WEBVTT - "And it went click" - Dawn of the Working Dead 0:00:15.410 --> 0:00:26.930 Pushkin. As far as the nurse was concerned, the behavior 0:00:27.050 --> 0:00:32.530 seemed odd and distinctly unnerving that fellow, who had been 0:00:32.570 --> 0:00:36.130 bedridden for weeks with a slip disc he just kept 0:00:36.170 --> 0:00:40.810 staring at everyone and scribbling in his notebook, and staring 0:00:40.850 --> 0:00:45.490 some more, and writing some more. The nurse reported the 0:00:45.650 --> 0:00:50.970 suspicious activity to an administrator, who dropped by the patient's 0:00:50.970 --> 0:00:55.810 bedside to investigate what did he think he was playing at. 0:00:57.250 --> 0:01:00.850 The patient was delighted to be asked. He took out 0:01:00.850 --> 0:01:05.010 the notebook and began to explain he had been making 0:01:05.050 --> 0:01:09.010 a careful time and motion study of the hospital staff 0:01:09.570 --> 0:01:15.810 and had observed everything, all the inefficient movements, the squandered energy, 0:01:16.250 --> 0:01:19.970 and the wasted time. It could all be done so 0:01:20.330 --> 0:01:26.130 much better. The patient's name was Robert Proops, and Robert 0:01:26.170 --> 0:01:32.050 Proops was a genius. His colleagues certainly thought so. In 0:01:32.130 --> 0:01:36.410 one hour, he would reinvent the world. His mind went 0:01:36.450 --> 0:01:42.290 off like fireworks. Proops had been a sculptor, painter, and 0:01:42.490 --> 0:01:47.610 professor of art. He'd invented everything from playground equipment to 0:01:47.690 --> 0:01:52.370 an artificial heart valve to a machine readable livestock tag. 0:01:53.250 --> 0:01:57.130 His formal training was as a chemical engineer, not that 0:01:57.210 --> 0:02:01.490 he let his formal training constrain him. During the Second 0:02:01.490 --> 0:02:05.250 World War, he'd managed Beachhead Logistics in the South Pacific. 0:02:06.570 --> 0:02:10.610 But in the nineteen sixties Robert Pruf would invent an 0:02:10.650 --> 0:02:15.250 object that has shaped the everyday lives of tens of millions, 0:02:15.450 --> 0:02:20.290 perhaps hundreds of millions of people. But when I say 0:02:20.330 --> 0:02:25.850 that his invention shaped our lives, what sort of shape exactly? 0:02:27.170 --> 0:02:57.490 I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. In 0:02:57.610 --> 0:03:01.610 nineteen fifty eight, the Herman Miller Company, a maker of 0:03:01.610 --> 0:03:07.330 office furniture, hired Robert proopst His mission was to deploy 0:03:07.570 --> 0:03:14.290 his brand of spirited, cross disciplinary creativity to help Herman 0:03:14.410 --> 0:03:21.130 Miller diversify away from the potentially stayed world of filing cabinets, desks, 0:03:21.410 --> 0:03:26.530 and swivel chairs. Proops wasn't a designer, but maybe that 0:03:26.610 --> 0:03:31.250 was a good thing. He would dream big, think deep thoughts, 0:03:31.810 --> 0:03:38.210 and take Herman Miller in new directions. Proops started by 0:03:38.210 --> 0:03:41.330 setting up a research studio in the college town of 0:03:41.530 --> 0:03:46.290 ann Arbor, Michigan. That decision would have been easily explicable 0:03:46.410 --> 0:03:50.250 had Herman Miller itself not been located one hundred and 0:03:50.250 --> 0:03:54.130 fifty miles away in Zealand. It would be a bold 0:03:54.250 --> 0:03:59.010 step even in today's era of remote work. In the 0:03:59.050 --> 0:04:04.730 pre internet world of nineteen fifty eight, his decision demonstrated 0:04:04.770 --> 0:04:09.330 that Proops valued the cerebral yet convivial atmosphere of a 0:04:09.370 --> 0:04:13.810 college town and that he wanted an extraordinary amount of 0:04:13.850 --> 0:04:19.290 independence from head office. It also showed that what he wanted, 0:04:19.970 --> 0:04:26.970 he got. Herman Miller gave him a free hand. There 0:04:26.970 --> 0:04:32.970 were only three rules. The first rule, don't design anything 0:04:33.250 --> 0:04:39.010 purely ornamental, make useful things. The second rule, don't make 0:04:39.050 --> 0:04:44.490 anything for the military. And the third rule, don't make 0:04:44.650 --> 0:04:52.210 office furniture. The first two rules he respected. Robert Proops 0:04:52.530 --> 0:04:56.970 wasn't a man whose creativity could easily be constrained or directed. 