Technology, Affordances and Occupational Identity Amongst Older Telecommunications Engineers: From Living Machines to Black-Boxes
Technology, Affordances and Occupational Identity Amongst Older Telecommunications Engineers: From Living Machines to Black-Boxes
复制标题
老年电信工程师的技术、可供性和职业认同：从活机器到黑匣子
作者：
Robert MacKenzie;Abigail Marks;K. Morgan
本文探讨了技术和职业身份之间的关系的基础上，工作生活的传记采访老年电信工程师。在构建自己的工作生活传记时，参与者非常重视他们工作的技术。文章认为，工人与技术的关系可能比技术文学社会学或工作文学社会学所能容纳的更为微妙。采用启示的概念，有人认为，早期的机电技术的物理性质提供了工程师的机会，通过熟练的应用工具，“修复”的东西，并作为自主监护人的“生活”的机器：固有的因素，他们的职业身份。然而，数字技术的变化否定了应用实践技能的可能性，并破坏了工程职业身份的关键要素。这些传记不仅反映了对过去的怀旧浪漫化，还捕捉到了工作的物质现实的恶化。
This article explores the relationship between technology and occupational identity based on working-life biographical interviews with older telecommunications engineers. In the construction of their own working-life biographical narratives, participants attached great importance to the technology with which they worked. The article contends that workers’ relationship with technology can be more nuanced than either the sociology of technology literature or the sociology of work literature accommodates. Adopting the concept of affordances, it is argued that the physical nature of earlier electromechanical technology afforded engineers the opportunity to ‘fix’ things through the skilled application of tools and act as autonomous custodians of ‘living’ machines: factors that were inherent to their occupational identity. However, the change to digital technology denied the affordances to apply hands-on skill and undermined key elements of the engineering occupational identity. Rather than simply reflecting the nostalgic romanticizing of the past, the biographies captured deterioration in the material realities of work.