that they had “imitated the movie
characters openly in beautification, mannerisms, and attempts at love-
making” (Lowery and DeFleur, 1995: 40).
The Payne Fund studies, like most social-scientific studies into media
effects, did not measure or attempt to define psychological well-being.
The Yin and Yang of media effects, however, were already obvious.
On the one hand, movies provided relaxation and entertainment dur-
ing tough times. On the other hand, they provided negative models that
interfered with healthy identity formation and might easily have con-
tributed to unhealthy levels of anxiety and depression.
Contemporary research
Investigators from the social-science perspective of media effects moved
over time from a powerful-effects, to a minimal-effects, to a mixed-effects
theory of media influence, continuing with an emphasis on media content
as opposed to media forms. The Payne Fund and Seduction of the Inno-
cent studies both supported the powerful-effects model, which predicted
that media would have an instant and potent influence on their audi-
ences, causing teenagers, for example, to change their self-concepts or
behavior immediately following the viewing of a movie or the reading of
a comic book. Later studies (see, e.g., Lazarfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet,
1948), which failed to confirm these effects, led to the minimal-effects
model, which predicted that media would have little influence on behav-
ior. Today, researchers accept a mixed-effects model, which predicts that
sometimes media will have powerful effects, sometimes minimal effects,
and sometimes – depending on a complex variety of contingencies – a
mixture of powerful and minimal effects.
The mixed-effects model is exemplified by Wilbur Schramm’s classic
research into the effects of television violence on children. After years
of elegant and robust research that resulted in several hundred pages
of findings on increasingly specific effects, Schramm, Lyle, and Parker
(1961: 13) summarized their findings as follows:
For some children, under some conditions, some television is harmful. For other
children under the same conditions, or for the same children under other con-
ditions, it may be beneficial. For most children, under most conditions, most
television is probably neither harmful nor particularly beneficial.
Communication technology and well-being 25
communication media – people sleep less, for example, so they can watch
more television, while the stimulation of late-night programming can
make it more difficult to sleep (Schramm et al., 1961). Also, television
viewing is not only inherently sedentary but also associated with the
consumption of unhealthy snacks, many of which are sold in television
advertising (Signorielli and Staples, 1997).
Still, there can be little doubt that digital media are used to manage
complex tasks, and that their ability to do so provides happiness to many
of their users. However, several researchers have pointed out the problems
in erasing the line between work life and family/recreational/nonwork
life. Chesley (2005) explains how blurring the boundaries between work
and home creates problems for families, such as when a parent takes
a child’s worried question about a sick pet at work, or an executive is
interrupted in the middle of a family dinner with a call from the work-
place. This blurring of boundaries was dubbed “spillover” by Zedeck
(1992), and has become a focus of considerable research. Spillover
occurs in both directions, from home to work and from work to home,
and can have both positive and negative effects (Frone, 2003; Roehling,
Moen, and Batt, 2003). For example, Hill, Ferris, and Martinson (2003)
found that telecommuters working from virtual offices have more flex-
ibility than traditional office workers to meet both work and family
needs.
Conclusion
Communication technologies were once divided into two types: mass
media such as radio and television, and interpersonal media such as the
analog telephone. Mass media were used by one organization, such as a
television network, to send a message out to a large and diverse audience.
Interpersonal media were used for one person to communicate with one
other person. Today’s era of digital media has led to the convergence
of mass media and interpersonal media, which is epitomized in devices
such as cell phones capable of downloading television programs, and web
sites such as YouTube and MySpace that allow individuals to send out
what are essentially personal messages to large audiences. This makes
the question of technology’s effect on the beneficial aspects of human
communication especially important in today’s world.
For example, cell phones and instant messages keep friends in constant
touch; it stands to reason that this kind of contact should encourage pos-
itive relations with others. This effect was not supported by Kraut et al.
(1998), who looked at new Internet users and found that greater use of
the Internet was associated with declines in participants’ communication
with family members in the household, decline in the size of their social
circles, and increases in their depression and loneliness. This was true
even though their sample used the Internet extensively for communi-
cation. Kraut and his colleagues called this the “Internet Paradox.” A
follow-up study (Kraut et al., 2002), however, found that the negative
effects had dissipated over time. Could it be that, within the period of
time that elapsed between both studies, heavy Internet users had inte-
grated the medium into their lives in such a way that they were able to
figure out how to maintain, even reinforce, a sense of personal well-being
by using it? Could it be, perhaps, that in that period of time the Internet
Communication technology and well-being 29
had become much more widely used by others, and for many different
tasks and connections, so that one’s sense of well-being would not be
affected in a negative way, but would be even positively associated with
it? Or, is it that both studies reinforce our theme that communication
technology sometimes helps, and sometimes hurts, psychological well-
being? Yair Amichai-Hamburger and Azy Barak have more to say about
the Internet and psychological well-being in Chapter 2.
Conventional wisdom tends to see the effects of communication as a
straight cause–effect, with the cause being the adoption of new media
forms and/or content, and the perceived effect being positive or negative
depending upon one’s point of view and the theoretical model deployed.
We suggest here that a more reasoned point of view is that media tech-
nologies and media content have both a Yin and a Yang, in which the
positive and negative effects work together, with optimal benefits seen in
a golden mean of media use. We argue that it is important to look histori-
cally at changes in communication and specifically the dominant forms of
communication within a given era. As communication technologies have
been introduced and adopted they have created new environments for
understanding the world, including the relationship between others and
ourselves. We present this idea with a special sensitivity to the fact that
the concept of psychological well-being has changed significantly over
time, and that the development of new forms of communication media
has played a major role in that change. Future historical examinations of
psychological well-being and communication technologies must include
Eastern cultures, which were left out of this discussion. The evolving
notions of self and society, from centuries past to the present, are not
the same in non-Western cultures, and a more thorough examination of
those differences is necessary.
It seems social scientists and media researchers of all stripes would
benefit from further investigation into the shifting sense of self and con-
sequent shifting sense of balance that is identified as psychological well-
being as communications and specifically communication technologies
evolve. Such investigations might include any number of approaches,
with the larger intent to understand how different modes of communica-
tion shape content and individual as well as group and public interaction.
The idea is that communications mold the reality within which we live
our lives. One approach in this larger endeavor is research into the way
mediated communication forms replicate a sense of presence (see Lom-
bard and Ditton, 1997). Presence research looks at the ways in which
electronic media can create virtual environments which, through the use
of an interface, can create new realities, or new ways of “being there”
that produce feelings and experiences in users which are not unlike
30 George Rodman and Katherine G. Fry
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Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No Sense of Place. New York: Oxford University Press.
Muhlen, N. (1949). Comic books and other horrors: Prep school for totalitarian
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Communication technology and well-being 33
34
Internet and well-being 35
Greater anonymity
On the Internet, people can easily maintain their anonymity; for exam-
ple, they can choose a false name and hide other identifying personal
details. Different sites, as well as online communication tools (e.g., chat,
e-mail), vary as to the degree of anonymity they allow the user to main-
tain. However, even when people use their real names or disclose other
36 Yair Amichai-Hamburger and Azy Barak
who feel that they can hide behind their invisibility might deceive others
about their physical characteristics and describe themselves online as
looking very different from their real selves, thus abusing others (e.g., in
dating sites).
Greater control
One of the unique facets of Internet communication is that, for the
participant, the whole encounter is taking place in an environment of
his or her choosing; this may well be a source of security and comfort.
The Internet user is able to “go out to meet the world,” meet strangers,
take part in numerous activities, communicate through asynchronous
and easily controllable tools – without leaving his/her home. Internet
users experience greater control in their social interactions due to the
possibilities of an easy escape from contact, the fact that they can choose
to remain unidentified, and a subjective sense of privacy (Madell and
Muncer, 2007).
identities that differ from the mainstream (e.g., Durkin, 2004; McKenna,
2001).
The elderly The widespread belief that old people are unable
to cope with computers and would have no use for them anyway has
been, sadly, internalized by many elderly people and so for many has
become a self-fulfilling prophecy (O’Hara, 2004). Despite this, Eastman
and Iyer (2004) report that elderly people, over the age of 65, are the
fastest-growing group among Internet users.
Blit-Cohen and Litwin (2004) pointed out that use of the net by the
elderly enables them to maintain a social network from their homes, since
they appear ageless on the Internet and so are not immediately classi-
fied by their age and appearance with the resulting stigma attached. The
elderly tend to make the greatest use of the communication and infor-
mation aspects of the Internet, more specifically e-mail and searching
for medical information (Fox et al., 2001). Based on numerous obser-
vations in a variety of cultures and settings, researchers (e.g., Carpenter
and Buday, 2007; Fozard and Kearns, 2007; Fuglsang, 2005; Karavidas
et al., 2005; McMellon and Schiffman, 2002; Xie, 2007) suggest that
the computer helps the elderly to counter four major challenges with
which they are faced: loneliness, boredom, learned helplessness, and a
reduction in their mental abilities. The Internet enables the elderly to
establish communities with no geographical or physical limitations (see,
e.g., www.seniornet.com). This may prove an extremely important way
in which to maintain their relationships with friends and family, and
make new acquaintances. This may prove particularly important should
they reach a stage of physical disability. In this way, the Internet may
serve to give older people important feelings of control over their lives.
The elderly may access the Internet through components developed for
the sight-impaired: for example, large fonts and vocal browsers (Rau and
Hsu, 2005). Several field intervention projects have shown that older
people’s training and use of the Internet can indeed empower them and
contribute to their increased social contact and reduced feelings of lone-
liness and depression (e.g., Shapira, Barak, and Gal, 2007; White et al.,
2002). It is important to assist the elderly community to expand their
knowledge of computers and Internet use and remove psychological and
technical barriers so that they can gain from the Internet to promote
their well-being (Adams et al., 2005; Dunning, 2004; Meischke et al.,
2005).
Interpersonal relationships
Larson (1978) pointed out that people who have more friends or spend
more time with their friends are happier. Argyle and Furnham (1983)
found that the spouse relationship is the greatest source of life satis-
faction, with close relatives and friends next. When it comes to marital
status, married people score higher on life satisfaction as compared with
those who are unmarried; those in widowhood scored the lowest (Nettle,
2005). Baumeister and Leary (1995) argued that the need for close per-
sonal relationships is a fundamental and a highly pervasive motivation.
In their study, they found that a lack of attachment is linked to a variety
of ill effects on adjustment, health, and well-being. If belongingness is
a basic need, the Internet constitutes a significant social environment
through which this basic need may be fulfilled. The Internet provides a
convenient means through which to build and maintain relationships, for
both friendship or romantic purposes.
Friendship and intimate relationships involve mutual trust. When we
trust someone, we are likely to feel comfortable with him or her and
disclose intimate details about ourselves. Since self-disclosure is usu-
ally a reciprocal process, within a dyad disclosure, it often serves to
strengthen the ties that bind people in friendship-based relationships or
romantic ones (Jourard, 1971). While this is usually a lengthy process,
as mentioned earlier, a far speedier process toward disclosure may take
place when two strangers meet with no expectation of ever meeting again
(Ben-Ze’ev, 2005; see also Rubin, 1975, “the strangers-on-a-train phe-
nomenon”). A similar process leading to fast self-disclosure frequently
occurs in cyberspace, due to the protected anonymous environment it
supplies (McKenna et al., 2002) and other factors related to the online
disinhibition effect (Suler, 2004a). Indeed, accelerated and increased
self-disclosure is evidently typical in virtual interpersonal relationships
(e.g., Chiou, 2006; Cho, 2007; Dietz-Uhler et al., 2005; Joinson and
Paine, 2007; Qian and Scott, 2007) as well as reciprocity of self-disclosure
(Barak and Gluck-Ofri, 2007).
Ben-Ze’ev (2005) argued that this unique anonymous psychologi-
cal environment allows introductions and interaction without gating
features. Since online communication is the only way to learn about
one another, this, together with the ease of finding like-minded peo-
ple, encourages self-disclosure. A large number of studies have investi-
gated the formation and maintenance of interpersonal relationships in
Internet and well-being 45
cyberspace via chat rooms, forums, social networks, dating sites, and
many more online options. Much of the research reports that most peo-
ple find these relationships satisfying and enjoyable and that they lead to
a broadening of social circles. This runs counter to some of the earlier
contentions (e.g., Kraut et al., 1998) that the Internet limits or restricts
FtF contacts and leads to social isolation. These studies include reports
of people sharing and disclosing online (Henderson and Gilding, 2004;
McKenna and Bargh, 1998; Parks and Floyd, 1996), empowered to
make more friends (Tidwell and Walther, 2002), though some patterns
of relationships might be different online from offline (Chan and Cheng,
2004; Cheng et al., 2006). Moreover, growing research shows that online
relationships contribute to people’s well-being (Valkenburg and Peter,
2007a; Valkenburg et al., 2006), apparently by allowing more openness
and self-disclosure, ventilation, and social support. It is important to note
that social relationships may be established and kept up through various
online vehicles, including instant messaging (Bryant et al., 2006; Hu
et al., 2004), chat (McKenna et al., 2002), forums (Barak and Gluck-
Ofri, 2007), blogs (Stefanone and Jang, 2008), or social networks (Ellison
et al., 2007; Hlebec et al., 2006).
Internet interaction may provide opportunities to make contacts
and preliminary acquaintances, which may later be followed by FtF
meetings. Baker (2002, 2005, 2008), Hardey (2002), and Whitty and
Carr (2006) reported that many Internet romantic encounters progress
gradually to include phone conversations, exchange of photographs,
exchange of pictures and letters, and finally meeting in person. A study
by McKenna et al. (2002) found that Internet-mediated dating, and
romantic relationships in particular, produced positive effects on psy-
chological well-being. Sixty-eight percent of participants reported an
increase in their social circle. Forty-seven percent reported a decrease
in their feelings of loneliness. Twenty-five percent of the survey’s
respondents indicated that the relationship decreased their feelings of
depression.
I’ve been chatting with a girl, the most unbelievable person I’ve ever met. I mean,
this girl is tall and has short brown hair – which happens to be my favorite hair
style. On top of that, she has the biggest blue eyes you can ever find. I haven’t
really seen a picture, but she described it in fine detail . . . Now, on top of all that,
she’s smart and she’s getting a Ph.D. (Mileham, 2003: 71)
46 Yair Amichai-Hamburger and Azy Barak
of the Internet has both accelerated and altered this process. The acces-
sibility of information via the Internet has created a shift in the patient–
physician relationship; while in the past, the physician possessed knowl-
edge of which patients were ignorant, today many people learn about
conditions before they seek medical intervention. This shift may lead to
changes in the way in which medical decisions are taken. For example,
Podolsky (1998) argued that the Internet has had a “leveling effect” on
the access to information and, subsequently, on the patient–physician
relationship which, in turn, may lead to defensive attitudes on the part
of the medical profession. Others maintain that, in fact, the decision-
making process may improve if efforts are made to share the burden
of responsibility and knowledge. Moreover, further benefits may arise
from physicians who assist patients in the information-gathering process
(Charles, Gafnil, and Whelan, 1997). Relationships between patients
and health professionals in general have altered (McMullan, 2006) and
interestingly, use of medical online searches has in many cases changed
the terminology patients use with physicians (Jucks and Bromme, 2007).
Gerber and Eiser (2001) suggested that health providers should refrain
from feeling frustrated that their role as the source of information has
been challenged, or they run the risk of losing patients, since highly
motivated patients wish to be active participants in their health care.
Physicians should direct their patients to valid web sites and show them
how to evaluate the credibility of information.
online and offline activities, and report back details of their experiences.
To receive additional help, the site may provide further channels through
which clients may communicate online with therapists – synchronously or
asynchronously, sometimes also by phone. Web-based therapy is offered
for various problem areas, such as depression, social anxiety, insom-
nia, and many more. Reviews of web-based therapy, drawing on both
empirical studies and accumulated practice, provide much support for
this approach (e.g., Andersson, 2006; Carlbring and Andersson, 2006;
Etter, 2006; Strecher, 2007; Weinstein, 2006). (2) Online therapy (or
e-therapy), where therapist and clients communicate and conduct coun-
seling and therapeutic conversations through an online communication
tool. Communication could take place synchronously (through chat or
instant messaging) or asynchronously (through e-mail), individually or in
groups (through chat room or forum), and by use of audio (e.g., through
Skype) and/or video (using webcams). These therapeutic conversations
may be assisted by directing clients to online readings, test-taking, or
other online activities. Various psychological approaches may be used,
including psychodynamic, cognitive, and behavioral. Literature reviews
of online therapy (e.g., Grohol, 2004; Mallen et al., 2005; Skinner and
Zack, 2004), based on empirical research and intensive practice, show
that, despite the physical distance, invisibility, and mostly textual-based
communication, such psychotherapeutic interventions are quite success-
ful. (3) Online software, through which clients are being treated by a
robotic therapist (e.g., Epstein and Klinkenberg, 2001) or by the assis-
tance of an advanced program (e.g., virtual reality; Riva et al., 2007). (4)
Hybrid therapy, where integration of offline therapy and online activities
and communications are offered (Fenichel et al., 2002; Ritterband et al.,
2003). This approach allows a therapist to utilize online options, com-
bined with regular FtF meetings, so therapy is enriched and accelerated.
In this process, clients take part in various online activities, including
publishing a blog, participating in an online support group, correspond-
ing with the therapist between FtF sessions and/or after termination of
therapy, and visiting sites for therapy-related readings.
Internet-assisted therapy is not flawless. There are a number of pro-
fessional, technical, ethical, legal, and practical issues that the thera-
pist has to deal with (e.g., Kraus, 2004; Manhal-Baugus, 2001; Ybarra
et al., 2005). In recent years, however, many of these obstacles have been
overcome through technological advancements, establishment of specific
ethical guidelines, and therapist education and training. A recent meta-
analysis (Barak, Hen, Boniel-Nissim, and Shapira, 2008) found that,
on average, online psychotherapeutic interventions are just as effective as
traditional, offline interventions. Apparently, this innovative possibility to
receive professional help significantly contributes to people’s well-being.