0:04:57.650 --> 0:05:00.330 Herman Miller was trying to break out of its traditional 0:05:00.410 --> 0:05:04.330 business of office furniture, and Proops seemed like the perfect 0:05:04.370 --> 0:05:07.410 man to help with that. But asking a free spirit 0:05:07.610 --> 0:05:11.970 like Proops not to think about office furniture simply encouraged 0:05:12.010 --> 0:05:16.450 him to think about office furniture even harder. After all, 0:05:16.930 --> 0:05:22.810 thinking about office furniture meant thinking about everything, mind, body, 0:05:23.050 --> 0:05:28.850 and soul. He carefully observed office dwellers at work. He 0:05:28.890 --> 0:05:33.170 read the latest ideas from management thinkers, explaining that the 0:05:33.210 --> 0:05:36.810 economy of the future would revolve around a new kind 0:05:36.850 --> 0:05:42.850 of worker, the knowledge worker, and he hungrily consumed ideas 0:05:42.890 --> 0:05:50.610 from psychology, sociology, and anthropology. All this grand talk about 0:05:50.770 --> 0:05:55.690 knowledge workers rather obscures the question of what exactly a 0:05:55.810 --> 0:05:59.930 knowledge worker is. There's a black and white photograph of 0:06:00.210 --> 0:06:04.650 just such a worker, using furniture designed by Robert Prout's 0:06:04.730 --> 0:06:09.370 research team. Next to him is a computer display teen 0:06:09.530 --> 0:06:13.330 sixty eight style. It's on a pivot and casters for 0:06:13.850 --> 0:06:19.050 easy tilting and swiveling and movement. The knowledge worker himself 0:06:19.170 --> 0:06:23.490 is wearing the standard office clothes of the day, white shirt, 0:06:24.050 --> 0:06:30.690 dark tie, smart dark suit pants. He looks intensely relaxed, 0:06:31.210 --> 0:06:34.970 calmly focused on the work in his lap, leaning back 0:06:35.010 --> 0:06:38.930 in an elegant Eames chair with his feet up on 0:06:38.970 --> 0:06:42.770 a little circular conference table. And that work in his 0:06:42.890 --> 0:06:49.330 lap a large computer interface supported by modifications to the chair, 0:06:49.930 --> 0:06:53.770 an all in one module with a keyboard, a computer mouse, 0:06:53.810 --> 0:06:59.570 and other controllers. And if nineteen sixty eight seems a 0:06:59.570 --> 0:07:04.210 bit early to have a laptop, keyboard and a computer mouse, well, 0:07:04.850 --> 0:07:09.770 the knowledge worker's name was Douglas Engelbart as a Silicon 0:07:09.850 --> 0:07:16.690 Valley pioneer. He invented the computer mouse. When Robert Proops 0:07:17.010 --> 0:07:20.930 was reading about knowledge workers, he was thinking of people 0:07:21.530 --> 0:07:26.490 like Douglas Engelbart, the top people, the most brilliant people, 0:07:27.290 --> 0:07:33.250 people who couldn't be put in boxes, people like himself. 0:07:36.290 --> 0:07:39.730 Robert Proops didn't like to be called a designer, or 0:07:39.810 --> 0:07:44.370 even a searcher, with its connotations of looking back to 0:07:44.450 --> 0:07:49.410 dig up old ideas. He preferred to be called a searcher. 0:07:50.690 --> 0:07:54.850 So what if he could make the perfect office for 0:07:55.050 --> 0:08:02.090 searchers like Douglas Engelbart and like Proops himself. At the time, 0:08:02.450 --> 0:08:06.610 the typical American office space had a large open area 0:08:06.810 --> 0:08:11.170 with neat rows of typists and secretaries and clerks in 0:08:11.210 --> 0:08:16.690 the middle, surrounded by offices with closable doors. Today's office 0:08:17.010 --> 0:08:23.130 is a wasteland, wrote Proops in nineteen sixty. Its SAPs vitality, 0:08:24.010 --> 0:08:29.890 blocks talent, frustrates accomplishment. It is the daily scene of 0:08:30.210 --> 0:08:37.410 unfulfilled intentions and failed effort. But there was a hopeful 0:08:37.450 --> 0:08:43.650 development over in Germany. The bureau land shaft or office landscape, 0:08:44.130 --> 0:08:50.010 designed by two brothers at the consulting firm Quickborner Bureau 0:08:50.090 --> 0:08:54.650 land Shaft threw everything into the air. There would be 0:08:54.770 --> 0:09:00.130 one huge room with groups of desks artfully arranged to 0:09:00.210 --> 0:09:05.370 appear haphazard, sinuous routes between them like paths through a 0:09:05.450 --> 0:09:10.050 rock garden, and everything dotted with soft acou stick screens 0:09:10.130 --> 0:09:13.970 and pot plants. It was flexible. If the needs of 0:09:13.970 --> 0:09:18.010 the office changed, he just moved the desks around. Thick 0:09:18.290 --> 0:09:22.290 carpet absorbed noise. There were break rooms rather than a 0:09:22.410 --> 0:09:28.170 trundling tea trolley. There were no offices and no obvious hierarchy. 