Internet and well-being 51
Several online support services throughout the world offer free counsel-
ing and support to anonymous people in distress. This approach is of
special importance for suicidal people who refrain from referring to tra-
ditional therapy. One outstanding example of this is SAHAR, an online
support service dedicated to helping people suffering severe emotional
distress and those contemplating suicide (Barak, 2007a).
Stigmatized groups
Online groups exist on almost every possible topic. This is of partic-
ular use to people who have an unusual or esoteric interest that they
find difficult to pursue offline because of the challenge of finding sim-
ilar others. On the Internet, with hundreds of millions of surfers from
all over the world, it is much more likely that this problem will not
arise. Moreover, on the Internet, the locating of others like yourself is
very straightforward. This has important implications for people who
belong to groups with a negative stigma. This stigma can be due to phys-
ical features (for example, deformity or scarring), skin color, physical or
mental illness, political opinion, or any other tendency that is perceived
as negative or unattractive by society. In the offline world, belonging to
such groups is likely to lower the self-esteem of members (Link et al.,
2001). Social rejection may be a persistent source of social stress and
may increase feelings of self-deprecation (Wright et al., 2000). Offline,
for those belonging to certain types of such groups, the ability to conceal
their membership may be seen as an advantage, but over time, for several
major reasons, this may well become a disadvantage: (1) It is difficult to
find similar others as they, too, are likely to be hiding their stigmatized
identity. (2) As a group member, you are very likely to be subjected to
hearing negative observations about your stigmatized group, since people
are unaware that you belong to this group and so will not restrain their
comments; this is likely to lead to a diminution in self-esteem (McKenna
and Bargh, 1998). (3) Another blow to one’s self-image may arise from
the difficulties involved in locating similar others. Online, it is possi-
ble to openly belong to a group and find similar others without such
dangers.
The group on the net is likely to be lively and fulfilling, and partici-
pants will frequently receive positive reinforcement, encouragement, and
support. All of this may well have such a significant impact on their
self-image and self-esteem that members may feel ready to reveal their
secret, stigmatized identity to family and friends (McKenna and Bargh,
1998).
Support groups and therapy groups
Emotional and informational support enhance psychological well-being
(Thoits, 1986; Uchino et al., 1996). However, such restrictions as time,
geographical location, physical debilitation, and the difficulties involved
in opening up to others on intimate subjects may limit the success of
offline support groups. However, conversely, these are the factors that
lead to the success of such support groups online.
Internet and well-being 53
performs social roles that fit his/her ability and characteristics. This
argument was proved in a series of studies (Bettencourt and Sheldon,
2001). Amichai-Hamburger (2005) pointed out that, despite the seem-
ingly optimistic approach of Bettencourt and Sheldon, it is important to
stress that, in many cases, offline groups demand that individuals take
on roles not necessarily of their choosing. Those responsible for allocat-
ing these roles will inevitably not take into account the skills, abilities,
and motives of the individual, but will rather look to the needs of the
group. In addition, roles are frequently allocated according to the social
role to which the group is aspiring. In such a case, an individual may
be chosen to perform a certain role according to the general percep-
tion that is held of him or her. This perception may not be in keeping
with who he or she really is, or may be outdated, and, therefore, the fit
between personality and social roles will not be accurate. This may be
the case even when the group attempts to choose the best person for the
role.
In the Internet arena, it may be easier to find social roles that allow
individuals their self-expression and even their self-actualization, since
the net provides surfers with more freedom to choose the groups and
the social roles that suit them. It is also the case that the number and
variety of groups are far greater than in the offline world; it is frequently
far easier to find such groups on the Internet than it is offline. The act of
compelling someone to take on a role does not exist on the Internet, since
any attempt to do so will lead the person to disagree or express alternatives
and, should this not be acceptable, he or she can leave without any social
consequences. It seems that the Internet creates an environment where
the conflict between the need to relate and the need for autonomy is very
limited and, in fact, the Internet is able to sustain situations in which both
needs are mutually fulfilled. In this case, there are positive implications
to be considered that pertain to individual well-being.
and patients where necessary over great distances (Safran, 2003). Below
we briefly discuss the following: well-being on a wider scale; closing the
digital gap; addiction; and enhancing Internet abilities.
problems or issues close to your heart. It’s a chance to change their world
and your world as well.”
Addiction
Many personality characteristics have been linked to addiction, for exam-
ple, introversion and sensation seeking (Shotton, 1991), tendency to
boredom, self-consciousness, loneliness, social anxiety (Loytsker and
Aiello, 1997), and poor self-esteem (Armstrong et al., 2000). When
assessing the relationship between Internet use and addiction, it is impor-
tant to understand that a significant percentage of addictive surfers are
addicts of a different sort offline and, in this case, have found another
outlet for their proclivity.
Internet addiction is a very broad umbrella term. It is more useful to
review specific Internet addictions, for example, addictions associated
with chat, information, sex, and so on. To engage in depth with this
problem and attempt to counter these behaviors, it is first necessary to
gain a full understanding of the relationship between addiction to specific
services and specific personality characteristics.
allows its users to design their own environment are growing. In the
future, the Internet will be able to design an environment that suits the
personality of the individual surfer (Amichai-Hamburger, 2002). This
facility of the Internet to adapt its interactive capacity is related to the
process of flow. Flow is an optimal experience that stems from people’s
perceptions of challenges and skills in given situations (Csikszentmihalyi,
1975: 50). Flow is a psychological state in which an individual feels cog-
nitively efficient, motivated, and happy (Moneta and Csikszentmihalyi,
1996: 277). Basing their findings on self-reports of surfers, Chen et al.
(2000) suggested that flow exists on the Internet, and that flow theory
should be applied to Internet design so that Internet surfing will provide
an enjoyable experience and positively affect surfer well-being. As net
designers begin increasingly to work according to the principles of flow,
the results for the user will become more significant.
Enhancing the virtual reality capabilities of the Internet will create an
even more comprehensive, enjoyable environment that may impact the
user in a variety of ways. One example may be the ability to deliver sophis-
ticated therapy through the net. Virtual reality therapy (VRT) is a method
of psychotherapy that uses virtual reality technology. It is currently used
to treat patients with a variety of problems, such as burn pains (Hoffman
et al., 2000), fear of flying (Rothbaum et al., 2002), and fear of spiders
(Hoffman, 2004). VRT was shown to have long-term success rates (Choy
et al., 2007). As Internet technology becomes more sophisticated, VRT
will be available for surfers on their Internet platforms.
Another advancement envisaged for Internet technology is one which
will enable surfers around the world to communicate with one another
in their own mother tongue, as each communication will be simultane-
ously translated. This, in itself, will enable more effective communication
between different groups and different races (Amichai-Hamburger and
McKenna, 2006). Other advancements in the realm of design would be
the adaptation of web sites to meet the needs of particular groups; for
example, web sites for the elderly could display fonts in a larger for-
mat that may be further enlarged, and options would be expressed more
simply and clearly. Voice commands, rather than instructions through
the keyboard, would also be a further advancement for this type of
site.
It is, however, vital to understand that any and all attempts to enhance
surfer well-being depend on the Internet being a secure, safe environ-
ment. It is of paramount importance that a balance be struck and main-
tained between freedom on the Internet and regulation. This balance is
important for each specific element of the net; for example, a web site
offering group therapy will not succeed if the participating surfer does
not feel protected when he or she discloses information. Policymakers,
62 Yair Amichai-Hamburger and Azy Barak
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Steven L. Goldman
Revolution or evolution?
When talk of revolution comes up it is worth keeping in mind the dictum
of art historian Walter Friedlander (1957) that every so-called revolution
becomes an evolution when its precursors are properly understood. While
revolution implies a radical discontinuity with the past, evolution implies
a deep continuity with the past, the episodic introduction of discontinu-
ities into these continuities leading to the emergence of true novelties.
History is far more central to the generation of evolutionary phenomena
than to revolutionary ones. So, is society today experiencing a revolution-
ary change in the historical relationship between information and society,
or an evolutionary change in that relationship? If the latter, our under-
standing of the social impact of digital information technologies, and our
ability to assess their effect on our well-being, will require understand-
ing the historical role of information in Western society. We will need
to identify the continuity of that role into which discontinuities in the
form of technological innovations were introduced, changing the form of
expression of that role.
77
78 Steven L. Goldman
For example, long before the Internet erupted into public conscious-
ness in the 1990s, it was obvious that fundamental structural changes
already had taken place in advanced industrial economies and that these
changes were the result of the growing value of information. By the late
1920s, the rate of growth of the service sector of industrial economies
exceeded the rate of growth of the industrial sector. Shortly after the
Second World War, and for obvious reasons first in the US, the size and
the value of the service sector exceeded those of the industrial sector
in absolute terms, and the gap between the two widened steadily from
then on. By the mid-1950s, “information workers” were the largest com-
ponent of the US workforce and, by the end of the twentieth century,
manufacturing accounted for less than 15 percent of the US GDP.
In 1962, the Austrian-American economist Fritz Machlup pub-
lished The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the U.S. (1962).
Machlup argued that an emerging “knowledge economy” was replac-
ing the manufacturing-based industrial economy. In 1973, Daniel Bell’s
The Coming of Post-industrial Society (1973) correctly predicted the
following: the imminent domination of economies and of societies
by information-based services; that commercial competition would be
driven by information-based “intellectual” technologies; and the replace-
ment of the machine as the central Western metaphor for nature, human
beings, and organizations by information. In 1982, Marc Porat produced
and narrated a highly acclaimed video documentary, The Information
Society (1982); he then went on to a notable career as an information
economy entrepreneur and in-house visionary at several influential com-
puter hardware and software companies. In the 1984 New York Times
best seller Turing’s Man, University of North Carolina literature professor
J. David Bolter identified the computer as the “defining technology” of
the late twentieth century, displacing such earlier defining technologies
as the clock, steam, and electricity.
The US Congress in 1862 passed the Morrill Land Grant Act reward-
ing state governments that founded agricultural and “mechanical arts”
colleges. At that time, only six institutions offered degrees in engineering
and two of those were military academies. Thirty years later, the number
was 120 and it doubled to 240 by 1920. Collaterally, there were in 1860
perhaps three thousand people in the US with the job title “engineer”
and only a small fraction of these were college trained. By 1960 the num-
ber was a million and it doubled to two million in 1980, by which time
almost all engineers had degrees from officially accredited institutions
(Goldman, 1991). This enormous expansion in the number of engineer-
ing colleges created a demand for unprecedented numbers of academic
mathematicians, physicists, and chemists. Although initially employed
largely to serve the needs of engineering students, increasingly profes-
sionalized communities of scientists and mathematicians quickly arose.
At the same time, growing numbers of mathematicians and physical sci-
entists were required by industry. They were needed to solve problems
in factories and to develop commercially valuable new knowledge in in-
house research laboratories such as those established at Dupont, General
Electric, and AT&T.
Together, these professionalized communities of academic and indus-
trial scientists, mathematicians, and college-educated engineers were
high-visibility, specialized knowledge workers. The knowledge worker
model expanded with the introduction of “management science” in the
opening decades of the twentieth century. This brought the business
world broadly into the knowledge worker domain. To be a successful cor-
porate manager now required education and training in “rational” deci-
sion making and in financial management models. By 1919, Thorstein
Veblen was calling attention to what he saw as a threatening transition
in American industry. The entrepreneur-innovators running businesses
they had created, and knowledgeable about the specific technologies
involved in those businesses, were giving way to lawyers, financiers, and
accountants with generic “scientific” management skills and little under-
standing of technology (Veblen, 1921).
There was, then, a “pull” from industry for creating educational insti-
tutions and degree programs capable of providing the army of knowl-
edge workers and of information-collection and -processing workers that
industry needed. The ability to recruit such an army, needed first by
industry and starting in the 1930s by rapidly expanding federal and state
governments, was made possible by an extraordinary social development,
one in which the US again played a lead role: the extension of college
education to the public at large. From the twelfth through the nineteenth
centuries, a college education in the West provided entry to, or at least
Information, innovation, and society 87
association with, social elites for those students from the lower or middle
classes fortunate enough to acquire a college education. In the course of
the first half of the twentieth century, however, a college education for
everyone who completed high school became a US social ideal and then
an expectation. After the Second World War, it became a social as well
as a personal goal in Europe too and then globally.
The resulting expansion in the number and size of colleges, to some
three thousand in the US alone, serving over three million students at
any given time, required a concomitant expansion in the number of
faculty, administrators, and staff: thus, more knowledge workers. More
significant was the impact of this expansion on the careers that a college
education opened for the large majority of new college students who
were not pursuing careers in natural science, engineering, math, law, or
medicine. Clearly, there was no point going to college only to wind up
after graduation working as a manual laborer or as a clerk in a store. The
most popular degree programs for these students were business, educa-
tion, English, social science, psychology, and history. And the majority
of these graduates became either teachers for the now vastly expanded
kindergarten through the graduate and professional school educational
system, or they became information workers. The market for such work-
ers was in businesses across the economy, in government, in new kinds
of publicly funded social-service institutions, and in rapidly expanding
information businesses such as advertising, human resources services to
industry, marketing, sales, and mass media entertainment. This social
development was driven by the growing value to society of information,
echoing the value of information to industry and its supporting infras-
tructure.
The Great Depression called into question the claim that knowledge
guaranteed prosperity, but by the end of the Second World War knowl-
edge was once again critical to national and personal prosperity. The
media dubbed the war a “scientists’ war” and lionized Vannevar Bush
for overseeing the creation by teams of industrial and academic scientists
and engineers of radar systems, the atomic bomb, cheap penicillin, the
proximity fuse, operations research, and ENIAC (Electronic Numeri-
cal Integrator and Computer), among other wartime-developed wonders
(Zachary, 1997). Information and knowledge, and the ability to exploit
them productively, were proclaimed vital social and economic resources.
They had suddenly become the ultimate wellsprings of individual and
social security, wealth, power, and value. Bush argued just this case in
his seminal report to the President of the United States entitled Science:
The endless frontier (Bush, 1980). This report influenced the massive US
federal government support of science and technology that began with
88 Steven L. Goldman
the onset of the Cold War. This support, in turn, directly and indirectly
influenced the creation of the semiconductor-based digital information
technologies that would lead to talk of an Information Revolution.
large of the Internet was utterly transformed by its convergence with the
WorldWideWeb and with powerful software for finding and correlating
information on Internet-linked computers.
The web was created c. 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee to facilitate col-
laboration among the hundreds of scientists, engineers, and mathemati-
cians who make up high energy physics research teams. The academ-
ically developed Gopher file locater program evolved in 1993 into the
commercial web page “browser” Netscape Navigator and into the com-
mercial web page search engines WebCrawler (1994), Yahoo (1995), and
Google (1998). E-mail had been standardized by Ray Tomlinson in 1971,
and Internet-based discussion forums by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in
1979, but e-mail for the masses and blogging were not the objective
of these highly innovative software developments, nor were eBay, retail
electronic commerce, global interenterprise collaboration among compa-
nies, outsourcing and the virtual enterprise, and global pornography and
gambling rings. All of these nevertheless quickly emerged as what the
computer community calls “killer apps.” The course that innovations
take as they are applied, and hence the social impact that innovations
have, cannot be deduced from attributes of the innovation!
By the turn of the twenty-first century, digital information applica-
tions of semiconductor technologies were driving the emergence of new,
global social, cultural, and commercial information infrastructures with
profound consequences for prevailing institutionalizations of social, polit-
ical, and commercial activities, as well as for prevailing personal, social,
and cultural values. While this may seem revolutionary, and is popularly
taken to be so, even a brief historical sketch such as this one strongly sug-
gests that the “Information Revolution” in fact is the most recent stage of
a very long evolution of the role played by information in society. History
here illuminates the continuities underlying the technological disconti-
nuities shaping the expression of this role. At the same time, this sketch
raises further questions about information itself. How is it that informa-
tion and knowledge have emerged as the dominant drivers of social and
cultural change today? How does technological innovation effect social
change? To what extent has the transition from industry-dominated to
information-dominated societies improved human well-being? Before the
issues raised by these questions can be addressed, however, it is necessary
to clarify what we mean by “information.”
resulted in new outlets for the role that information has always had.
“Information” in the world of digital information technologies, however,
is a meaningless statistical pattern and information in this sense has a
better claim on being revolutionary.
DNA orchestrates play the roles in cell metabolism that they do because
of their form, the distinctive way in which each is folded. Again, struc-
ture, which like information is a form and thus immaterial, has causal
properties of its own independent of its constituents, which are a means
to the material realization of the form. Indeed, if different materials could
be organized into a molecule with the same form as a particular protein,
then that molecule would function the same way in the cell that that
protein did.
It is not only in biology that information structures have come to
be identified as elementary features of reality. In contemporary astro-
physics, physicists use information theory mathematics to describe black
holes. Like Shannon, the physicists, too, connect the thermodynamic
concept of entropy with information, and in 2005 Stephen Hawking
conceded that black holes are most accurately described as information-
preserving structures, after a decade of vigorous opposition to that
claim. They preserve all the information about the matter and energy
they suck in even as that matter and energy “disappear” into the black
hole.
This information, and the distinguishing characteristics of a given
black hole, are a function of its surface area, not its volume as had
been expected. It can, in principle, be retrieved from a full account of
that surface. This has given rise to a speculation, called the Holographic
Principle, that the universe as a whole is an information structure, anal-
ogous to the surface area of a black hole and to the holograms with
which we are familiar: two-dimensional artifacts containing recover-
able three-dimensional content (Smolin, 2001). The further idea that
all physical objects, at all levels of physical reality, are information
structures is being pursued by scientists and mathematicians in various
disciplines.
Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science (2002) argues that the uni-
verse and everything in it are information structures analogous to the
software “objects” that emerge unpredictably within computer programs
that repeatedly iterate a simple set of rules. Wolfram claims that this
should be the basis for a new physics in which natural objects and
their behaviors are explained in terms of a fusion of information theory,
computational science, and chaos/complexity theory. Wolfram’s book is
highly idiosyncratic and controversial, but there are prominent academic
physicists, among them Max Tegmark at MIT and Anton Zeilinger at
the University of Vienna, who champion the view that the universe
and its contents are information structures. Among mathematicians, an
extension of Shannon’s work has evolved into a respected research spe-
cialty called algorithmic information theory. This integrates information
Information, innovation, and society 97
theory and probability theory with complexity theory and the theory
of self-organizing systems to yield information structure representations
of material objects and their properties (Baeyer, 2003).
The idea that information has an ontological as well as a semantic
character, that information is or may be the ultimate “stuff” of physical
reality, is thus alive and well in current scientific theory, however odd it
may seem to nonscientists to put information on a par with matter and
energy as “stuff” out of which a universe can be made!
selected for introduction into society and which are ignored, what form
the selected inventions take, and how societies respond to them are all
social phenomena in which the inventor’s intentions are of little or no
consequence. Further, it is society’s response to innovations that deter-
mines the resources applied to the form of the further development of an
innovation after its introduction and to the rate of its development. Both
form and rate of development are unpredictable because they emerge out
of interaction with their social context (Goldman, 1991).
Technological innovation is thus best understood as dependent upon,
but distinct from, invention. Innovation is a social process, hence endoge-
nous to society. It is a process in which the technical knowledge of
engineers and scientists is selectively applied to advance the agendas
of commercial and governmental institutions that believe they can turn
the exploitation of inventions to their advantage. An invention may
be the work of an individual, and the technical knowledge necessary
to bring the invention to the marketplace may be in some sense objec-
tive. The criteria for selecting what knowledge will be applied, in which
ways, to the further development of an invention are not properties of the
invention. They reflect an interaction between society and its institutions.
It is not the case that “things are in the saddle and ride mankind,” as
Emerson put it in his “Ode, inscribed to William H. Channing.” Instead
some people are in the saddle and are using things to enable them to
ride over mankind. Furthermore, who gets to ride and which things they
choose to ride and are allowed by their society to ride are a function of
prevailing social institutions and values (Goldman, 1990).
Artifacts and artifactual processes silently, and largely invisibly,
embody a web of social choices. Printing with movable metal type had a
totally different impact on the Christian societies of western Europe in
the fifteenth century than on the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Islamic
societies in which it was introduced centuries earlier. The same is true
for the impact of gunpowder and of the application of mathematics to
practical problems in mapmaking, navigation, military engineering, and
machine design. Japan provides a telling instance of this differential social
response to what was ostensibly the same innovation. The Tokugawa
Shogunate closely restricted the use of firearms so as not to undo the sta-
tus of the Samurai class. The first daily newspaper began publication in
1870, two years after the Meiji Restoration and more than five hundred
years after the introduction there of printing using movable metal type.
The rise of a commercial nuclear power industry in the US and UK in the
1960s is incomprehensible without understanding the political and mil-
itary agendas that pushed utilities to order the first generation of power
reactors. The impact of the IBM PC, certainly an epochal artifact, was
100 Steven L. Goldman
not the result of its superior technical performance but of IBM’s place
in corporate culture and the decision by IBM management not to copy-
right the software controlling the lowest level of machine operations. This
decision, later much regretted, opened the door to the PC clones and cre-
ated the mass market for computers and their applications (Goldman,
1991).
almost never necessitated by the ends, but are also contingent choices.
The subjectivity of the artificial notwithstanding, it seems straightforward
to make objective judgements as to whether changes constitute improve-
ments. Given value assignments to an end, a change in the means either
does the job better or it does not and that would seem to be the end of
the matter. The design parameters for a digital camera, compact-class
automobile, or raincoat tell us what it is for. You may not approve of its
purpose, but it seems straightforward to justify a claim that a new model
camera, automobile, or raincoat is better at accomplishing it.
Without, for the moment, considering whether objective criteria really
do exist for determining that changes in an artifact have improved it,
it is clear that no such criteria exist with respect to natural objects and
processes. Assessing claims that a change to a natural object or process
has improved it requires agreement on what the purpose is of nature as
a whole, as well as of constituent processes and objects. Nature, how-
ever, is, de facto if not de jure, nonintentional and, thus, not intrin-
sically valuational. Straightening the Mississippi River, improving the
yield of dairy cows, or genetically modifying food crops can only be said
to have improved them relative to human-imposed criteria, not in and of
themselves. Furthermore, earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions,
drought, and hurricanes can only be called “bad” relative to their impact
on humans. For that matter, the destruction of the earth itself, or of all
of the life forms on it, seems eminently consistent with a universe full of
exploding stars, black holes, and colliding galaxies.
listen to radio or watch television or surf the web for hours at a time
instead of reading books, socializing, playing games, or exploring nature?
Criteria can be identified for making these judgements, as for judgements
that digital information technologies have improved human well-being or
harmed it. These criteria, however, and the judgements that derive from
them, are inescapably contingent upon subjective assignments of value
to ends, and to particular means for accomplishing those ends. Such
assignments of value are woven into the fabric of personal and social
life.
Individually and collectively we pay a difficult to calculate but unques-
tionably very high “price” – measured by social, political, cultural, and
environmental change, as well as economically and physically – for the
mobility conferred by the automobile and for the prosperity generated
by the Industrial Revolution. The price of adopting digital information
technologies is not yet clear, because the impact of these technologies is
still evolving.
Furthermore, what we mean by human well-being is also evolving,
coordinate with the unpredictable-in-principle forms that technologi-
cal innovations take as societies assimilate them. We are faced, then,
with a psychological and sociological analog of the three-body prob-
lem in physics. Since Isaac Newton it has been known that there are
only approximate, but no unique, general solutions to the motions of
three (or more) mutually interacting bodies. In our case, technological
innovation, social change, and human value judgements, including our
self-conception, mutually interact in evolving contexts of creating and
sharing information.
Digital information technologies, based on the revolutionary sense
of information as a semantically neutral pattern, serve the evolutionary
senses of information: as semantically rich communication in the service
of communitas, via blogs, social networking software, virtual communi-
ties, multiplayer games, et cetera (Mead, 1967), and as the ordering
principle of physical reality, life, the cosmos. Information technologies
enable new forms of relationships, then, such that our understanding
of human well-being becomes a shifting function of how these tech-
nologies affect human beings in the social and natural worlds. As they
enhance the historically high value placed on information-based relation-
ships, it is not surprising that these technologies are judged to improve
human well-being. However, relationships create vulnerability to abuse
and to harm, and the exploitation of the globalization of communica-
tion is causing personal and social dislocation, so while information
may want to be free, the assimilation of information technologies is
costly.
104 Steven L. Goldman
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Information, innovation, and society 105
1 The New York Times reports that “on average Britons spend 23 hours a week on the
Internet, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau . . . Americans use their computers
on average of 14 hours a week, according to Neilsen Media Research” (Khor and Marsh,
2006).
106
Work-related change and psychological well-being 107
the importance of social support for workers’ mental and physical health
(see, e.g., Bliese and Britt, 2001; Johnson and Hall, 1988; Johnson et al.,
1989; Melchior et al., 2003). Mamaghani (2006) pointed out that the
mobility of the workforce implies that organizations will have to adapt
and find new means of protecting their health and safety.
Given the close links between ICT and the psychosocial work envi-
ronment, Smith et al. (1999) proposed a model of stress and computer
use. Their model suggests that, while some negative aspects of intro-
ducing new technologies cannot be avoided, organizations can at least
attempt to minimize sources of stress in the psychosocial environment by
ensuring that employees participate in the implementation process, are
properly trained to use the technology, and that the new technologies do
not undermine people’s feelings of personal control, nor cause excessive
workload. This suggestion is in line with Korunka et al. (1993), who
studied different levels of employee participation in the implementation
of new technologies and their subsequent levels of stress. Their results
showed that participation in the implementation process counteracted
negative effects of the new technologies.
This brief description of the influence of ICT on job design (and in
turn on stress and well-being) suggests that the way ICT is implemented
in workplaces and the possibility for workers to participate in the process
can determine the impact ICT will have on well-being. This is consistent
with stress intervention research. Indeed, a recent study by Nielsen et al.
(2007) evaluated the impact of workers’ participation in an intervention
that aimed at modifying aspects of their work environment. Having influ-
ence and opportunity to shape the intervention (e.g., its content, timing,
target population) mediated the relationship between information about
the project and participation in the intervention activities. According to
these results, employees actively evaluate their opportunities to influ-
ence the project before deciding if they will buy in and participate. This
is consistent with research on job control that recommends the active
participation of individuals in the intervention. For example, the widely
cited study by Bond and Bunce (2001) showed that job control acted as a
mechanism or mediator by which work-oriented interventions improved
sickness absence and other stress-related outcomes.
The impact of ICT on workers’ well-being is likely to depend on the
way technology is introduced in the workplace and the extent to which it
influences the psychosocial work environment. Wastell and Newman’s
(1996) research on the effects of a new computer system for emer-
gency service is another example of a technological change where the
new system was designed with explicit attention to human and organiza-
tional factors and strong involvement of end-users in the process. Their
112 Michael P. O’Driscoll, Caroline Biron, and Cary L. Cooper
study evaluated the impact of a database linked with radio calls that
replaced paper documentation. The new system was implemented to help
ambulance dispatchers in Manchester (UK) to coordinate the command-
and-control center. The results showed that, compared with preimple-
mentation, stress and performance levels at postimplementation were
improved and the system was well liked by end-users. As described by
Wastell and Newman, the technical merits of a system are not enough to
ensure the system will not be rejected by users. As with the introduction of
changes aimed at reducing stress at work, workers need to participate and
be involved in the process in order for the changes to produce intended
results. In an example of good practices in stress prevention, Jordan
et al. (2003) described how new technologies, if implemented properly
and with users’ involvement, can help employers provide work environ-
ments and job designs that allow higher levels of job control. In sum, new
technologies are often designed and introduced in workplaces with the
main focus put on their technical properties, whereas there is a growing
body of research showing that, by taking into consideration humanis-
tic principles, new technologies can actually improve well-being and job
performance (Harrison et al., 2004; Kendall and Kendall, 1993; Wastell
and Newman, 1996).
Within this new work/life culture, the balance of interest between employer and
employee will need to be renegotiated. Through the last half of the 20th century,
a consensus emerged on aspects of employment such as the length of the normal
working week, with working time outside of these limits considered overtime.
Expressions such as 9-to-5 reflect the widespread acceptance of this consensus,
the idea of “24/7” potentially threatens this consensus. (Harrison et al., 2004: 9)
Not only is this blurring of boundaries between private life and work life
likely to be even more prevalent in the future, but the boundaries between
114 Michael P. O’Driscoll, Caroline Biron, and Cary L. Cooper
what is “work” and leisure time are also likely to become more hazy
(Costea et al., 2005). Work, nonwork, and leisure are becoming harder
to distinguish in a knowledge economy with high rates of technological
uptake. An example of this blurring between work and leisure/personal
time is Facebook, a networking web site, now being used by groups
of various intellectual/business interests. In the United Kingdom, it has
been reported that up to 70 percent of employers have actually banned
access to Facebook during work hours, yet users claim they are building
useful networks for the business (Frost, 2007). According to Sproull
(2000), employees have traditionally used computers at work to meet
personal and work-related interests, but Costea et al. (2005) argued that
what is considered as work and what is play or personal time has and will
continue to be increasingly blurred. A sales representative could be on
a golf course or on Facebook networking and it could be considered as
serious play . . . or playful work.
Frustration
Alongside anxiety, another reaction that has commonly been observed in
ICT usage, even among individuals who feel confident and efficacious in
their use of this technology, is frustration. Most users experience momen-
tary, and sometimes ongoing, feelings of frustration, which can have a
deleterious effect on both their work performance and their psychologi-
cal health and well-being. A comprehensive model of ICT frustration has
118 Michael P. O’Driscoll, Caroline Biron, and Cary L. Cooper
been proposed by Bessiere and her colleagues (2006), who suggested that
it can emerge in a variety of ways, although typically these are associated
with an inability to perform tasks efficiently and to achieve important
goals.
Bessiere et al. commented that while approximately 25 percent of peo-
ple in the US do not have physical access to computers (or other ICT),
around another 20 percent do not access this technology directly but
use other people to send e-mails or access the Internet for them, and a
further 17 percent have abandoned using the technology due to techni-
cal and related problems which engendered significant frustration. The
computer frustration model outlined by Bessiere et al. offers a useful
platform for understanding the processes through which frustration can
emerge and the cognitive and emotional outcomes that can arise from
continuing frustration with ICT usage.
Other researchers (e.g., Ceaparu et al., 2004) have identified some of
the major causes of frustration in respect of ICT usage. These include:
unpredictable delays in program reaction times, poorly designed inter-
faces which may be difficult to utilize, time lost due to unclear error
messages, excessively long downloading times, features being difficult
to locate, and lost connections. Most ICT users will readily identify the
experience of frustration resulting from the above (and other) difficulties,
but reactions will of course depend on a range of other factors. One of
these is the person’s expectations. It has been demonstrated, for instance,
that where an individual is “primed” to anticipate delays or error mes-
sages or long downloading time, their reactions will to some extent be
mitigated by these expectations (Ceaparu et al., 2004; Lazar et al., 2006).
Another potential problem commented upon by Coovert and Thomp-
son, and also referred to by other commentators (see, e.g., Bessiere
et al., 2006; Ceaparu et al., 2004), is that sophisticated technologies
are not always easy to utilize and can create substantial frustration
among users due to their complexity and sometimes unpredictabil-
ity. The term “user-friendly” came into parlance as far back as 1977
(Coovert and Thompson, 2003), and referred to efforts to make techno-
logy more accessible and less daunting, especially for inexperienced
and nontechnical users. Since then there have been continued efforts
to design technological interfaces which better accommodate human
capacity and needs, although not always successfully (Bessiere et al.,
2006).
A further issue that may contribute substantially to the individual’s
affective reactions is time pressure. Clearly, the need to perform tasks
rapidly and to a deadline will create additional demands on the person,
and will exacerbate their sense of frustration when problems occur with
Work-related change and psychological well-being 119
Perceived control
Anxiety
Technological Frustration
demands Withdrawal
Attributions
Although the concept of locus of control (LOC) has been around for over
forty years, only recently has it been invoked as a possible explanation
of people’s reactions to ICT and other technologies. LOC refers to a
tendency to perceive events and outcomes in one’s life as being under
one’s own control or as being controlled by sources over which the person
has little or no control, such as luck, fate, or other people. In his landmark
article on this topic, Rotter (1966) referred to these beliefs as internal and
external LOC, and suggested that feelings of internal or external control
are largely dispositional rather than situational. In this sense, LOC can be
distinguished conceptually (and operationally) from the degree of control
a person perceives oneself to have over specific environmental demands
(such as workload). In practice, of course, the two processes tend to
coexist (O’Driscoll, 2006).
Attributions about the degree of control the person feels they can exert
over technology can be an important predictor of how they will cope
with (a) new technological requirements, (b) changes in technology, and
(c) difficulties encountered when using technology. The moderating or
buffering effect is illustrated in Figure 4.1.
120 Michael P. O’Driscoll, Caroline Biron, and Cary L. Cooper
That is, when individuals are confronted by demands from the use of
technology which may lead to symptoms of psychological strain (such
as anxiety, frustration, and withdrawal), feeling that the situation is (at
least to some extent) controllable will mitigate the negative impact of
the stressors. On the other hand, when the person feels that they do
not understand and cannot exert any influence over the difficulty (for
example, they cannot determine how to resolve a failure or they do not
know how to respond to an unexpected message), they will experience an
increased level of anxiety and frustration, which may lead to withdrawal
behavior.
This conceptualization of perceived control as a buffering variable
accords with the Job Demand–Control model of stress proposed by
Karasek (see Karasek and Theorell, 1990), and confirmed in subse-
quent research. Karasek suggested that it is not the level of demand
per se which necessarily creates stress (or strain) for a person, but rather
whether they feel that they can exert control over the demands which they
encounter. Coovert and his colleagues (2003, 2005) have noted that per-
ceived control can play an especially important role when new technol-
ogy is being implemented within an organization. In these conditions,
lack of perceived control over the technology is a major predictor of
job dissatisfaction, and that “the lack of control experienced by workers
who are required to deal with technological failures, inadequacies, and
changes generate psychological stress and concomitant physical effects”
(Coovert and Thompson, 2003: 229). Likewise, Beckers and Schmidt
(2003) observed that feelings of control over computer technology were
associated with more positive experiences (feeling computer literate) and
with greater liking for ICT.
In a similar vein, Salanova et al. (2002) also found support for the
Job Demand–Control model in a study of Spanish information tech-
nology workers. Individuals reporting higher levels of perceived control
experienced fewer symptoms of burnout (emotional exhaustion and cyni-
cism) when confronted with high demands than did their low-control col-
leagues. Put another way, when demands were high, levels of emotional
exhaustion and cynicism were greater for workers feeling less autonomy
in deciding how and when to perform their tasks. One practical impli-
cation of these findings is that increasing perceptions of control (over
the work tasks and environment) may alleviate strain when it is difficult
to modify job demands per se, and hence organizations should explore
mechanisms for enhancing perceptions of internal (personal) control.
Finally, as noted earlier, Kossek et al. (this volume) also demonstrate
that feelings of control over work schedule flexibility are a critical deter-
minant of the effects of teleworking on individuals’ well-being.
Work-related change and psychological well-being 121
Technological self-efficacy
A related, albeit distinct, concept to attributions of control is the indi-
vidual’s sense of self-efficacy, defined as “beliefs about one’s capabili-
ties to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce
given attainments” (Bandura, 1997: 3). Various researchers have demon-
strated that self-efficacy in relation to ICT has both direct (positive)
effects and buffering effects on technology attitudes, satisfaction, and
reduced anxiety, depression, and frustration. For example, in a study of
communication technology workers, who might be anticipated to have
favorable attitudes toward ICT, Beas and Salanova (2006) differentiated
between three forms of self-efficacy beliefs: generalized, professional, and
computer self-efficacy. Low levels of all three forms of self-efficacy were
significantly associated with greater burnout, anxiety, and depression.
Salanova et al. (2002) reported that the more specific the self-efficacy
beliefs (that is, the more focused they were on technology per se), the
greater their contribution to reduced burnout. Computer-related self-
efficacy functioned to buffer the relationship between job demands and
burnout levels, such that the impact of job demands on burnout was
reduced when self-efficacy was high. Finally, Salanova et al. (2000) found
that computer self-efficacy also moderated the relationship between com-
puter training and burnout, suggesting that increasing self-efficacy prior
to providing computer training may be beneficial in terms of reducing
burnout.
Other researchers have obtained similar findings on the positive influ-
ence of self-efficacy. Bessiere et al. (2006), for instance, compared sit-
uational and dispositional predictors of technology frustration, finding
that self-efficacy especially contributed to reduced frustration and more
positive mood among computer users. In a longitudinal investigation
of computer usage among Canadian subscribers to a business journal,
Compeau et al. (1999) reported significant relationships between ini-
tial computer self-efficacy and outcome expectations, affect, anxiety, and
usage one year later. The authors concluded that their findings “provide
strong confirmation that both self-efficacy and outcome expectations
impact on an individual’s affective and behavioural reactions to informa-
tion technology” (1999: 145).
Czaja and her colleagues (2006) examined the relationship between age
and technology usage. Previous studies have suggested that older peo-
ple have less favorable attitudes toward computer technology and are less
likely to adopt it – the so-called “digital divide.” Czaja et al. confirmed this
relationship, but also found that the relationship between age and adop-
tion of computer technology was moderated by computer self-efficacy
122 Michael P. O’Driscoll, Caroline Biron, and Cary L. Cooper
(among other factors). Specifically, older people who were high in self-
efficacy beliefs were more likely to adopt computer technology than their
counterparts who were low in self-efficacy, whereas the difference was
not so observable among younger people. Again, the beneficial effects of
self-efficacy are illustrated by the findings of this research.
In sum, the studies discussed above (and others) suggest that feelings
of mastery (self-efficacy) and perceived control over ICT can have a sub-
stantial influence on psychological health and well-being, in particular
reducing anxiety (about using ICT) and depression (arising from failure
to master the technology), and enhancing individuals’ feelings of satisfac-
tion with and intention to continue using this technology. These findings
have implications for the design of interventions to increase individuals’
skills and competency, as well as enhancing their overall well-being. As
suggested by Salanova et al. (2000), early identification of levels of com-
puter self-efficacy may be an important first step toward the development
of effective interventions within organizations.
maximizing benefits strategy. For this to occur, they need to feel a strong
sense of opportunity to utilize the technology and address difficulties,
coupled with a high level of perceived control (see our discussion above
of this variable). In reality, for many end-users there can be an oscillation
between strategies 2, 3, and 4, and in cases where individuals experi-
ence both little opportunity and low control, self-preservation is more
likely to occur. One potential outcome of this coping response could be
withdrawal from using the technology, and a subsequent perpetuation
of the belief that the person cannot master it, which may have negative
consequences for their self-concept and general feelings of well-being.
In sum, one important consideration in addressing user adaptation
is to explore the individual’s appraisals of the technology, to ascertain
whether they perceive it as a challenge versus a threat, and to determine
their likely coping strategy. This should not be just an individual respon-
sibility, but one which is shared by the person and the organization. Var-
ious authors have discussed what organizations might do to assist their
workers to adapt more effectively to ICT and other technologies, in par-
ticular to changes in technology, which can have a substantial impact on
worker performance (Beas and Salanova, 2006; Coovert and Thompson,
2003; Smith et al., 1999; Smith and Carayon, 1995). The most obvious
assistance that organizations can provide is training (in how to use the
technology and how to attend to problems which arise). However, the
general literature on training suggests that training programs and efforts
do not always result in effective learning and behavior change, for several
reasons.
First, the training which is offered may not be attuned to the needs
and capacities of individual end-users. For example, older workers may
have less facility to learn computer-based skills (Czaja et al., 2006), may
require a slower-paced learning environment, and may experience more
anxiety and concerns about using ICT to undertake tasks that are either
completely new to them or which they had previously performed in some
other manner (e.g., manually). Furthermore, training can have differ-
ent outcomes for different people and it is critical to consider individual
differences (e.g., in learning styles and preferences) when implement-
ing training, and to examine factors which may moderate the relation-
ship between technological demands and people’s cognitive and affective
experiences (Bessiere et al., 2006).
The experience of anxiety, frustration, and lack of control over the
technology, coupled with how individuals endeavor to cope, both with
the technology itself and with their affective reactions to it, may have a
very substantial impact on their ability to utilize it effectively and their
subsequent psychological well-being (Beckers and Schmidt, 2003; Joiner
et al., 2007). In brief, training initiatives must be tailored to accommodate
Work-related change and psychological well-being 125
main thrust has been to advance the technology per se rather than to
consider its impact on individual workers. As social scientists, however,
we have the knowledge and mandate to bring a social and psychological
perspective to new technology development and implementation.
As outlined in this chapter, research has demonstrated that technolog-
ical changes are closely related to the psychosocial work environment and
have a major influence on job demands, job control, and social relation-
ships in the workplace. Given the criticality of these variables for workers’
stress, interventions designed to improve the psychosocial work environ-
ment should consider how ICT can be used as a means toward the goal
of reducing stress. On the other hand, technological changes have the
potential to increase workers’ stress, especially when not enough con-
sideration is paid to the development of feelings of mastery (or control)
and self-efficacy. The above discussion illustrates that considerably more
attention must be accorded to the enhancement of these (and other)
psychosocial factors. The absence of mastery and self-efficacy has been
shown in numerous studies to be associated with higher anxiety, increased
frustration, and ultimately a greater probability of exogenous depression.
The provision of training, learning experiences, and support programs
which take these factors into account will be essential to enhance indi-
vidual worker well-being, as well as optimizing performance levels. As
noted, this training, learning, and support needs to be tailored to the
specific requirements and capabilities of individuals within the organiza-
tion, as well as ensuring that competencies developed are transferable to
other settings.
Finally, while the notion of “user-friendly” technology has been in
existence now for many years (Coovert and Thompson, 2003), techno-
logical interfaces are still often designed with little acknowledgement of
how individuals function in reality (Bessiere et al., 2006; Ceaparu et al.,
2004), in particular how the technological demands will impinge upon
the person’s coping abilities and limitations. The design, development,
and implementation of technology (especially ICT) require a thorough
understanding of how people think, feel, and respond when dealing with
systems that challenge their capacity and may not be fully under their
control.
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Work-related change and psychological well-being 129
Trends in ergonomics
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, it is the work of two individuals,
Ramazzinni and Jastrzebowski, that is almost alone in being solely
directed to the study of work design and ergonomics. Bernardino
Ramazzinni was an Italian physician (1633–1714) who, based on his
medical practice and experience, wrote what is considered to be the first
report on work-related complaints. Ramazzinni’s (1713) treatise became
especially relevant when, in 2001, the US Congress voted to undo the
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would have required employers to create programs to inform workers
131
132 Tal Oron-Gilad and Peter A. Hancock
than the workmen, while in the past almost all of the work and the greater
part of the responsibility were thrown upon the men” (1911: 5–29).
Early production environments were largely dependent on human
power and human motion. The Scientific Management approach
improved worker efficiency by specifying the workflow and the use of
tools in the production process. Taylor sought the “One Best Way” in
which tasks could be performed. In one well-known example at Bethle-
hem Steel, Taylor dramatically increased worker production and wages
in a shoveling task by matching the shovel with the type of material
that was to be moved, that is, ashes, coal, or ore. This approach could
be referred to as one of the earliest attempts to develop a use-centered
design. Use-centered design is a design construct that demands an inte-
gration of user, instrument, and goal. Thus, distinctions between user,
instrument, and goal are sublimated and new distinctions emerge, in
contrast with the more well-known concept of user-centered design that
differentiates the human factor as a special, distinct component within
the system. (See Flach and Dominguez, 1995, for a more contemporary
discussion of this former concept.) Henry Gantt, one of Taylor’s col-
leagues and followers, developed the commonly used Gantt chart. His
essays Work, Wages, and Profits (1913) and Organizing for Work (1919)
argued for daily organization and planning of the employees’ workday by
defining tasks and their order of completion. Taylor’s followers, Frank
and Lillian Gilbreth, made jobs more efficient and less fatiguing through
time and motion analysis, and standardizing tools, materials, as well as
the job process. One of their famous applications was in bricklaying: the
number of motions in bricklaying was reduced from 18 to 4.5, allowing
bricklayers to increase their pace of laying bricks from 120 to 350 per
hour. Another contribution by Lillian Gilbreth (1956) was related to the
design of efficient household interiors (e.g., kitchens), household appli-
ances (e.g., kitchen mixer and the interior setup of the refrigerator), and
household task-based work processes. Gilbreth’s designs are probably
the first attempts to devise ergonomically efficient and safe environments
for the home. Graham (1997), among others, has argued that Gilbreth’s
contribution to home management actually had a negative influence on
the modern, urban, middle-class American woman, particularly with
regard to promoting consumption and setting standards of quality that
were not necessarily based on needs, but rather on desires (i.e., pro-
moting the use of a kitchen mixer and/or preaching the consumption of
advanced technological appliances for the kitchen does not necessarily
improve the quality of the food made in that kitchen). We return to the
question of efficiency and ergonomics design in the home later in this
chapter.
134 Tal Oron-Gilad and Peter A. Hancock
INDIVIDUATION
(Personal Perfection) Hedonomics
PLEASURABLE EXPERIENCE
Collective
Individual
(Promotion of Pleasure)
USABILITY
(Priority of Preference)
FUNCTIONALITY
(Promulgation of Process)
Ergonomics
SAFETY
(Prevention of Pain)
individual traits, personal views, changing goals, and mood states over
time. Some may argue that this pyramid presentation is already outdated
in describing the individual person as these two mechanisms for func-
tionality and affect, the intuitive and cognitive systems, act in parallel
(see, e.g., Kahneman, 2002).
However, one general question is whether industry and workplaces
will adopt hedonic design. From a practical perspective, this pyramid
of needs representation reflects the way industry and workplaces could
adopt hedonic design. Thus, over the last century safety, ergonomics,
and usability were ubiquitously adopted by industries and manufacturers
after they were proven to increase productivity and profit. Furthermore,
they build upon each other and represent a hierarchy of needs in the work-
place, that is, safety is the most fundamental need and usability has been
the latest “top level” of the pyramid. Unfortunately, operators’ well-being
was, and still remains, rarely a matter of concern per se. Human fac-
tors have traditionally followed the technology- and performance-driven
path by facilitating better designs for systems and workplaces to achieve
higher productivity goals. Similarly, hedonomics will not be adopted by
industries and workplaces unless it proves to follow this productivity’s
increasing trend and become the next novel, innovative top hierarchy of
the pyramid.
Individuation
Starting from the premise that emphasizes commonalities across all
human beings, we seek to extend such concern to an individual-based
design or state of individuation in which the focus is on the unique
characteristics of each and every single individual user (see Hancock,
2003; Hancock, Hancock, and Warm, 2009). We believe technology has
now progressed to a point that it is capable of dealing with users on
this individual, personal level, and this progress fits hand-in-glove with
the growing concerns for affect as embraced by hedonomics. Individ-
uation is not just the pursuit of self-centeredness. This is so because
optimization of an interface for a specific user alone, which allows him
142 Tal Oron-Gilad and Peter A. Hancock
or her to interact intuitively and personally, does not affect only the
user; it also affects the user’s environment and all aspects of that envi-
ronment, including other people (see Hancock, 2003). This widespread
effect could be either pleasant or detrimental in nature, given that sat-
isfying one individual’s hedonomic need has no necessary link to the
hedonic state of any other individual. For example, Moray (1993: 35)
commented on the benefit of smart houses for “making life easier and
safer for inhabitants and reducing energy consumption.” The ability of
a smart house to detect and adapt to the individual characteristics of
its inhabitants would not only allow for individual comfort and optimal
operation, but also could conserve energy for the greater good: in this
case, a collective positive benefit (see Mynatt et al., 2004). Additionally,
human factors/ergonomics specialists have a responsibility to consider
potential negative effects of the outflow of poor design and the failure
that is produced when we do not take into consideration the strengths
and limitations of each human (Vicente, 2004).
Conclusion
Hedonomics has two main purposes: the promotion of pleasant and
enjoyable human–system interaction, and the promotion of well-being
and use of technology to facilitate well-being. These two goals may some-
times be contradictory. For example, the question of enjoyment is one
that is stable neither in space nor in time. For one to experience epochs of
joy or high levels of enjoyment, they must necessarily be contrasted with
intervals that are, by definition, less enjoyable. Thus, hedonomic experi-
ence is fundamentally cyclic in nature. In the modern 24/7/365 society,
we have tended to forget these inherent cycles, instead adopting a con-
tinuous temporal ganzfeld (complete field; total) of experience. Worse,
we have often taken those very festivals and holidays which have con-
noted past pleasures and have sought to expand upon these by extending
them in time. In so doing, we have inevitably diluted the experience. Let
us take, for example, some typical Western “holiday” periods, the most
obvious being Christmas, the reflection of the old celebration of the mid-
winter solstice. Even within living memory, Christmas was a two to three
day celebration with its own unique characteristics – being Christmas
Eve and Boxing Day, respectively. However, due to the exploitation of
the season by commercial enterprises, Christmas can start (at least in the
United States) in early November (if not before). Indeed, as one looks at
the annual calendar, one can begin to see that commercial concerns have
arranged the dilution of experience, such that there is nearly always a “cel-
ebration” at hand. Thus, again in the US, this proceeds from Halloween
to the Thanksgiving break to the Christmas interval (almost immedi-
ately followed by the now legendary January sales and Valentine’s Day,
and so on). Thus, in dissolving these peaks of expectation and assumed
enjoyment in time, the modern propensity for vast greed has dissolved
the fundamental nature of the experience. It is not merely the content of
an interval, but its length and the degree of anticipation involved in its
arrival, that dictate the emotional response engendered.
Another way to look at the issue of the ganzfeld (completeness) of
experience is not to separate the work from the leisure as many people
144 Tal Oron-Gilad and Peter A. Hancock
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146 Tal Oron-Gilad and Peter A. Hancock
Myth: The home is a benign place to work and enables teleworkers to “have
it all” – excel at both work and family. Work is portable to home without any
downside.
Reality: For many employees, moving the workplace to the home can hurt an
employee’s home life and create new social dilemmas, especially if employees do
not perceive control over the timing, location, and process of work, and believe
they are able to create boundaries that allow them to sometimes separate work
and family roles.
Given the increasing availability of formal and informal access to tele-
working and other flexible work arrangements, in this chapter our goal
is to understand the kinds of psychological working conditions under
which use of teleworking is more likely to enhance employee well-being.
We will show that “good teleworking” or teleworking where use is likely
to be related to favorable outcomes for the workers’ well-being has several
psychological job design characteristics. We draw on survey and interview
data from a sample of 316 professional employees in two Fortune 500
firms. Our chapter emphasizes two main features of good teleworking.
First, perceived psychological control over when, where, and how one
teleworks matters for well-being. We will show that employees with higher
perceived personal control over the location, timing, and process of work
experience significantly lower work–family conflict, turnover intentions,
and are less likely to want to move to a new career.
Second, how an employee manages psychological and physical bound-
aries between work and family roles is another critical influence on
Prior to her death Dr. Susan C. Eaton was an important member of our teleworking
research group. We would like to acknowledge her significant contribution to the early
stages of this project.
We are grateful to the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at Michigan State
University for providing graduate assistantships to support data collection and analysis, and
especially to Casey Schurkamp for serving as project manager of this study. Correspondence
should be addressed to: Ellen Ernst Kossek, [email protected]. Portions of this original
chapter draw on Kossek et al. (2006).
148
“Good teleworking” 149
Theoretical background
Early work–family research viewed work and home as independent sys-
tems, where a structural and emotional separation of work and family
evolved for individuals and organizations (Homer, 2002). Given current
shifting labor force composition toward growing numbers of employees
managing caregiving and other nonwork demands, more recently schol-
ars have argued that the enforced separation of work and family spheres
in traditional workplaces leads to work–family role conflict (Friedman
et al., 1998; Kanter, 1977). As potential solutions, researchers and prac-
titioners advocate that employers adopt flexible work arrangements such
as flexible schedules and teleworking to help employees integrate and
restructure work and family roles to reduce conflicts (Golden, 2001).
National surveys show that 84 percent of major employers have adopted
flexible schedules and nearly two-thirds (64%) offer telecommuting
(Alliance for Work/Life Progress, 2001) with these policies most accessi-
ble to professional employees (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2000). How-
ever, questions remain concerning whether the integration of work and
family reduces conflicts, whether flexible work arrangements, namely
teleworking, provide the intended benefits to the synthesis of work and
family roles, and, in particular, whether flexible work schedules and tele-
working practices provide professional workers the control they may need
to jointly manage often unbounded work hours with nonwork demands.