0:09:29.850 --> 0:09:34.450 Proops loved this new trend, but he could do so 0:09:34.570 --> 0:09:39.170 much better than those inefficient flat table desks and the 0:09:39.290 --> 0:09:43.650 endless sitting no good for your back, and Proops was 0:09:43.690 --> 0:09:47.450 a man who well understood the agonies of a bad back. 0:09:48.570 --> 0:09:53.930 Proops wanted to design a system which accommodated movement, a 0:09:54.010 --> 0:10:02.410 system with verticality stand up, sit down, spin round. In 0:10:02.530 --> 0:10:07.810 nineteen sixty four, Herman Miller revealed Robert Proops's brainchild to 0:10:07.890 --> 0:10:15.490 the world. It was called simply Action Office. According to 0:10:15.530 --> 0:10:21.570 the design historian Jennifer Kaufman Buehler, Action Office would upend 0:10:21.770 --> 0:10:27.530 the American office furniture industry through the nineteen seventies. But 0:10:27.610 --> 0:10:35.530 as we'll see, it did much more than that. Action 0:10:35.850 --> 0:10:40.970 office was built around the idea of the workstation. One 0:10:41.050 --> 0:10:45.890 sits at a desk like a secretary, but one sits 0:10:45.970 --> 0:10:50.170 in a workstation like a fighter pilot sits in a 0:10:50.210 --> 0:10:56.970 cockpit surrounded by a variety of achingly cool freestanding furniture 0:10:57.090 --> 0:11:03.290 units located in the arena center, explained proops. You are 0:11:03.490 --> 0:11:07.690 free to turn and use a suitable work surface, console 0:11:07.930 --> 0:11:14.770 or conference expression. Yes, indeed, everything you need is within 0:11:14.890 --> 0:11:20.330 vision as you spin your stylish rotating chair. Your files 0:11:20.330 --> 0:11:23.370 are color coded, sitting on a shelf at eye level, 0:11:23.610 --> 0:11:28.490 perfectly adjustable, and mounted on a soundproof divider above your 0:11:28.650 --> 0:11:33.250 equally adjustable desk, maybe a low coffee table where a 0:11:33.330 --> 0:11:37.570 couple of coffee cups sit empty after an impromptu brainstorm 0:11:37.570 --> 0:11:41.250 with a colleague espresso cups. Of course, there's a pin 0:11:41.370 --> 0:11:45.130 board full of your creative ideas. Do you need to 0:11:45.250 --> 0:11:49.930 discreetly lock them away? No problem, The board folds down 0:11:50.010 --> 0:11:54.130 to provide a secure cover over a side desk. Of course, 0:11:54.290 --> 0:11:58.090 you also have a large, angled architect's desk with a 0:11:58.130 --> 0:12:01.970 swivel stool you can stand at it or sit, moving 0:12:02.010 --> 0:12:06.250 around dynamically from idea to idea, from chair to stool 0:12:06.370 --> 0:12:11.450 to standing at your pinboard. You are active, You are creative. 0:12:12.010 --> 0:12:18.090 You look fabulous. You are the knowledge worker, the beating heart, 0:12:18.170 --> 0:12:25.450 and the pulsing brain of Action Office. The concept was 0:12:25.450 --> 0:12:32.290 by Proofs, the stylish design by his colleague George Nelson. Nelson, 0:12:32.610 --> 0:12:36.450 director of design at Herman Miller, was no passenger on 0:12:36.530 --> 0:12:39.930 this adventure. Nelson was one of the taste makers of 0:12:39.970 --> 0:12:45.130 the twentieth century, working with iconic figures such as Charles 0:12:45.170 --> 0:12:50.890 and ray Eames or Isamunugucci. And Nelson's designs for the 0:12:50.930 --> 0:12:55.570 Action Office units were so cool that Stanley Kubrick used 0:12:55.570 --> 0:12:58.810 the Action Office on a space station in two thousand 0:12:58.890 --> 0:13:02.250 and one a Space Odyssey. This was the kind of 0:13:02.330 --> 0:13:06.730 furniture people would have in the future in space right. 0:13:10.410 --> 0:13:14.770 Some executives bought it for their own homes. The reviews 0:13:14.890 --> 0:13:16.130 were delirious. 0:13:17.370 --> 0:13:21.450 Seeing these designs, one wonders why office workers have put 0:13:21.530 --> 0:13:27.890 up with their incompatible, unproductive, uncomfortable environment for so long. 0:13:29.290 --> 0:13:33.690 There's an answer to that, and we'll hear it after 0:13:33.690 --> 0:13:45.250 the break. Why did office workers put up with an incompatible, unproductive, 0:13:45.450 --> 0:13:50.810 uncomfortable environment for so long. The answer is simple, they 0:13:50.890 --> 0:13:55.290 didn't have any choice. When Proops set out the action 0:13:55.570 --> 0:14:00.010 off his concept, he was imagining men like himself. Yes, 0:14:00.330 --> 0:14:04.690 men of course, who saw themselves as highly paid, highly 0:14:04.770 --> 0:14:10.570 creative free spirits. But their bosses may have seen things 0:14:10.690 --> 0:14:14.930 rather differently. And it was their bosses who chose the 0:14:14.970 --> 0:14:20.490 office design, which raised the question why would they pay 0:14:20.530 --> 0:14:26.850 for the action office? Action office cost five hundred dollars 0:14:26.850 --> 0:14:30.850 for the simplest component. Relative to the wages of the day, 0:14:31.410 --> 0:14:36.330 that would be more like ten thousand dollars today. The 0:14:36.490 --> 0:14:40.610 first rule for anyone seeking to sell equipment for workers, 0:14:40.850 --> 0:14:45.810 surely is to remember who buys equipment for workers. It's 0:14:45.810 --> 0:14:50.130 not the workers, it's the managers. And while the workers 0:14:50.250 --> 0:14:53.610 might dream of climbing into the cockpit of their own 0:14:53.770 --> 0:15:00.570 productivity plane, the managers are focused on efficiency. This is 0:15:00.610 --> 0:15:04.650 an old story going back to Frederick Winslow Taylor, the 0:15:04.690 --> 0:15:10.290 founder of scientific management, watching manual workers with a stopwattion, 0:15:10.890 --> 0:15:15.090 calculating the most efficient movements and the optimal equipment, even 0:15:15.130 --> 0:15:18.530 the ideal size of shovel to give to a laborer 0:15:18.570 --> 0:15:22.050 digging a ditch, which might differ from the ideal shovel 0:15:22.530 --> 0:15:27.010 for a laborer shoveling coal, and since this was scientifically 0:15:27.050 --> 0:15:31.330 determined what the laborer himself thought of, it didn't much matter. 0:15:33.650 --> 0:15:37.770 Robert proopst didn't think in terms of shovels, but he 0:15:37.930 --> 0:15:42.690 certainly understood the appeal of time and motion studies, as 0:15:42.770 --> 0:15:46.570 the nurses caring for his bad back could have attested. 0:15:47.570 --> 0:15:52.010 And while Proops dreamed of creating the perfect working environment 0:15:52.130 --> 0:15:56.210 for the Douglas Engelbarts of the world, perhaps the dividing 0:15:56.290 --> 0:16:00.410 line between an inventor like Douglas Engelbart and a worker 0:16:00.450 --> 0:16:04.050 digging a ditch isn't as clear as he might have imagined. 0:16:04.490 --> 0:16:10.690 Once the bosses started thinking about efficiency, Sure, Douglas Engelbart 0:16:10.770 --> 0:16:15.850 is a knowledge worker, but are the secretaries. Maybe, but 0:16:16.050 --> 0:16:21.170 corporate bosses weren't lavishing thousands of dollars on designer furniture 0:16:21.530 --> 0:16:26.490 for the secretaries, which explains why, despite being a critical 0:16:26.610 --> 0:16:32.290 and cultural success, the Action Office was a commercial failure. 0:16:34.730 --> 0:16:39.610 So what were bosses buying in a nutshell? Better and 0:16:39.690 --> 0:16:45.690 better stop botches? The bosses have always been particularly keen 0:16:45.890 --> 0:16:49.090 to use technology to monitor what workers get up to 0:16:49.490 --> 0:16:52.930 so they can squeeze more work out of them. That's 0:16:52.970 --> 0:16:55.490 been true from the punch clock of one hundred years 0:16:55.490 --> 0:16:59.490 ago that records you arriving at or leaving work, right 0:16:59.570 --> 0:17:04.410 up to the complex technologies of today. While Robert Proopst 0:17:04.410 --> 0:17:09.530 and George Nelson were making space age furniture at Interplanetary, says, 0:17:10.210 --> 0:17:15.490 the bosses were more interested in squeezing workers, which is 0:17:15.650 --> 0:17:20.130 how we got to now with workers constantly being watched. 0:17:22.570 --> 0:17:27.410 Amazon tracks our every move, explains Wendy Taylor. She works 0:17:27.450 --> 0:17:30.850 as a packer at an Amazon warehouse in Missouri, and 0:17:30.970 --> 0:17:33.370 was one of a group of workers who filed a 0:17:33.410 --> 0:17:38.010 complaint against Amazon in May of twenty twenty four. They 0:17:38.050 --> 0:17:41.290 know every move you make when you're working. When you're 0:17:41.330 --> 0:17:45.210 not working, they surveil you with their cameras. Managers survail 0:17:45.290 --> 0:17:47.530 you with their laptops because they can pull up your 0:17:47.570 --> 0:17:50.930 profile and a bar changes a certain color. When you're 0:17:50.970 --> 0:17:57.090 not active, every move you make is being tracked. Another 0:17:57.170 --> 0:18:01.450 worker who was worried about surveillance was Carol Kramer. Unlike 0:18:01.490 --> 0:18:05.770 Wendy Taylor, Kramer had a desk based job. She had 0:18:05.770 --> 0:18:10.730 a camera pointed at her throughout the working day, taking snapshots. 