150 Ellen Ernst Kossek, Brenda A. Lautsch, and Susan C. Eaton
professional workers to work longer hours and other actions that shape
the boundary between work and family time. Once professional work
extends into the home, managers may begin to call workers at home
or expect them to answer e-mails in the evenings and on weekends, for
example. Introducing work into personal times and spaces also raises the
potential of work being increasingly shaped by the employee’s manage-
ment of boundaries in relation to the family role. Recent developments
in boundary theory (Ashforth et al., 2000; Clark, 2000) highlight the fact
that integrating work and family in time and space, as in flextime and
flexplace job designs, means that borders between the two domains are
permeable; work may be more interrupted by family influences and vice
versa.
For professional workers to really have control over when they shift
from work to home or other nonwork responsibilities may not only require
a job design that provides autonomy, but also a boundary-management
strategy, which Kossek, Noe, and DeMarr (1999) define as the princi-
ples one uses to organize and separate role demands and expectations
into specific realms of home (e.g., dependent caregiving) and work (i.e.,
doing one’s job). Some professionals with jobs that allow flextime and
telecommuting may also desire a segmentation boundary-management
strategy; that is, they may seek to establish boundaries between work and
home by, for example, setting their own work hours and turning off their
cell phone or pager at the end of the day, not checking e-mail in the
evenings or weekends, or by working in a home office with a door to shut
out family interruptions. More research is needed on the effects of these
strategies in the context of flexible job schedules and telecommuting
practices, which this study was designed to address.
only the process, but also the timing and location of work, will enhance
effectiveness. We define this as personal job flexibility control, which is con-
trol over where, when, and how one works. We surmised professionals
with personal job flexibility control may experience lower work–family
conflict since they will be able to restructure work and family demands
as needed. Their performance may be enhanced since they will experi-
ence fewer work or family interruptions due to the ability to rearrange
roles as needed. They also will be more likely to want to stay in their
job and in their career, as the ability to control work hours is generally
highly valued by skilled professional workers. They will have lower career
movement preparedness (Kossek et al., 1998), which is defined as self-
management behaviors such as feedback seeking and networking to have
readiness to change careers, since they will find their current career more
satisfying due in part to the ability to have higher personal job flexibility
control.
Hypothesis 1: Personal job flexibility control will be positively related to perfor-
mance and negatively related to work-to-family conflict, family-to-work conflict,
turnover intentions, and career movement preparedness.
Given the generally positive results across many studies for flexibility
programs, individual use of flexible job designs is expected to generate
154 Ellen Ernst Kossek, Brenda A. Lautsch, and Susan C. Eaton
(Ashforth et al., 2000). For example, workers may find their ability to
attend to both work and home demands undermined by more frequent
interruptions if no limits are placed on times when colleagues could
phone home or family members could walk into the home office. There-
fore, we predicted higher family-to-work and work-to-family conflict for
strategies favoring integration.
Method
Results
Table 6.1 presents the means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations
for all variables in this study.
We used ordinary least squares regressions to test our hypotheses.
Table 6.2 shows the results for regressions with career movement
preparedness, work–family conflict (both directions), and turnover as
dependent variables, and Table 6.3 shows the results for the regression
with performance as an outcome.
The regression results show that flexibility type significantly predicted
work–family effectiveness. We predicted in hypothesis 1 that greater per-
sonal job flexibility control would improve professionals’ well-being. We
found significant support for this idea. While our results show that per-
sonal job flexibility control does not affect performance, it does signifi-
cantly reduce work–family conflict (in both directions) as well as career
movement preparedness and turnover intentions. We argued (in hypothe-
sis 2) that mere access to telecommuting would not have these beneficial
effects and our results support this: Formal access had no significant
relationship to any of our dependent variables. Turning to hypothesis 3,
Table 6.1 Means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations for all the variables in the study
N Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
1 Work-to-family 316 2.81 0.75 1.00
conflict
2 Family-to-work 316 1.78 0.47 0.09 1.00
conflict
3 Supervisor 84 3.91 0.62 0.02 –0.08 1.00
performance rating
4 Career movement 316 2.36 0.83 0.14∗ 0.05 –0.22∗ 1.00
preparedness
5 Turnover intentions 316 1.95 0.95 0.18∗ ∗ 0.12∗ 0.16 0.47∗∗ 1.00
6 Personal job flexibility 316 3.84 0.77 –0.11∗ –0.17∗∗ –0.01 –0.21∗ ∗ –0.29∗ ∗ 1.00
control
7 Formal access to 316 0.72 0.45 0.01 0.01 0.29∗∗ –0.21∗ ∗ –0.16∗ ∗ 0.31∗∗ 1.00
telework
8 Volume of portable 316 43.24 39.48 –0.11 –0.05 0.22∗ –0.26∗ ∗ –0.17∗ ∗ 0.36∗∗ 0.54∗∗ 1.00
work
9 Schedule irregularity 299 0.66 0.47 0.14∗ –0.07 0.05 –0.01 –0.01 0.10 0.12∗ 0.10 1.00
10 Place mobility 305 1.65 0.68 0.13∗ –0.06 –0.08 0.06 0.03 0.06 0.00 –0.22∗ ∗ 0.22∗∗ 1.00
11 Boundary- 314 0.58 0.91 0.02 0.13∗ 0.22∗ –0.01 –0.04 0.00 0.10 –0.02 0.05 0.11 1.00
management
strategy
12 Dependents 310 0.49 0.50 0.03 0.17∗∗ –0.01 –0.08 0.04 0.09 0.12∗ 0.09 –0.01 0.11 0.07 1.00
13 Gender 316 0.57 0.50 0.03 0.02 0.29∗∗ –0.06 –0.10 –0.05 0.02 –0.01 –0.10 –0.21∗ ∗ 0.11∗∗ –0.02 1.00
14 Total work hours 316 45.11 8.25 0.30∗ ∗ –0.11∗ –0.02 –0.07 0.02 0.06 0.07 –0.04 –0.45∗ ∗ –0.29∗ ∗ 0.03 0.14∗∗ –0.21∗ ∗ 1.00
Career
Work-to-family Family-to-work movement Turnover
conflict conflict preparedness intentions
Performance rating
Beta
Controls
Gender .27∗
Dependents –.04
Total work hours .01
Flexibility type
Personal job flexibility control –.13
Formal access to telework .23
Volume of flexible work .14
Schedule irregularity .04
Place mobility –.02
Boundary-management strategy .17
Total r2 .22∗
Note: After pairwise deletion n = 80
wonders of the virtual workplace. Our results show that higher indi-
vidual control over the location, timing, and process of work has ben-
eficial effects for work–family conflict, turnover intentions, and career
movement preparedness; however, other types of flexible job designs,
including access to formal teleworking arrangements, working in multi-
ple locations, and schedule irregularity, may have less positive effects on
work and family outcomes. The management literature has overlooked
many of these differences in flexible job designs and oversimplified the
benefits of making jobs flexible and virtual. A main issue our study raises
is that there may be costs associated with flexibility and with moving work
into the home, which used to be a place of personal respite and peace.
What other problems and conflicts did the workplace of the twenty-
first century create and what myths of flexibility need to be debunked
or at least examined? For example, for some jobs, flexibility means an
employee is available to work 24 hours 7 days a week! In the long run, is
this really good for employers, individuals, and their families?
Our results suggest that, for many employees, moving the workplace to
the home can hurt home life and create new social dilemmas, especially
if workload is not reduced, space and technological infrastructure inade-
quate, and the family has little understanding of these roles. We also col-
lected some qualitative data that triangulates nicely with our quantitative
results noted above. One key subtheme we found was that teleworking
changes family and friends’ expectations as indicated by some responses
below by different teleworkers.
“They think you’re available, and people tend to think you’re not really working.”
“They expect that I’m available at home. When I’m not, it annoys them.”
“My wife is always looking for me to do other things besides work.”
“My husband goes out of his way to stay with the schedule. The children have a
harder time understanding, though.”
“My children call from school more often than when I am at work. My family
expects that I can do things like running errands at lunch.”
164 Ellen Ernst Kossek, Brenda A. Lautsch, and Susan C. Eaton
“They think I won’t get as much done, my co-workers. My children think I’m
available when I’m at home.”
“My friends will want me to do lunch with them. My kids are more demanding
when I’m at home.”
“My kids and even my wife don’t understand that my focus is on work.”
“They think I’m not working. It’s very annoying. That happened more in the
beginning.”
“Yes, it’s hard for them to understand that I’m working for my office and not
available.”
strategies and flexible job designs. These methods are very expensive,
but may be well worth the investment. Despite these potential areas for
improvement, this study adds to our knowledge by examining the mixed
effects and multifaceted aspects of flexibility. A clear practical implication
of the study is that work–family boundary integration may arise naturally
with flexible working arrangements as volume and irregularity of flexible
work increases, unless individuals strive to counter this with strategies
to segment work and nonwork roles, and organizations allow them to
do this. An example of a personal strategy is having a separate door to
a home office and hiring a full-time babysitter while working. We have
downloaded the office onto some employees’ homes, and they and their
families may not yet have learned effective strategies to manage these
new work arrangements.
Additional studies should build on our research on the construct of
boundary-management strategy to further examine how people may shift
rhythms over daily, weekly, and lifespan changes and how they are associ-
ated with different types of flexible job designs. As noted, the work–family
literature places boundary management on a continuum from segmen-
tation to integration, and there may be more complexity to this issue
to investigate in future work. For example, if an employee is working
at home with the door closed while their child is watching television;
some could say they are physically integrating roles; they are working
at home and are physically there, but are mentally segmenting as they
are not interacting with their family. People cannot move work into the
home without changing their social relationships. Future research should
develop additional measures of the various aspects of boundaries that
are being integrated/separated (physical, mental, behavioral, temporal),
the implications of integrating on some parts of the boundary, but not
others, and the waxing and waning of the process of boundary manage-
ment over a workday, work week, and the life course. More research is
needed on coping strategies individuals can adopt to help set boundaries
that fit with their preferences. Training in negotiation skills might be help-
ful so that individuals feel empowered to speak up and negotiate flexibil-
ity enactment approaches that help not only their work effectiveness but
also their personal and family effectiveness. Supervisors also may need
additional training on how to better manage and provide more effective
support to employees in these transformational work arrangements.
Conclusion
We have written this chapter with the goal of contributing to future
studies on the effects of enhanced control and autonomy over one’s
170 Ellen Ernst Kossek, Brenda A. Lautsch, and Susan C. Eaton
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“Good teleworking” 173
The progress of human societies has always been associated with mobil-
ity and transportation. Since the earliest homo sapiens migrated from
their cave dwellings over 100,000 years ago to establish civilizations in
the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, human achievement and soci-
etal well-being has been dependent on our ability to transport ourselves
and the goods that we produce. While the information age has radically
modified both work products and the means of transportation, physical
mobility on roadway systems remains fundamental to our commerce,
recreation, and other life-sustaining activities. Indeed, mobility is very
much associated with well-being, but the relationship is not uniform,
as higher levels of travel may be reflective of constraints on opportuni-
ties, depletion of resources, and impairments to personal health and job
performance.
Contemporary urban societies are fraught with stressful environmen-
tal conditions, among which traffic congestion features prominently.
Remaining attached to the mode of private automobile travel and con-
strained by the availability of affordable housing, workers endure con-
gested commutes and absorb the stressful consequences. As Dubos
(1965, 1969) observed about human adaptation, we seem to develop
tolerances to aversive environmental conditions and apparently func-
tion effectively in these less than healthy environs; however, as he also
asserted, such adaptations in the present will be paid by misery in the
future. Although potentially harmful urban conditions, such as exposure
to noise, air pollution, and traffic congestion, become acceptable through
habituation, the adaptive adjustments are achieved at the price of phys-
ical or psychological disturbances later in life. Adaptations to chronic
stressors have costs, as was famously established for noise and social
stress by Glass and Singer (1972). Because routine exposure to high-
density traffic has become normative in urban areas worldwide, attention
to the strain of commuting on congested roadways and long-distance
commuting is important for both researchers and professionals in health
174
Commuting and well-being 175
study with Japanese drivers found some comparability with British stud-
ies on “driver stress,” although we discuss below some issues in this genre
of research. Overall, it is clear that traffic congestion and the strain of
commuting through it is a problem worldwide.
for home and family, they are perhaps more sensitized to stress on high-
impedance routes. The gender moderation effect (females showing higher
stress) was also obtained by Novaco and Collier (1994), as women in the
long-distance commutes (greater than 20 miles to work) perceived greater
commuting stress spillover to work and to home. Koslowsky et al. (1996)
found a near-significant moderation effect for gender on subjective stress,
but they only report the main effect testing, not in interaction with
impedance. However, they did find that women commuters had signifi-
cantly lower levels of perceived control. In studies with rail commuters,
Evans et al. (2002) and Evans and Wener (2006) found that gender did
not interact with commute variables in relationship to stress measures.
However, the ecology of commuting by train is quite different from that
by automobile, including margins of departure and arrival, intermedi-
ate stops, and tasks that can be done during the commute. Hennessy
et al. (2000) found no gender differences in driver stress, but their partic-
ipants were on single trips on their routine commutes. In the large sample
survey study of Italian factory workers by Costa et al. (1988b), women
across commuting modes had significantly shorter-duration commutes
than did men, but they had significantly higher psychological stress, fam-
ily problems, illnesses, work absences, and lower job satisfaction. Those
authors concluded that (long) commutes accentuate the problems that
working women face.
In our preceding discussion, we have given some attention to commut-
ing stress involving public transport, although automobile commuting
features more prominently. Comparative analyses of modes of commut-
ing on stress dimensions are sparse, particularly if one looks for mea-
surement intensity. A recent study by Gatersleben and Uzzell (2007)
compared drivers, cyclists, walkers, and public transport users on ques-
tionnaire measures, and their discriminant analysis shows that car drivers
have the most stressful commutes, but public transport users had the
most negative attitudes toward their travel mode. Parallel to automobile
commuting studies, Evans and Wener (2006) found that the duration of
the commute is related to salivary cortisol elevation and proof-reading
errors. Unfortunately, the latter study did not track the predictabil-
ity or control dimension of earlier train passenger studies (e.g., Evans
et al., 2002; Singer et al., 1977). The large sample survey study of Italian
factory workers by Costa et al. (1988b) examined differences between
commuters who have long-duration (forty-five minutes or more) versus
short-duration (twenty minutes or less) journeys to work – they oddly
termed the former “commuters” and the latter “non-commuters,” but
did not disentangle modes within these conditions. The long-distance
commuters (especially the females) did, however, report significantly
Commuting and well-being 187
effects” (Novaco et al., 1990), with results obtained from online assess-
ments in the vehicle. While this research by Hennessy and Wiesenthal
has been conducted on single trips, these did occur on the person’s rou-
tine commute route. Their use of a state/trait distinction for driver stress
and their innovative measurement of the state variables offers promise
for future research discoveries.
find value in this result (Hartig et al., 2007; Stephens and Szajna,
1998). Stephens and Szajna (1998) found evidence confirming that
commute reduction implies less driver frustration and stress, as conjec-
tured by Trent, Smith, and Wood (1994). Other widely reported motiva-
tions for telecommuting are: flexibility, relaxed atmosphere, cost savings,
increased family time, and avoidance of office politics. Telecommuting
enables workers to maximize control over their work schedules and trans-
portation modes; and an abundance of research on human stress in the
past two decades has shown that personal control mitigates stress. Such
beneficial effects of control have been found with regard to noise, crowd-
ing, air pollution, institutionalization, surgery, and stressful life events
(Cohen et al., 1986, as well as in the commuting studies previously dis-
cussed). A number of reviews concerning telecommuting, motivations,
and psychological well-being have been published in recent years (e.g.,
Andriessen, 1991; Baruch, 2001; Konradt et al., 2000). As motives and
circumstances for telework vary, telecommuting can affect well-being in
different ways.
The relationship between telecommunications and transportation can
be seen to be symbiotic (Mokhtarian, 1990), and it is quite possible
that advances in telecommunications technologies will result in travel
increases. As Mokhtarian states, the most important impact of telecom-
munications is in the reduction of constraints. At the psychological level,
this has important implications for the well-being of workers, consistent
with the broader issue of “personal control.” Within most work orga-
nizations, issues of personal control are recurrent themes (Greenberger
et al., 1991); workers generally seek to enhance control, and traditional
management routinely attempts to maintain control over subordinates.
Kossek et al. (2006) reported that employees who perceived greater job
control (the degree to which an individual perceives control over where,
when, and how work is done) had significantly lower turnover inten-
tions, family–work conflict, and depression. Kossek et al. expand on the
personal control and work flexibility theme in Chapter 6.
Although management preference for line-of-sight supervision is a
commonly noted institutional impediment to telecommuting, it is note-
worthy that not everyone capable of telecommuting chooses to do so.
An inspection of the literature reveals numerous reasons why telecom-
muting can be disadvantageous, including: decreased social interaction,
lack of career visibility, the need for direct supervision, and a desire to
separate home and work life. Standen et al. (1999) suggested that the
erosion of boundaries (the structural and psychological divide between
life and work) negatively affects well-being. Much attention has also
been given to the potential consequences of overlap between work and
196 Raymond W. Novaco and Oscar I. Gonzalez
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8 Technology and medicine
Relevant constructs
Well-being and related constructs of quality of life and psychological
functioning are part of a constellation that makes up the human experi-
ence with technology and so may be inseparable. There is no universally
accepted definition of quality of life (QoL) but some approaches to defini-
tion lend themselves to measuring the impact of technology better than
others. In our research on the impact of assistive devices for individuals
who have a physical or sensory disability, we have adopted the position
advocated by Renwick et al. (1994). These authors argue that QoL refers
to the degree to which a person enjoys the important possibilities of
his/her life. This is a definition that speaks directly to the theme of this
206
Technology and medicine 207
book because it compels us to focus on the most important goals for tech-
nology in supporting human existence. In defining well-being, we refer to
the degree to which individuals have positive appraisals and feelings about
their lives, considered altogether or in terms of particular domains, such
as health and recreation (Fuhrer, 2000). All three principal features of
psychological functioning (conation, affect, and cognition) may be affected
by technology (Fuhrer, 2000). Recent studies particularly examine how
devices make users feel more competent, confident, and motivated to
exploit life’s possibilities (Jutai, 1999; Jutai and Day, 2002).