0:18:11.010 --> 0:18:14.930 Both of her face and her computer screen to verify 0:18:15.010 --> 0:18:19.370 that she was being productive. Her pay was regularly docked 0:18:19.610 --> 0:18:23.250 because the system decided she wasn't working, even though she 0:18:23.330 --> 0:18:26.250 might have been mentoring a colleague, or making notes with 0:18:26.490 --> 0:18:30.170 Pensiland paper that the camera didn't track, or, for that matter, 0:18:30.850 --> 0:18:35.890 just taking a bathroom break. That might all sound familiar 0:18:35.970 --> 0:18:39.770 to the likes of warehouse packers like Wendy Taylor, but 0:18:39.890 --> 0:18:44.090 Carol Kramer wasn't a low paid administrator or call center worker. 0:18:44.450 --> 0:18:47.650 She was a corporate vice president, managing a team of 0:18:47.690 --> 0:18:50.850 twelve people and being paid two hundred dollars an hour. 0:18:51.690 --> 0:18:56.130 Workplaced surveillance wasn't just for the factory floor or the warehouse. 0:18:56.770 --> 0:19:04.530 It was coming for managers like Carol Kramer. In nineteen 0:19:04.610 --> 0:19:08.610 sixty eight, four years after Action Office was such a 0:19:08.650 --> 0:19:14.370 cultural triumph and such a commercial failure, Robert Proops tried again. 0:19:15.290 --> 0:19:20.930 He published a manifesto titled The Office, a Facility based 0:19:21.010 --> 0:19:25.970 on Change. More importantly, he offered a less costly, more 0:19:26.010 --> 0:19:31.730 compact version of the Action Office concept. George Nelson and 0:19:31.810 --> 0:19:37.450 his iconic designs had been jettisoned, but Action Office two 0:19:37.810 --> 0:19:42.170 still organized space vertically as well as horizontally, still offered 0:19:42.490 --> 0:19:46.890 multiple work surfaces, still used dividers to absorb sound and 0:19:47.170 --> 0:19:51.250 organize and display materials in use, and still sought to 0:19:51.370 --> 0:19:58.370 offer privacy without isolation. The system was modular, flexible, and 0:19:58.690 --> 0:20:04.490 easily adapted. The dividers snapped together at a variety of angles, 0:20:04.890 --> 0:20:09.010 but Proops favored three dividers per worker with a hunter 0:20:09.130 --> 0:20:13.250 dred and twenty degree angle, which creates a half hexagon 0:20:13.330 --> 0:20:18.370 space packed with ideas. Action Office two was a lot 0:20:18.450 --> 0:20:22.290 cheaper than its predecessor, and it looked a lot cheaper too, 0:20:22.810 --> 0:20:26.650 But still it was practical and a bit funky, especially 0:20:26.730 --> 0:20:34.050 those hexagons. The new system got good reviews. Sylvia Porter, 0:20:34.410 --> 0:20:38.370 a columnist at the New York Post, called it a revolution, 0:20:39.170 --> 0:20:44.410 adding I find the concept entirely appealing. I particularly like 0:20:44.490 --> 0:20:48.930 the idea of sit down or stand up workstations. She 0:20:49.210 --> 0:20:55.130 loved the way Proops described workers as human performers, and 0:20:55.290 --> 0:21:01.090 yet looking at publicity photographs of the system, you can't 0:21:01.130 --> 0:21:06.250 help but notice one difference. The Action Office one system 0:21:06.610 --> 0:21:10.250 tended to be photographed as a collection of unique components 0:21:11.610 --> 0:21:15.970 designed to equip a single knowledge worker, a genius like 0:21:16.170 --> 0:21:20.730 Douglas Engelbart right and that seemed to be how proops 0:21:20.930 --> 0:21:26.730 envisaged them. An early sketch biproops shows all the cool components, 0:21:27.130 --> 0:21:31.010 the swivel chairs, the roll top desk, the shelving, the 0:21:31.050 --> 0:21:35.890 coffee table, the angle drawing board. They are quite clearly 0:21:35.970 --> 0:21:43.250 located in a spacious private office space. But the Action 0:21:43.450 --> 0:21:48.650 Office two system wasn't designed to be installed in an office, 0:21:49.370 --> 0:21:52.970 but to replace one, or more likely a whole row 0:21:53.250 --> 0:21:59.170 of offices. Photographs showed Action Office two units in multiples, 0:21:59.970 --> 0:22:05.530 not one half hexagon workstation, but three clipped together for 0:22:05.650 --> 0:22:11.010 three workers to sit close together. The honeycomb was starting 0:22:11.050 --> 0:22:14.890 to take shape from the corporate garden that was bureau 0:22:14.970 --> 0:22:25.610 land shaft get busy worker bees. Action Office too took 0:22:25.690 --> 0:22:29.530 off in a way that its pricey predecessor never had. 0:22:30.530 --> 0:22:36.610 It was inexpensive, practical, compact, and it got a little 0:22:36.650 --> 0:22:41.570 boost from the government too. The US tax code changed, 0:22:42.130 --> 0:22:45.770 giving a nice tax break to companies which bought rapidly 0:22:45.810 --> 0:22:51.490 depreciating equipment such as furniture rather than long lasting office 0:22:51.570 --> 0:22:57.890 fixtures such as doors and internal walls, which meant if 0:22:57.930 --> 0:23:03.690 you could buy furniture instead of building offices, Uncle Sam 0:23:04.170 --> 0:23:09.530 would reward you Action Office too, had looked cheap before, 0:23:10.650 --> 0:23:18.290 now it looked really cheap in more ways than one. 0:23:19.530 --> 0:23:24.130 Every office furniture company in North America scrambled to copy 0:23:24.170 --> 0:23:31.170 the idea. Soon they were Steelcase, Soonar Gnol, They were 0:23:31.370 --> 0:23:36.410 all making modular office furniture systems. One of the Sonar 0:23:36.490 --> 0:23:40.410 designers went to admire the installation of their modular system 0:23:40.850 --> 0:23:45.130 at a large government office in Canada. Excited to see 0:23:45.170 --> 0:23:50.570 the dynamic new system in action, he came back looking 0:23:50.610 --> 0:23:57.530 as pale as a beige partition. It was awful, one 0:23:57.570 --> 0:24:02.770 of the worst installations I'd ever seen, he said. Sonar 0:24:02.930 --> 0:24:08.170 had installed dividing panels that were seventy inches tall, not 0:24:08.450 --> 0:24:11.730 tall enough to be a proper wall, but high enough 0:24:11.770 --> 0:24:15.970 to block all line of sight. They'd seemed to make 0:24:16.050 --> 0:24:21.010 sense on the drawing board, but en mass they were oppressive. 0:24:22.410 --> 0:24:26.890 While the original bureau land shaft concept felt like strolling 0:24:27.010 --> 0:24:31.010 through a shrubbery, this new installation was more like a 0:24:31.210 --> 0:24:36.730 sterile labyrinth, with workers trapped behind a maze of Hessian 0:24:36.850 --> 0:24:44.170 wrapped walls. At the time, the designer didn't have the 0:24:44.250 --> 0:24:48.330 right words to describe the horror of it all. It 0:24:48.370 --> 0:24:52.650 was only years later that the culture started to provide them. 0:24:54.330 --> 0:24:58.810 Looking back, the designer summed it up, I'd failed to 0:24:58.890 --> 0:25:01.490 visualize what it would look like when there were so 0:25:01.690 --> 0:25:09.410 many of them. It was Dilbertville. The designer of Action 0:25:09.690 --> 0:25:14.530 Office one, George Nelson wouldn't have been surprised at how 0:25:14.730 --> 0:25:20.370 grim these new modular furniture systems looked. Furious at being 0:25:20.450 --> 0:25:24.210 discarded from the Action Office project, he wrote to his 0:25:24.290 --> 0:25:28.970 boss at the Herman Miller Company, Tearing into Action Office III, 0:25:30.170 --> 0:25:35.410 complaining that the whole idea treated people as less than human. 0:25:37.650 --> 0:25:43.210 This dehumanizing characteristic is not an accident, but the inevitable 0:25:43.250 --> 0:25:46.890 expression of a concept which views people as links in 0:25:46.970 --> 0:25:51.890 a corporate system for handling paper, or as input output 0:25:52.130 --> 0:25:57.010 organisms whose efficiency has been a matter of nervous concern 0:25:57.130 --> 0:26:01.650 for the past half century. People do indeed function in 0:26:01.730 --> 0:26:06.410 such roles, but this is not what people are, merely 0:26:06.490 --> 0:26:13.410 a description of what they doing certain hours. Nelson's point 0:26:13.730 --> 0:26:18.450 was powerful. If you treat people like components in a machine, 0:26:18.730 --> 0:26:22.010 it doesn't matter how excited you are about their dynamism 0:26:22.170 --> 0:26:26.050 or movement or flexibility, or how they can mesh together 0:26:26.130 --> 0:26:31.810 to produce remarkable results. Ultimately, you have forgotten that they 0:26:31.930 --> 0:26:37.370 