Assumptions about these constructs and how they are affected by tech-
nology include that they (1) are complex and multidimensional; (2) are
dynamic, changing over time and over a person’s life; (3) arise from
the individual’s interaction with his/her environment; and (4) are experi-
enced differently from person to person, but have the same components
for everyone (Jutai, 1999). Approaches to outcome measurement should
be faithful to these assumptions. The relationship between technology
and health is difficult to measure but not impossible (Fuhrer et al., 2003;
Jutai et al., 2005).
Conceptual framework
Ohnabe (2006) describes a useful conceptual framework for health
technology that distinguishes the QoL impact of medical and assistive
technologies. This framework is presented in Figure 8.1. Medical tech-
nologies are more narrowly defined, and are designed for assessment
and intervention at the level of physical health and healing or, in the
language of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability
and Health (ICF), body function and structures (World Health Organiza-
tion, 2001). Medical devices are applied in one or more of the following
areas: life support (e.g., dialysis, mechanical ventilator); substitution for
body structure or function (e.g., implanted electrical stimulator, prosthetic
limb, cochlear implant); medical treatment (e.g., injection devices); and
measurement (e.g., glucose monitor, fMRI). Ohnabe’s framework makes
it clear that without technology where it is needed to support or prolong
life, individuals may still have QoL but their life span will be shorter. At
the same time, we do not expect medical devices in the narrow sense to
directly and appreciably improve QoL and well-being. These improve-
ments are much more influenced by the opportunities to engage in life
activities and participate in society. In fact, at times there can be opportu-
nity costs associated with constraints imposed by life support technology
(e.g., dialysis and mechanical ventilation) that may actually curtail these
opportunities and thereby diminish QoL and well-being.
208 Jeffrey W. Jutai, Sherry Coulson, and Elizabeth Russell-Minda
Improvement in
QoL and well-being
Participation in society
Assistive technology
Social activity
Vocational support Leisure support
support
technology
Activities
Living support
Self-support Care support
technology
that the use of wheelchairs had a positive effect on those with MS (Devitt
et al., 2003).
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is an adult onset, progressive
neuromuscular disease that affects all aspects of daily living. Jutai and
Gryfe (1998) found that wheelchairs were the most commonly prescribed
ATDs for those with ALS. Patients with ALS also used other aids to assist
with communication and activities of daily living. Using the PIADS, the
authors found that the impact of all types of ATDs used was positive, as
reported by both the users and their caregivers.
for vision rehabilitation includes optical aids for reading and other tasks,
such as magnifiers, electronic magnification systems, and Closed Cir-
cuit Televisions (CCTVs). Prisms may help with field enhancement and
telescopes may be useful for distance viewing and spotting tasks. Imple-
menting proper lighting conditions at home or work are simple ways
to modify one’s environment. Sight substitution technologies include
the use of Braille and other tactile materials. Assistive technology can
also include orientation and mobility training (including device training),
and driver rehabilitation. Ultimately, the desired outcomes of receiving
vision rehabilitation are for individuals to attain the maximum function
of any remaining vision, increase levels of functional ability, increase
independence, and improve their overall QoL (AHRQ, 2004; Jutai et al.,
2005).
Assistive technology for vision loss has typically been grouped by func-
tional application, by specific visual impairment condition, or by device
type. Some devices are multifunctional – so possibly more resistant to
simple categorization – and therefore a taxonomy for low-vision assistive
technology might be proposed to organize these devices and strategies
according to the way in which they either “enhance” or “substitute”
vision. Sight enhancement assistive technology can be defined as devices
or strategies used to take advantage of useful residual vision. Sight substi-
tution assistive technology may be designed around the premise that no
useful or contributing vision is available, where individuals rely on non-
vision senses of hearing and touch. Often, the success or effectiveness
of the assistive technology is determined by how well it performs for the
user and the level of satisfaction the individual has with the device (Jutai
et al., 2005, 2008). Outcome measures for determining the effectiveness
of assistive devices or strategies can include both subjective and objective
measures of performance. Subjective outcome measures – such as pref-
erence for a particular device, ease of use, or satisfaction with a certain
type of technology – may reliably assess the impact a device may have on
an individual’s QoL and happiness with assistive technology. Subjective
measures are typically assessed using psychometrically validated ques-
tionnaires or scales, which are administered by a clinician or therapist,
or completed by the patients themselves. In addition, research syntheses
using systematic review methods have helped to determine the strength
of evidence for the effectiveness of assistive technology in improving the
QoL and well-being of individuals with vision loss (Hooper et al., 2008;
Jutai et al., 2008; Virgili and Acosta, 2006; Virgili and Rubin, 2006).
Rehabilitation research has assessed the impact of vision rehabilitation
programs on improving individual QoL and well-being, activities of daily
living, and the use of low-vision aids (Eklund et al., 2004; McCabe
216 Jeffrey W. Jutai, Sherry Coulson, and Elizabeth Russell-Minda
et al., 2000; Pankow et al., 2004; Scanlan and Cuddeford, 2004). Brody
et al. (1999) conducted a randomized clinical trial for evaluating the
effects of a self-management program for individuals with age-related
macular degeneration, on measures of self-efficacy, psychological stress,
and use of low-vision aids. Mean QoL ratings were taken from Quality of
Well-Being scale scores. The results of the short, weekly, two-hour group
sessions showed substantially reduced psychological stress and improved
self-efficacy for those who participated in the intervention. The self-
management intervention also had a small effect on the increased use of
low-vision aids in sixty-eight subjects. In another randomized controlled
trial, Reeves et al. (2004) compared the effectiveness of an enhanced
low-vision rehabilitation program with a conventional type of program,
incorporating the training and use of low-vision aids. The enhanced
program included additional home visits by a rehabilitation specialist who
provided assistance with lighting modifications and guidance on suitable
low-vision aids. The main outcome measures were vision-specific QoL,
measured by the “vision core module 1” (VCM1) and generic health-
related QoL (SF-36), psychological adjustment to vision loss, measured
task performance, and restriction in everyday activities. The study results
found no evidence supporting the benefits of an enhanced program over
a conventional type of program via measures of subjective QoL ratings;
however, the use of low-vision aids was high throughout the trial and
increased with duration of follow-up.
Prisms and field enhancement devices can be beneficial prescriptions
for people with visual field loss resulting from hemianopsia and unilateral
visual neglect, typically occurring after a stroke. Prismatic lenses have also
been advocated for some patients with age-related macular degeneration,
where fixation is shifted to the nondiseased areas of the retina. Fresnel
prisms and mirrors may be used to provide enhanced awareness of obsta-
cles in the affected visual field, and may be useful in rehabilitation. Smith
et al. (2005) examined the relative effectiveness of prism spectacles for
subjects with age-related macular degeneration versus a control with no
prism. Subjective outcome measures included assessments of QoL using
the twenty-five-item National Eye Institute’s Visual Function Question-
naire (NEI-VFQ-25), and activities of daily living with the Melbourne
Low Vision Activities of Daily Living Index (MLVAI). The results indi-
cated that the prism spectacles were no more effective than conventional
glasses for improving reading performance, improving QoL, or increas-
ing activities of daily living skills for individuals with age-related macular
degeneration.
Monocular low-vision telescopes are commonly prescribed for indi-
viduals who require magnification to visualize distant objects of interest.
Technology and medicine 217
the mouse electronic vision enhancement system with monitor. They rated
the mouse electronic vision enhancement system with the head-mounted
device as having a difficulty similar to using their own magnifiers.
Among individuals with visual impairment, increased illumination has
been shown to improve overall QoL and the ability to carry out daily
activities. High-quality illumination includes not only a sufficient quan-
tity of light but also conditions such as the direction of the light, the type
of illumination, and the presence of glare. Several studies have shown that
the reading performance of persons with age-related macular degenera-
tion is more likely to improve with increased task illumination (Bowers
et al., 2001; Bullimore and Bailey, 1995; Eldred, 1992; Fosse and
Valberg, 2004; LaGrow, 1986; Lovie-Kitchin et al., 1983; Sloan, Habel,
and Feiock, 1973). Optimal illumination for people with low vision can
be measured using both objective evaluations (reading performance)
and subjective preference methods (comfort ratings). Brunnström et al.
(2004) evaluated the effects of suitable household lighting on subjective
QoL, and the ability to carry out activities of daily living by increas-
ing the lighting in various rooms of the home. They found a marked
improvement in QoL and activities of daily living performance as a result
of the lighting adjustments (as measured with a quality of well-being
scale). Bowers et al. (2001) assessed individuals with age-related mac-
ular degeneration on reading performance without low-vision devices,
for a range of print sizes at six different illuminance levels: 50, 300,
600, 1,000, 2,000, and 5,000 lux (a typical living-room illuminance
being 50 lux). This study evaluated both objective optimal illuminance
levels and subjective preferred illuminance levels. The majority of sub-
jects preferred an illuminance level of 2,450 lux (median). The majority
required task illumination of at least 2,000 lux to maximize reading per-
formance, based on objective assessments.
Orientation and mobility research frequently uses measurements of
mobility and obstacle detection performance, and typically takes place
within laboratory-based settings (indoor or outdoor), or in “real-world”
settings. Research related to subjective preferences and QoL assessments
has typically been conducted with mobility aids (canes), rather than with
specific types of training programs. In a recent systematic review of ori-
entation and mobility training programs (Virgili and Rubin, 2006), the
authors concluded that there is little evidence as to which type of orien-
tation and mobility training is most beneficial for people with low vision
who have specific needs and characteristics. In addition to the need for
consensus on the adoption of standard measurement instruments which
measure mobility performance, questionnaires which explore people’s
subjective experiences are also in need of development.
Technology and medicine 219
Traditional long straight canes are the most widely used mobility aid
for individuals with visual impairment, and continue to be an effec-
tive mobility device (Rodgers and Emerson, 2005). Current research
has not determined which canes produce the best performance, but
users often express strong subjective preferences for particular features
of canes, dependent upon environmental conditions (Ambrose-Zaken,
2005).
A number of adaptive technologies exist for both experienced Braille
users as well as non-Braille users. Some of these technologies include
refreshable Braille displays for reading or writing, Braille translation soft-
ware, Braille embossers for producing hardcopy documents, portable
note-taking devices, optical character recognition systems, screen mag-
nification software, and speech output software. Sensory substitution, a
concept introduced at the beginning of the 1970s, involves devices that
acquire and process sensory information relating to the impaired sys-
tem into signals that are adapted to a nonimpaired substitutive sensory
system (Veraart et al., 2004). Advances in tactile technology have also
made maps more accessible for individuals with visual impairment by
using tactile map materials (e.g., special inks and surfaces) (Siekierska
et al., 2003). For individuals with vision impairment, aspects of their
QoL can be greatly improved with this type of assistive technology, but
its usefulness is frequently dependent on their level of technical skill and
access to standard or emerging technology. There is a paucity of research
on these types of sensory and adaptive technology and their effects on
psychological well-being and QoL.
Vision-specific instruments designed to measure patient satisfaction
with devices as well as measures of QoL have been proved useful in pro-
viding valuable information to the low-vision research community. There
is a strong case for using a wide range of outcome measures to describe
the effectiveness of low-vision rehabilitation and assistive technology for
individuals with visual impairments, at least until research studies iden-
tify which outcomes are the most important and nonredundant (Harper
et al., 1999). The use of these measurements can assist users, providers,
and the research community with data on the practical utility and reten-
tion of low-vision assistive technology, based on psychosocial aspects.
Subjective data can also help plan out proper economic analyses and
provide the user with the tools for being informed consumers of devices,
both in terms of practical costs and cosmesis. Outcome measures for
evaluating subjective responses to low-vision assistive technology have
been criticized for their lack of standardization or applicability. This may
simply reflect the diversity of device types and ocular conditions, as well
as variabilities among individuals and research environments.
220 Jeffrey W. Jutai, Sherry Coulson, and Elizabeth Russell-Minda
measures that capture meaningful information about the QoL and well-
being of technology users (Lenker et al., 2005); (3) improved designs for
outcomes research that accommodate the dynamic and multivariate real-
ities about the relationship between technology and well-being (Fuhrer
et al., 2003); and (4) improved conceptual frameworks for researching
technology outcomes (Jutai et al., 2005; Ohnabe, 2006).
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226 Jeffrey W. Jutai, Sherry Coulson, and Elizabeth Russell-Minda
Written with the excellent and gratefully acknowledged assistance of Diana Bowen, Uni-
versity of Virginia.
227
228 Rae Lesser Blumberg
r Foraging, where women apparently were at least as important as men in
the techno-economic base of most non-Arctic groups, began millions of
years ago when we were hominids and this basically egalitarian, sharing
way of life accounts for nearly all of our history as Homo sapiens,
too.
r Women are usually credited with developing cultivation, perhaps
the most consequential technological innovation of all time. This
led to the world’s first horticultural societies a mere 10,000–12,000
years ago. Evidence indicates that female status initially was quite
high and that early horticultural societies tended to be peaceful and
innovative.
r Then women’s position (including as technology innovators) dropped
wherever patriarchal, hierarchical, warring societies rose and prevailed.
These included many later horticultural societies, most agrarian soci-
eties (which first emerged 5,000–6,000 years ago in the Middle East,
and where, on average, women’s position hit its nadir), and industrial
societies over the last two centuries (but where, especially since c. 1970,
women have been regaining ground).
r Overall, it appears that until c. 6,000–7,000 years ago, women in most
societies played an essentially equal part in techno-economic pursuits,
including control of resources. Levels of gender equality were also
generally high.
r Even during these last 6,000–7,000 years, women’s eclipse in techno-
economic activities and innovation has been far from total or uniform,
despite the stereotypes. In at least some groups at each techno-
economic level, a less patriarchal model prevailed.
r Now, an information/biotech/globalized new techno-economic base
seems to be rising, along with women’s importance – and level of
equality. In general, the nations where these techno-economic and
gender transformations have advanced the most have fared the best
in enhanced wealth and welfare.
The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows: First, I present
a brief look at links between females and subsistence technology among
chimps and bonobos, with whom we shared a common ancestor until c.
5.5–7 million years ago (De Waal, 2005, uses the 5.5 figure). Second,
I take a gendered look at foraging, horticultural, and agrarian techno-
economic bases. Third, I summarize my general theory of gender stratifi-
cation and show how it helps illuminate gender, economy, and technology
in any time period or group. Fourth, I give an overview of relevant trends
in the US and other industrial societies. The final section explores what
is happening now as a new base appears to be coalescing – and creating
new patterns of increasing gender equality at its cutting edge – amidst the
Mothers of invention? 229
they have a more human-shaped body, they French kiss and often have
face-to-face sex).
(LaFee, 2007: E8). And women’s containers surely extended to those for
water (Engelman, 2008).1
Kathleen Gough (1971) argues that humans’ patterns of foraging
included periodically going out in search of subsistence and then bringing
it back to the campsite, an almost always temporary but crucial “GHQ”
(general headquarters). Carcasses of larger animals can be slung over
shoulders or a pole, but how do people bring back handfuls of seeds,
small insects, or animals, berries, roots, and the like? Basketry is the
answer and it is an overwhelmingly female pursuit in human groups
(Murdock, 1967; Murdock and Provost, 1973). In short, the develop-
ment of carrying baskets solved the problem of getting the more reliable
and more numerous gathering calories back to that home base (yes; gath-
ering may be less glamorous and its calories less dense or craved than
animal protein, but it is more reliable). Richard B. Lee, noted ethnogra-
pher of the !Kung, asserts (1984: 40): “The universality of the carrying
device and its functional importance among all recent hunter-gatherers
has implications for the evolution of human subsistence during the Pleis-
tocene, because a device for carrying vegetable foods would seem to
be a prerequisite for human economic and social life (see Lee, 1979,
pp. 489–494).”
Regardless of which came first, both baby slings and carrying contain-
ers helped humans prevail. Most foraging humans had to be nomadic –
at least seasonally – in order to survive. On some occasions, a woman
might have left her still-nursing child back at the base camp. (It should
not have been hard to find a lactating woman to babysit once the child
was beyond infancy and nursing less frequently. After all, studies of con-
temporary foragers [e.g., the !Kung] find that children typically were
nursed to about age four and adults only left camp perhaps two to three
days a week to hunt or gather [see below].) Still, there were other times
when a woman had to take her child. Without a baby carrier, how could
she accommodate that child and still gather effectively? How could she
carry both her small child and her fair load of possessions (including
technology) to the next campsite without carrying devices?
Moreover, the ingenious baby-sling solution had further consequences
those original mother-innovators could not have imagined. For example,
it permitted the baby easy access to the breast, and because on-demand
nursing increases the ovulation-suppressing effect of breastfeeding
1 In 1542, Juan Cabrillo found the Chumash, acorn gatherers of coastal S. California, living
in permanent settlements of up to 800, making and trading superb baskets and water-
tight bottles. Most baskets were associated with traditionally female activities (LaFee,
2007). And most authorities also see women as crafting the many cooking techniques
that multiplied edible calories and changed our history.