are human and don't be surprised if that lapse has 0:26:37.490 --> 0:26:45.770 consequences action office too, continued Nelson is definitely not a 0:26:45.810 --> 0:26:50.770 system which produces an environment gratifying for people in general, 0:26:52.050 --> 0:26:56.330 and then comes the prophetic next line. But it is 0:26:56.610 --> 0:27:00.490 admirable for planners looking for ways of cramming in a 0:27:00.650 --> 0:27:07.090 maximum number of bodies for employees as against individuals for personnel, 0:27:07.770 --> 0:27:13.730 corporate zombies, the walking dead, the silent majority, a large 0:27:13.810 --> 0:27:21.930 market ouch. But George Nelson had put his finger on 0:27:22.050 --> 0:27:26.650 the problem. While Robert Proops wanted workers to be able 0:27:26.650 --> 0:27:29.570 to adapt, to move around, and above all, to be 0:27:29.650 --> 0:27:34.450 in control of their own knowledge work benches, George Nelson 0:27:34.530 --> 0:27:39.410 realized that it didn't matter what Robert Proops wanted, and 0:27:39.490 --> 0:27:44.450 it didn't matter what the workers wanted. Managers were in charge, 0:27:45.090 --> 0:27:50.490 and managers had their own agenda. Cautionary tales will be 0:27:50.530 --> 0:28:03.570 back after the break. The conflict between Nelson and Proops 0:28:04.210 --> 0:28:09.090 shouldn't have come as a surprise. Proops could be intellectually 0:28:09.250 --> 0:28:14.330 stubborn and intolerant of people who disagreed. He believed his 0:28:14.410 --> 0:28:17.570 way was the right way, said a colleague, and he 0:28:17.650 --> 0:28:22.730 was usually right. But there was more than that stubbornness 0:28:22.810 --> 0:28:28.570 to the falling out. Nelson had highlighted a contradiction in 0:28:28.690 --> 0:28:35.410 Proopst's thinking. Proops spoke of human performers, but what if 0:28:35.410 --> 0:28:41.130 there was a tension between job performance and simply being human? 0:28:42.490 --> 0:28:47.490 Proops embodied that tension. One day, he's setting up a 0:28:47.530 --> 0:28:51.330 research studio one hundred and fifty miles away from head office, 0:28:51.930 --> 0:28:55.530 insisting on his freedom to innovate and to skip boring 0:28:55.690 --> 0:29:01.610 corporate meetings. Another day, he's a hospital patient, making minute 0:29:01.770 --> 0:29:05.210 observations on all the ways that the nurses around him 0:29:05.370 --> 0:29:11.450 could move more efficiently. Time and studies are fun if 0:29:11.690 --> 0:29:17.410 you're the one holding the stopwatch and the clipboard. Action 0:29:17.770 --> 0:29:22.410 Office imagined a class of people like Proops himself, or 0:29:22.450 --> 0:29:27.890 like Douglas Engelbart, whose performance depended on the fullest exercise 0:29:27.970 --> 0:29:33.250 of their human freedom and human creativity. But Action Office 0:29:33.330 --> 0:29:36.850 too didn't appeal to the boss class because it encouraged 0:29:36.930 --> 0:29:41.930 human freedom and human creativity, but because it was efficient 0:29:43.170 --> 0:29:46.970 and the inevitable next step they would try to make 0:29:47.050 --> 0:29:53.450 it more efficient. Still. The great architect Frank Duffy described 0:29:53.530 --> 0:29:59.690 that awful realization. To the writer and office historian Nikil Saval, 0:30:00.770 --> 0:30:06.170 there was a moment when the orthogonal came in. Someone 0:30:06.170 --> 0:30:08.130 figured out that you didn't need the one hundred and 0:30:08.170 --> 0:30:14.050 twenty degree and it went click. That was a bad day. 0:30:15.330 --> 0:30:20.370 It took only five seconds for Action Office to turn 0:30:20.370 --> 0:30:28.890 into a box. Robert Proops had shaped our lives, and 0:30:28.930 --> 0:30:35.290 that shape was a cube. Proops had been ahead of 0:30:35.330 --> 0:30:41.290 his time in emphasizing flexibility, worker autonomy, and movement away 0:30:41.290 --> 0:30:46.330 from the sedentary desk. Indeed, he hated the very word desk. 0:30:47.010 --> 0:30:51.530 For Proops, knowledge workers were like artisans at their workbenches, 0:30:52.250 --> 0:30:56.850 tools organized close at hand rather than hidden away, everything 0:30:56.890 --> 0:31:03.130 in motion, vibrant rather than austere. And yet somehow he 0:31:03.210 --> 0:31:09.250 had invented the hated cubicle. Less a dynamic cockpit for 0:31:09.330 --> 0:31:17.050 a knowledge pilot, more a cage in an administrative factory farm. 0:31:17.690 --> 0:31:23.850 The beij cage multiplied across American offices. In nineteen ninety seven, 0:31:24.170 --> 0:31:29.050 nearly three decades after Action Office III was launched, it 0:31:29.130 --> 0:31:33.170 was estimated that more than three quarters of white collar 0:31:33.250 --> 0:31:38.970 workers were working in cubicles. The average cubicle had also 0:31:39.250 --> 0:31:44.050 halved in size between nineteen eighty seven and nineteen ninety seven. 