232 Rae Lesser Blumberg
(e.g., Frisch, 1978), especially if there is no baby food for, say, nine
months, this contributed to women having their babies farther apart and
a lower total fertility rate.2 Indeed, studies of modern foragers (e.g., Aus-
tralian Aboriginals and the !Kung of Southwest Africa) show spacing
of four-plus years and a total fertility rate hovering around replacement
level: a little over two children per mother (Birdsell, 1968, makes anal-
ogous estimates for the Pleistocene). In turn, this fertility pattern facil-
itated women’s productive role. This was especially important among
“pure,” but non-Arctic, foraging groups, who do no herding, cultivation,
etc. (Kelly, 1995). Wide spacing also reduced child mortality: If a baby
arrived before its older sibling was weaned, both were at greater risk. Fur-
thermore, longer intervals between (fewer) births also could have positive
consequences for women’s autonomy and prospects for equality, not just
productivity.
The combination of the baby sling and carrying devices made women
formidable creators and wielders of a survival-enhancing subsistence
technology. Moreover, although almost surely developed by women (and
in many places and times by our early ancestors), both these technologi-
cal innovations could be used by men. Men can carry gathering baskets,
water bottles, or even babies in slings – and do, especially in more gender-
egalitarian groups.3
2 I posit two types of factors affecting forager women’s wide spacing/low fertility (Blum-
berg, 1984): (1) Passive factors including (a) nursing practices such as on-demand
nursing, as well as weaning at about age four, and (b) low body fat ratios (Kolata,
1974) stemming from their nutritious but low-fat diet and their high levels of physical
mobility. (2) Active factors including (a) infanticide, (b) abortion, and (c) use of plants
with contraceptive properties – which seem to have been used for this purpose far back
in our history (e.g., Engelman, 2008).
3 For example, in the course of my work and research in forty-plus countries, I have
personal experience with five groups that are gender egalitarian at the local level (provided
you do not consider local manifestations of the government and world religion, both of
which are more male dominated than local village life). These include the indigenous
people of the Central Andes of Ecuador; the people of Northeast Thailand, and their
Lao co-ethnics across the Mekong River in the lowlands of Laos; the Bijagos, who live
in a string of islands off the coast of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa; and the Mosuo (they
call themselves Nazeh) of China’s Yunnan Province in the country’s southwest. Here is a
vignette about a young father and his baby-carrying sling in the wild and wooly frontier
town of Oudomxai, Laos, near the border with Yunnan Province, China:
A young Lao Lum [lowland Lao] man was walking down a side street toward the main
road to China. He was carrying a baby, probably close to a year old, in a narrow cloth
hip sling suspended from his shoulder. As he approached the corner, a teen-age girl on a
motorcycle zoomed into the side street from the road. She was dressed in school uniform:
white blouse and a navy blue sin, the long, dark traditional embroidered skirt . . . His hand
reached down as she whizzed by, and he protectively and tenderly patted the baby’s head.
Then he began to cross the main road. (Blumberg, 2002)
Mothers of invention? 233
4 Australian Aboriginals are an exception. As explained below, they were forced to remain
foragers out of necessity, for some 40,000–60,000 years, in fact. But their typically
male-tilted kin/property system is as elaborate as in many horticultural societies (fam-
ily and kin complexity reach their zenith in prestate advanced horticultural groups
[Blumberg, 1978]). Middle-aged men could marry multiple wives, whose gathering
provided resources for these men to buttress their position. Overall, these groups were
less gender egalitarian than most other non-Arctic “pure” foragers. (Arctic groups, with
male-dominated production, also tend to be less gender equal.)
234 Rae Lesser Blumberg
being at the right place at the right time to obtain the food resource in
question – especially if there was nonhuman competition. This also gave
women more reasons for close observation of growing cycles.
But input–output analyses (Lee, 1968, 1969) of the !Kung Bushmen
of the harsh Kalahari desert find foragers to be, perhaps, the world’s
most leisured people (Sahlins, 1968): The average workweek was twenty
hours or less, spread over 1.9–3.2 days a week (Lee, 1984: 51). And only
about 65 percent of the population – adults c. 15–60 – were involved in
subsistence pursuits. For untold millennia, it would appear, there was
little need for most people to work harder to produce a basic food supply.
(Foragers apparently produced surplus mainly for festivals and, in harsh
climates, winter. Otherwise, it was too hard to take along surplus when
they moved camp so they had little incentive to accumulate it.) It would
not have taken long for them to figure out that cultivation entailed more
work than foraging.
So, why did they ever leave paradise – the peaceful, egalitarian, leisured
bands depicted in most ethnographies of pure foragers (e.g., Marshall,
1965; Turnbull, 1961, 1981)? The gradual rise of population pressure
is the most agreed-upon reason. All the cultigens (edible plants cultivated
for that purpose) that were massaged by our ancestors into today’s staple
foods – wheat, rice, corn, cassava, quinoa, yams, potatoes, etc. – share
the characteristic of being genetically plastic (i.e., mutating easily). Once
women felt the need to increase the food supply to feed growing popula-
tions, they presumably would have begun selecting for and planting the
most food-rich and desirable plants, capitalizing on the most promising
mutations.
According to Diamond (1997), all the world’s large land masses had at
least one such suitable cultigen except for Australia, which had abysmal
“geographic luck.” (As a result, foraging remained the sole techno-
economic base there until the British sailed into Botany Bay in 1788.)
Everywhere else, in a remarkably short time, early experiments in cul-
tivation – presumably done by the women, who dominated gathering –
gradually led to an increasing reliance on horticulture, which permitted
more settling down. As a result, by c. 10,000–12,000 years ago, we can
talk about horticultural societies and the beginning of the “horticultural
era” (Nolan and Lenski, 2009).
Today, most horticultural societies are “female farming” systems (e.g.,
Baumann, 1928; Boserup, 1970). Women not only are credited with
developing what is arguably the world’s most revolutionary technological
innovation, they now are primary (or, at least, equal) farmers in four-
fifths or more of world horticultural societies (Bryson, 1981). These days,
however, most groups that continue to practice this cultivation method
Mothers of invention? 235
do so because they live in areas with poor, acidic tropical soils too thin for
the plow – the situation in much of sub-Saharan Africa, where women still
raise up to 80 percent of locally grown food crops (Saito and Weidemann,
1990).
Technologically, horticultural cultivation can be done with the same
digging stick used for foraging, but attaching a blade to the stick – that
is, turning it into a hoe – raises its efficiency. Before metallurgy, a mostly
male pursuit, women easily could have made the wooden blades and
bindings for hoes. Most processing equipment would have been similar
to items already in use for the products of gathering. But horticulture
soon would have produced so much higher yields that needed processing
and storage that women’s work would have gone up (Engelman, 2008:
88–89).
Men’s work also would have been affected. In forested areas, the main
horticultural technique is slash and burn, or shifting, cultivation. At the
end of the dry season, the bush (but usually not the top canopy trees)
is cut – usually by males – and allowed to dry. Then they do a carefully
controlled burn. This releases all the nutrients in the plants into the
ashes. As a result, in the first season, whatever is planted tends to produce
high yields with very few weeds. There is a catch: If a plot is used too
long, weeds multiply, yields drop, and cultivators’ labors intensify. For
most horticulturalists, it is time to move on. Men will gain fresh hunting
grounds, even if they have to do most of the clearing work for the new
plots. Women will have far less weeding.
Most important, however, is that with cultivation people became
semisedentary villagers. They moved the village only after a number
of years, when suitable nearby plots had been used and “commuting” to
increasingly remote gardens or good hunting areas loomed as an issue.
The new settlement pattern permitted higher fertility as women moved
about less and became a little plumper, thereby facilitating pregnancy.
More settled people would see less reason to kill a baby born “too soon”
after the last birth (say, three years). The result was the world’s first “pop-
ulation explosion,” which, in turn, precluded a return to foraging without
a major die-off. The more settled village life also permitted utilization
of two technologies that already had been invented, but were little used
because they involved items too bulky to carry around on the at least par-
tially nomadic “seasonality and scheduling” rounds of foragers. These
were: (1) pottery, and (2) weaving.
Both contributed greatly to our physical and psychological well-being.
Pottery expanded the range of food preparation, presentation, and preser-
vation: It permitted many more dietary and storage options than the
throw-away “plates” (of leaves, etc.) used by many foraging groups and
236 Rae Lesser Blumberg
5 Collins long has stressed this factor (e.g., 1971, 1975; Collins et al., 1993; Coltrane and
Collins, 2001).
Mothers of invention? 237
6 Blumberg (1978) describes “four paths through horticulture.” One path remained quite
egalitarian. The other three involved complex unilineal kin systems and the pursuit of
surplus to varying degrees. Historically, most matrilineal horticultural societies remained
internally peaceful, productive, and monogamous. But ultimately most were eclipsed or
conquered by patrilineal societies. These patri-oriented groups’ male leaders could con-
centrate more resources at the top because they tended to have multiple farmer-wives
who produced surplus that could fund their political gambits and the occasional external
or internal war. But the patri groups that became the “historical main line” avoided
the dead end of another patri path: “warrior complex” societies so trapped in feud-
ing/revenge warfare (often over women, who were made scarcer by female infanticide)
they rarely developed the state. (To add a personal note, I have done fieldwork in all
three unilineal types. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I led an expedition to the headwaters
of Venezuela’s Orinoco River to study the matri-oriented Maquiritare and the notorious
“warrior complex” Yanomamo [Blumberg, 1978]. Since then, I have done develop-
ment work/research with various groups [overwhelmingly patri-oriented] in ten African
countries and a few Amazonian tribes [two of them matri-oriented] in Ecuador and
Peru.)
238 Rae Lesser Blumberg
Bad times in the average agrarian group and why the average
is misleading
Akin to Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, in the “average agrarian society” it
was the best of times (for the agrarian ruling class) and it was the worst
of times (for the common peasants and, especially, for most women).7
But averages can bury important information.
In Blumberg (2004a), I posit three different types of agrarian societies,
which differ in the gender division of labor in subsistence technology, as
well as in the gender division of control of economic (and technological)
resources (below I link this to my gender stratification theory).
First, instead of Lenski’s technological criterion (the presence of iron)
to separate agrarian societies into “simple” and “advanced,” I used a dif-
ferent technological criterion: rain-fed versus irrigated cultivation (“dry”
versus “wet” – with all the major “wet” agrarian societies growing irri-
gated rice as their principal crop). This clearly distinguishes two very dis-
tinct gender divisions of labor: (1) Rain-fed agriculture is the world’s most
masculinized techno-economic base (Boserup, 1970, calls these “male
farming systems”). (2) In contrast, irrigated cultivation of rice is so labor-
intensive that everyone works: men, women, boys, and girls, and available
major domestic animals such as oxen, water buffalo, donkeys, and horses.
Second, I then divided the irrigated societies on the basis of their
kinship/property system. The great majority was patriarchal, but a
7 Agrarian societies are based on plow cultivation and some background is useful here.
Someone invented the plow somewhere in the Middle East 5,000–6,000 years ago.
Technically, it digs deep into the soil, bringing up nutrients and breaking up weeds
(Nolan and Lenski, 2006). The Eurasian landmass had superlative “geographic luck,”
for example all the most valuable domesticatable animals (Diamond, 1997). So, farming
systems were mixed and animals provided free fertilizer. All this permitted permanent
cultivation and settlement and higher levels of surplus/stratification/hierarchy/warfare
(Lenski, 1966). As the plow diffused along Eurasia’s long East–West axis, subjugation
entered as well.
240 Rae Lesser Blumberg
season. In Northeast Thailand and lowland Laos, I saw how these not
only facilitated dry-season crop production, but also made women’s
daily burdens easier because water was available for both household
and productive use.
r Furthermore, women tend to be entrepreneurs who have developed
technologies to use water for profit-making ventures (e.g., making
batiks). This is part of the strong female economic traditions found
in these societies, even the Muslim ones.8 Many of these women not
only trade in the market, but also create small-scale, technology-based
microenterprises.
The Southeast Asian pattern has predominated in, for example,
Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It
is generally less hierarchical, centralized, and male-dominated than the
two more patriarchal types of agrarian societies.
9 The story of how we made the revolutionary transition from relatively stagnant agrarian
societies to dynamic industrial societies involves the rise of capitalism, the “once in a
planet’s history” discovery of the New World, with its gold and silver, and many other
factors. This topic is beyond the scope of the chapter (but see Blumberg, 1978).
Mothers of invention? 243
10 But women gained over half the seats in Rwanda’s lower house in mid-September 2008,
a world first, even though the state remains largely male-led.
11 The two other sets of factors are the kinship/property system, and the level of inequality
in a society’s overarching socioeconomic stratification system (Blumberg, 1984).
244 Rae Lesser Blumberg
daughters, and to hold back less for themselves. So a woman who controls
income not only has more say in household decisions about her children’s
human capital, but she can also use her own income to invest directly in
her children’s welfare: their education, health, and nutrition (Blumberg,
1988, 1989a, 1989b, 1991, 1993, 2009, as well as Blumberg et al., 1992,
show mounting evidence for my hypotheses). Those healthier and better-
educated girls and boys have better personal futures and also contribute
to greater techno-economic development, national income growth, and
human welfare in their societies. I call such micro and macro effects
the “synergy bonus” of women’s economic empowerment (Blumberg,
1989a).
Third, where women have consolidated economic power, they tend not
to be victims of violence (Levinson, 1989, in a ninety-society study, found
female economic dependence the main predictor of male violence against
women [VAW]; I found similar results in a sixty-one-society study [Blum-
berg, 1978]). The dark side, however, is the more men feel threatened by
women’s rising relative economic position, the more likely a short-term
spike in VAW (Blumberg, 2004c).
All these points are relevant because with the rise of industrial societies,
an initially small but growing proportion of women began to earn and
control income. Now, this trend is worldwide and accelerating (the pro-
portion of women earning income is growing faster than among men)
as both the cash nexus and what seems to be an emerging “Base V”
extend their global reach. At this juncture, let us consider industrial
societies.
of women into the labor force. At the micro level, this has led to more
equality in the home, as indicated in the theory section above, as well
as reduced depression among married women (Coltrane and Collins,
2001). At the macro level, it has also led to greater national income
growth (Goldin, 1986). In fact, the Economist (2006a: 16) dramatically
concludes that the “increase in female employment in the rich world has
been the main driving force of growth in the past couple of decades.
These women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have
either new technology or the new giants, China and India.” And, in India,
for that matter, the states with the highest proportion of women in the
labor force have grown the fastest; additionally, they are the ones that
have had the biggest reductions in poverty, according to the World Bank
(Faiola, 2008: A12).
We can trace the path of women’s employment in the United States.
In 1900, only some 20 percent of women in prime labor force years,
18–64, were in the labor force. By 1970, female labor force partici-
pation (LFP) had risen to 50 percent (Oppenheimer, 1973), and the
overall upward trend has continued since. By the late 1990s, almost
80 percent of married women with children, living with their husbands,
were in the workforce – and more egalitarian “sharing” marriages, where
both partners help provide and care for the household and children,
had become the norm (Coltrane and Collins, 2001). Today, women are
approaching 50 percent of the total US labor force. What is arguably
more important is that, by the year 1900, women had become sex seg-
regated into the two categories of jobs destined to grow the most ever
since: clerical and service occupations. As further discussed in the next
section, an increasing proportion of those jobs involve information and
life (e.g., health, biology).
Simply put, by the twentieth century, another historic reversal had
begun – this one for women. Their growing role in key productive activ-
ities – now done for income – started to reduce the inequality they expe-
rienced in both the wet and dry patriarchal types of agrarian societies
(from which all of today’s advanced industrial societies have sprung).
r By the twenty-first century, advanced industrial economies had elim-
inated most of the nonfarm productive activities performed as unpaid
family labor, that is, activities that were “mere work,” and did not bring
economic power to the worker.
r The “second shift” of housework and child care has been more
resistant to change, however (Fenstermaker et al., 1991). Even so,
since the 1960s, men’s contributions to child care tripled, while their
housework contributions doubled (Fisher et al., 2006; Sullivan and
Coltrane, 2008). This is especially likely where the woman earns a
Mothers of invention? 247
12 For women, for most of the last two hundred years, technological “progress” in house-
work failed to reduce the time burden involved (Cowan, 1983), or raise feelings of
well-being in doing it; here, too, there has been some recent progress.
248 Rae Lesser Blumberg
13 I clearly lean toward the “new type” view. But even if the blossoming of what I am calling
the trees of knowledge (information) and life (biotechnology, biomedical, life/health
sciences) proves to be only another phase of industrial society, my basic argument about
women’s rising role in its globalizing economy and technology is mostly unaffected.
Mothers of invention? 249
The upside is a flowering of the trees of knowledge and life. In the brave
new world of biology, we are poised to turn our exploding knowledge
into new global industries and advances in human health, including both
physical and psychological well-being. Naturally, there is a downside
in all this. Some of those new biotechnologies could run amok, with
devastating consequences. For example, Wajcman (2000: 458) argues
that now even bodies are made and remade, becoming technological
artifacts. Unquestionably, this has risk as well as promise. Alternatively,
the forces of reaction and terror could kill the globalized Base V baby
while it is still in its cradle.
Barring catastrophe, however, the basic trend lines for both a more
gender-equal division of technological expertise and overall gender equal-
ity have turned up, although there are significant exceptions. Even now,
feminist scientists often feel that SET is still a “boy’s club” that marginal-
izes them in myriad ways – although it is difficult for many women to
protest, since they are just gaining a toehold.14 Still, in an information
techno-economic base, education is critical. How have US women fared
in SET fields other than biology? Burger et al. (2007: 256) detail that:
chemistry has grown from less than 10% female bachelor’s-level graduates in
the 1960s to 50% in 2005; physics [noted for being the least hospitable of the
sciences to US women] and engineering lag at 25% and 22%, respectively; and
14 For example, Hubbard (2001) and many other articles in Wyer et al. (2001) make a
provocative case for women’s marginalization, with numerous examples. Tang (2006)
traces the invisibility and isolation of most of the small number of women science
pioneers who managed to break through.
250 Rae Lesser Blumberg
the percentage of women in computer science has actually declined from 28.6%
in 1994 to 27.6% in 2001 (NSF, 2004). However, the lagging fields are still two
or three times as popular with women (in total numbers) than they were 30 years
ago (NSF, 2000, 2004).
Conclusions
As what appears to be the fifth techno-economic base on the histor-
ical main line takes shape, we see a number of contradictory trends
that complicate any easy conclusions or predictions. On the one hand,
the rate of technological change has been accelerating faster and faster,
especially computer processing power.15 On the other hand, the level of
uncertainty16 has been rising rapidly, too (although, fortunately, not as
fast).
In today’s world, women are 47 percent of members of parliament in
Sweden (IPU, 2008) and have just taken over half the seats in the lower
house in Rwanda (BBC News, 2008), but Saudi Arabian women cannot
drive or vote and, if the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan, they
likely would again throw all the girls out of school and all the women
out of jobs. There are bitter debates over the costs versus benefits of
both globalization and different ways of attacking global warming and/or
its consequences. Growing terrorist networks, asymmetric warfare, and
epidemics (as well as their media coverage) also increase uncertainty.
At the same time, other, more positive global trends are at work. One
important trend concerns the increasing support for women’s equality in
the world’s most global network: the UN system. Very significantly, the
third of the eight Millennium Development Goals adopted in 2000 by
189 United Nations member states, to be achieved by 2015, is “promote
gender equality and empower women.” The United Nations has also
adopted gender equality as a human right, and it keeps expanding the
scope of women’s human rights (Blumberg, 1998; Blumberg and Salazar,
15 Moore’s Law, originally stated in terms of the number of transistors that can be inexpen-
sively placed on an integrated circuit, currently predicts, in essence, that the power of
computers per unit cost (“bang per buck”) doubles every two years (Wikipedia, 2007).
It has become a self-fulfilling prophecy that helps drive Base V into the future. The
first general-purpose digital computer (ENIAC) occupied 1,500 square feet, weighed
30 tons, and performed 5,000 additions/second; supercomputers now perform over 100
trillion additions/second (Nolan and Lenski, 2009: 203).
16 Uncertainty is usually contrasted with risk. Risk can be calculated if one knows all
the values a variable, x, can assume and their respective probabilities of occurrence.
Uncertainty is analogous to erasing some of the entries on the risk prediction table: this
means not knowing all possible outcomes of a new event or the likelihood of many of
the ones one does know about. It is as though someone keeps adding new jokers to the
deck: the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, the catastrophe of 9/11 . . .
252 Rae Lesser Blumberg
2006); for example it has banned rape as a war crime. So, there is a new
push to reach the “50–50 line” of gender equality in ways only a minority
of horticultural and irrigated rice Southeast Asian agrarian groups have
done since the heyday of simple foragers. Many of the nations that sign
on to these treaties and conventions do remain quite patriarchal, but such
legal mechanisms create a world climate of opinion and often can be used
by local activists to leverage more change from reluctant governments and
societies.
This chapter has argued that female techno-economic empowerment
has been another positive and sweeping trend. Here are some of the
dividends (Blumberg, 2005, 2009):
r Studying international armed conflict, Caprioli (2000) found an
inverse link to female equality: (1) a 5 percent rise in female labor
force participation was linked to a state being 495 percent less likely to
fight its neighbors; (2) a one-third drop in fertility was linked to a state
being 467 percent less likely.
r For internal armed conflict, she found (2005) that nations with only
10 percent female LFP were thirty times (3,000 percent!) more
likely to have it than those with 40 percent female LFP.
r Greater female involvement in business, the labor force, or parliament
was linked to less corruption (King and Mason, 2001).
r Copeland (2006) found an inverse link in sub-Saharan Africa between
women who controlled the spending of their own cash income and the
HIV/AIDS prevalence rate.
r In my own fieldwork in developing countries, for example in North-
ern Thailand (Blumberg, 2002), I found that rural women with more
economic power have more say in environmental/land use decisions
at both family and community levels and tend to opt for conservation
(after all, in deforested rural areas, where the hydrological cycle has
been broken, they are the ones who must go farther for water in the
dry season and to collect firewood year round).
r Women are driving the success of the world microfinance movement
(involving tiny loans to microentrepreneurs): by the end of 2007, 3,552
microfinance institutions (MFIs) reached over 155 million clients. At
time of first loan, 106.6 million were among the poorest and 83.4 per-
cent of these were women. Their loans affected c. 533 million people
(Daley-Harris, 2009). Microcredit now impacts whole nations: the vast
majority of Bangladesh villages have MFIs, with an overwhelming pro-
portion of their clientele being women; World Bank data indicate that
all this has lowered the country’s poverty rate. (Mohammed Yunus,
founder of the Grameen Bank, the best-known MFI, won the 2006
Nobel Peace Prize for his work. Its clients have shifted from 64 percent
Mothers of invention? 253
male in the early 1980s to about 97 percent female in recent years, with
women clients maintaining a 98 percent repayment rate [Blumberg,
2001b, 2006].) Women not only are more likely to repay loans – and
on time – but they are also more likely to channel any profits not rein-
vested in the business to their children’s welfare. “Best practices” MFIs
charge market rates of interest and strive to turn a profit, so clients of
the most rigorous (those with computerized management informa-
tion systems [MIS], to track loan repayment) tend to feminize over
time.17
Increasingly, it appears that whether the trend toward female empow-
erment and equality in our globalized world continues – or not – can have
planetary consequences. If it is constrained or stymied by, say, an upsurge
in widespread terrorism/asymmetric warfare, perhaps linked to increased
religious fundamentalism, the consequences could be the reversal of most
of the positive trends noted in the preceding bullets. Indeed, the impact
might be enough to tip the balance concerning use of nuclear weapons
(which could produce nuclear winter) or, conversely, efforts to reduce our
carbon footprint (which could lead to the intensification of global warm-
ing). Similarly, hampering women’s ability to produce food18 or income
could hinder efforts to provide macro- and micro-level food security,
with resultant decreases in material and psychological well-being and,
potentially, increases in national and international instability.
In conclusion, it is too soon to predict the outcome of the race between
the accelerating transformations linked to the apparent rise of a new
global knowledge/life techno-economic base and the often capricious
impact of rising terror, climate change, volatile commodity prices, and
other forms of uncertainty. Nonetheless, we can say that a continuation of
the trend (back) toward the “50–50” line of gender equality is more likely
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10 Technology and well-being: designing
the future
Yair Amichai-Hamburger
This book has demonstrated that technology has enhanced many aspects
of our lives, but its effects are complex. This final chapter will discuss
how we can increase the positive impact of technology and minimize
some of its more dangerous aspects. In the first chapter, Rodman and
Fry utilized the symbols of Yin and Yang to demonstrate the contradic-
tory effects technology can have on our well-being. They pointed out,
for example, that while portable music players such as the iPod provide
great pleasure to their users, they may also isolate listeners by allowing
them to tune out the world around them. Amichai-Hamburger and Barak
(in Chapter 2) suggested that the Internet can provide an excellent psy-
chological environment enabling people to find support for many kinds
of difficulties they may be facing. However, this same psychological envi-
ronment may create addictive behavior among its users.
This chapter will begin by assessing the major roles played by tech-
nology within our society. It will ask whether technology has the answers
to many of the current and future challenges facing society or whether
it is a tool that may be harnessed to achieve our real goals. In other
words, is technology a means to an end or does it constitute the end?
This chapter will initially explore some of the more worrying aspects
of our highly technological society, and then go on to discuss ways in
which present technological achievements and those of the future may
be used to promote the well-being of the societies in which they oper-
ate. We see technology neither as the fire-breathing dragon, placing our
lives in imminent peril (as it is perceived by the Neo-Luddism move-
ment, among others), nor as the knight on a white charger coming to
save the world from all its ills (as the techno-Utopians would have us
believe). This chapter will investigate in greater depth the overall interac-
tion between technology and well-being in both its positive and negative
aspects.
260
Technology and well-being: designing the future 261
Leadership or lack of it
Leadership, in contrast to management, is about having a vision and
leading the people toward its fulfillment. Management without leadership
has been likened to the arranging of the chairs on the Titanic. It is
262 Yair Amichai-Hamburger
B R I A N : Please, please, please listen! I’ve got one or two things to say.
T H E C R OW D : Tell us! Tell us both of them!
B R I A N : Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t NEED to follow ME; you don’t
NEED to follow ANYBODY! You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re ALL
individuals!
T H E C R OW D : Yes! We’re all individuals!
B R I A N : You’re all different!
T H E C R OW D : Yes, we ARE all different!
M A N I N C R OW D : I’m not . . .
T H E C R OW D : Ssh!
long-term goals and a recognition of the process that leads to the result.
As an industrial consultant, I was once asked to analyze a high-tech com-
pany. After a careful assessment, I suggested that senior management
should discontinue their policy of promoting an artificial atmosphere of
a constant crisis in their organization; while that policy may have provided
a good excuse to keep the workforce constantly on their toes and squeeze
more work out of them, it simultaneously created significant burnout
and a reduction in creativity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was never invited
back.
It seems that we, as a society, have become used to functioning under
pressure, and this is now perceived as part of a normal life. However,
stress clearly has a negative effect on different aspects of our lives, from
our personal well-being to our functioning at work (Bakker et al., 2000).
As Amabile et al. (2002) put it, when creativity is under the gun, it will
usually end up getting killed. The lack of clear boundaries between work
and home is also a major cause of stress in our society (Harrison et al.,
2004). As a friend of mine, a human-resource manager in a high-tech
company, pointed out: “They gave me a mobile phone as a present so
they can own me 24 hours a day. They gave me a portable computer,
so my office is now with me all the time and I cannot block myself from
work pressure; it is with me all the time 24 hours a day.” It seems that
every organizational present has a price and that price is unremitting
pressure. The effects of the lack of separation between work and home
may be so great that, for some people, the only way to reenergize is to
go away on vacation. However, as Fisher (2005) related, 34 percent of
people in the US reported being in touch with the office even during
vacations. It should come as no surprise that many such people return
to work as stressed as when they left, and in some cases even more so. It
seems that modern society is in danger of replacing quality of life with
standard of living. We are under continuous pressure to achieve and,
without noticing it, this may come at the expense of the most important
components of our lives.
When communication technology is utilized to promote the kind of
values described above, it is very hard to resist its influence.
As early as 1970, Ellul warned that technology is no longer a means to
achieve human objectives, but rather has become the master controlling
humans and their environment (Ellul, 1970). A direct demonstration of
this influence may be seen in the power of media to run campaigns of
persuasion, for example to enhance sales (Cialdini, 1984). Harrington
(1966) warned of the scientific methods utilized by the advertising indus-
try in order to galvanize public opinion toward private causes. These seek
to direct the free will and freedom of choice of the consumer so as to bring
Technology and well-being: designing the future 265
Toward a solution
One of the key aims of a democratic government is to promote the good
life: A flourishing society where citizens are happy, healthy, capable,
and engaged, in other words with high levels of well-being (Marks and
Shah, 2005). Below we assess the main components necessary to promote
the positive impact of technology on our well-being. We will discuss:
(1) recognizing the lighthouse; (2) the captain or the leadership story;
and (3) utilizing the lighthouse.
1 I received the endorsement of Deci and Ryan for my transforming their “needs” into
“values.”
Technology and well-being: designing the future 269
and positive ways, including, for example, having the ability to recognize
and reject negative persuasion campaigns and avoid Internet addiction.
One environment where children are likely to experience feelings of
autonomy and competence is that of Internet games. The game is also a
very important means through which experience is formulated (Erikson,
1968). The phenomenon of Internet games is a growing one. Turkle
(1995) argued that involvement in Internet identity games is similar to
participation in psychodrama. Turkle believes that the Internet supplies
an individual with space, warmth, safety, and understanding. This is, in
fact, similar to the setting provided by psychotherapy, so that both the
Internet and the psychotherapy room may create safe environments in
which to rework elements from the past and try out different alternatives
for the present and the future. Amichai-Hamburger (2005) argued that
the main problem with Turkle’s (1995) argument is that the Internet
may empower people, but the direction of the empowerment depends
on the tendencies of all the people taking part online. Interaction with
others on the net has the potential to be supportive and help people to
explore their identities if all surfers taking part in the interaction are pro-
socially oriented and are capable of giving support. However, this is not
always the case; interaction over the net, be it in a chat room or a fantasy
community, is equally likely to be unhelpful and in some cases may even
be hostile. We suggest the creation of a fantasy game environment where
people are rewarded according to the level of help and support they
give others. Building such an environment will enhance the likelihood
of the Internet being utilized as a tool for helping people. Having the
combination of the protected environment and the supportive one will
enhance the benefits of the Internet for our well-being.
Relatedness can be enhanced through balanced and directed use of
communication technology. Children should be shown how to use the
Internet to strengthen ties with friends and family. This is especially rele-
vant when friends or family members are not close by and face-to-face
meetings are infrequent. This may have particular relevance for older
relatives, since their ability to travel may be limited due to reduced phys-
ical health and they are therefore prone to loneliness. Keeping in touch
through the Internet may be a way of partially overcoming geographical
and physical limitations, and can enhance the relatedness factor for both
sides.
in a work environment refers to the degree of support the job gives the
worker and to the level of connectivity the worker has with his or her
fellow workers. It is highly recommended that organizations invest in
their workers’ well-being, not only for the sake of the individual worker,
but for the benefit of the whole organization. People with high levels of
well-being perform better at work, are very high on scales of organiza-
tional citizenship behavior, and are likely to become an asset to their
organizations (Allen and Rush, 1998; Konovsky and Pugh, 1994). Tech-
nology in the workplace should be implemented in ways that respect the
workers’ needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This means,
for example, minimizing, as far as possible, the invasion of work into
other areas of life. Technology, such as mobile computers and phones,
should not be used during workers’ private time. One important indica-
tor in job evaluation should be the levels of autonomy, competence, and
relatedness it provides.
Autonomy is an important factor in the Job Characteristics Model
which argues that jobs should be redesigned to enable people to gain
more enjoyment from their work (Fried and Ferris, 1987; Hackman and
Oldham, 1980). According to the model, in order to achieve a positive
impact, it is necessary that the job require: (1) a variety of skills (that
the employee use a variety of skills and talents); (2) task identity (the
opportunity to complete an entire piece of work); (3) task significance
(the opportunity to have an impact on others); (4) autonomy (employees
should have the freedom to plan, schedule, and perform in their tasks as
they so wish); and (5) feedback (workers should receive comments as to
their effectiveness). While autonomy is explicitly mentioned in this
model, competence, too, can be found in terms of use of skills, task
identity, task significance, and feedback.
In global organizations, the Internet allows managers to relate directly
to their employees, cutting out the intermediate managerial layers in the
organization. This enables managers to become significant e-leaders who
can approach their workers directly with vision, messages, and feedback
on their work (Coovert and Burke, 2005). This is very likely to have a
positive impact on workers’ well-being.
When organizations implement technology in ways that take the human
factor into account, they should aim to create a balance between the
technological challenge and the capabilities of the workers. Creating
such a balance is likely to give workers the experience of flow. This
is an optimal experience that stems from people’s perceptions of chal-
lenges and skills in given situations (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975: 50). Expe-
riencing flow enhances well-being (Moneta and Csikszentmihalyi, 1996:
277).
Technology and well-being: designing the future 273
It is also important that technology does not eliminate the human touch
especially in the service-based professions. Postman (1993) warned that
the introduction of the stethoscope marked the start of the distance
that has developed between patient and doctor. Postman was clearly not
rejecting the use of technology in medicine, but was emphasizing that it
should not eliminate the interpersonal relationship between patient and
doctor. Today’s doctors have been compared to garage mechanics, since
they look at each body part as a separate identity and do not holistically
look at the whole person. In some organizations, clients have become
a number on the computer and have lost their human characteristics.
Interestingly, when service providers do not relate to an individual on a
human level, this may affect not only the client, but also the well-being of
the service provider. This is because such a limited approach to the client
is likely to harm the feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness
of the service provider.
of important events in your life. This does not mean that Facebook will
become your main channel of communication, but an important one in
addition to the more traditional ones.
Another danger of “technological leisure time,” related to the issue
of critical thinking, is that of addiction to computer games and Internet
games (see Chapter 2). It is our belief that a promotion, both within indi-
viduals and within society as a whole, of the components of autonomy,
competence, and relatedness, together with an understanding of critical
thinking, will strengthen people psychologically and ensure that they are
better equipped to resist succumbing to addiction.
Another important value that can promote positive utilization of our
free time is an involvement in groups both on- and offline which work
for causes to which we relate; for example, ecological or social issues. In
addition to being part of a group that strives to help others, our participa-
tion has many positive implications for strengthening our social ties and
reinforcing a strong sense of autonomy and competence. In many cases,
it may also give us opportunities to exploit technology in positive ways.
These are just some examples of how we can implement “the lighthouse”
values as they relate to technology and these can be expanded upon to
include many other areas of our lives.
Last word
Our well-being has implications for every aspect of our society. It pro-
motes sociability, generosity, creativity, activity, tolerance, health, altru-
ism, economic productivity, and long life (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005).
Therefore, promoting the well-being of citizens, both psychologically
and physically, should be a major task for governments.
While technology is tremendously important in modern society, it does
not have any inherent value system, and it is therefore of pivotal impor-
tance that technological development and use are regulated by a set of
ethical standards. These standards should be taken from the unchanging
values of human society that we have termed “lighthouse values” and
should be based on those factors known to promote the well-being of
people.
The values we advocate are based on the work of Deci and Ryan (1985)
and promote autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We have added an
additional component, that of critical analysis. A society which develops
these values is likely to be more caring, less materialistic, and less selfish.
In addition, it is also much more likely to be willing to act to eliminate
the dangers we are facing through uncontrolled technology.
Technology and well-being: designing the future 275
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Index
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280 Index