0:31:44.970 --> 0:31:55.570 Workers were packed in like eggs in cartons. The office 0:31:55.690 --> 0:31:59.210 has come a long way since the punch clock. In 0:31:59.250 --> 0:32:03.410 twenty twenty two, The New York Times reported that eight 0:32:03.650 --> 0:32:07.170 of the ten largest private sector employers in the US 0:32:07.850 --> 0:32:13.370 were carefully tracked king productivity metrics for individual workers, often 0:32:13.650 --> 0:32:19.490 in real time. There were Amazon Warehouse packers, ups, drivers, 0:32:20.290 --> 0:32:24.690 cashiers at Kroger, but there were also people who previously 0:32:25.170 --> 0:32:28.890 had been viewed as too skilled and perhaps too high 0:32:28.970 --> 0:32:35.090 status to subject to second by second surveillance. The workers 0:32:35.130 --> 0:32:39.930 have noticed two One long running research project in the 0:32:40.050 --> 0:32:45.130 UK concludes that back in nineteen ninety, almost two thirds 0:32:45.130 --> 0:32:49.050 of employees felt that they were empowered to make decisions 0:32:49.450 --> 0:32:52.290 about the tasks right in front of them. By twenty 0:32:52.330 --> 0:32:57.610 twenty four, that proportion had fallen dramatically to one third. 0:32:58.930 --> 0:33:02.690 Workers don't decide how to spend their time from minute 0:33:02.690 --> 0:33:08.530 to minute anymore. The computer does. The Times found that 0:33:08.570 --> 0:33:15.370 this sort of bosswear often seemed counterproductive. Grocery cashiers found 0:33:15.370 --> 0:33:19.530 themselves getting impatient with elderly customers for slowing down the 0:33:19.610 --> 0:33:24.850 checkout scan. Social workers who were counseling patients in drug 0:33:24.890 --> 0:33:31.770 treatment facilities found themselves marketers idle because they weren't sending emails. 0:33:32.770 --> 0:33:37.810 Middle managers at United Health knew the tracking system was flawed, 0:33:37.850 --> 0:33:41.650 but couldn't fix it. According to the Times, they told 0:33:41.690 --> 0:33:46.410 employees to jiggle their mice during online meetings and training sessions. 0:33:47.490 --> 0:33:51.090 What Douglas Engelbart, the inventor of the mouse, would have 0:33:51.130 --> 0:33:57.450 made of all that? I do not know. But the 0:33:57.490 --> 0:34:01.730 more fundamental problem with workplace surveillance is the same as 0:34:01.730 --> 0:34:08.610 the problem George Nelson identified with Action Office I. Workplace 0:34:08.690 --> 0:34:13.930 surveillance treats workers as components in a system, and, as 0:34:13.970 --> 0:34:17.970 Nelson had complained back in the late nineteen sixties, that 0:34:18.090 --> 0:34:21.570 might indeed be what people did, but it wasn't what 0:34:21.650 --> 0:34:28.250 people were. Carol Kramer was one of these unwilling components. 0:34:29.050 --> 0:34:32.290 She was the corporate vice president manager of a team 0:34:32.330 --> 0:34:35.730 of a dozen people, who found her employer had installed 0:34:35.890 --> 0:34:39.730 bosswear to take frequent snapshots of her screen and her 0:34:39.890 --> 0:34:44.050 chair to check that she was actually working. That raised 0:34:44.050 --> 0:34:48.050 all the usual questions about whether the software was really 0:34:48.130 --> 0:34:53.370 rewarding the right behavior. Did a conversation about workover coffee 0:34:53.410 --> 0:34:57.410 with a subordinate count? Did jotting some ideas on a 0:34:57.410 --> 0:34:58.210 piece of paper? 0:34:58.330 --> 0:34:58.610 Count? 0:34:59.770 --> 0:35:02.410 Did going for a walk to think about a business 0:35:02.410 --> 0:35:03.850 problem in a new environment. 0:35:03.970 --> 0:35:04.290 Count. 0:35:05.610 --> 0:35:11.330 Of course, they all should count, but they didn't. Carol 0:35:11.450 --> 0:35:14.170 Kramer found that she was getting her pay doct for 0:35:14.370 --> 0:35:17.890 failure to work in a way that satisfied the bosswear, 0:35:18.770 --> 0:35:22.810