 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The History of Typewriters and Why Honesty and Work Rarely Mix04/06/2007 Darren Wershler-Henry's The Iron Whim in The New Yorker:The Typing LifeHow writers used to write.by Joan Acocella April 9, 2007Many of the early inventors of the typewriter thought that what they were inventing was a prosthetic device for the blind. Why would ordinary writers need a writing machine? They had pens. Eventually, it became clear that such a mechanism could benefit the seeing, too, but, as we find out in “The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting” (Cornell; $29.95), by Darren Wershler-Henry, a professor of communication studies in Ontario, almost two centuries, roughly the eighteenth and the nineteenth, passed before that hope was realized. There was no single moment of discovery, no lone inventor crying “Eureka!” in a darkened laboratory. On the contrary, historians estimate that the typewriter was invented at least fifty-two times, as one tinkerer after another groped toward a usable design. One early writing mechanism looks like a birthday cake, another like a pinball machine. One was almost eight feet tall; another, a Tyrolean entry, was whittled largely from wood. Until about the eighteen-thirties, all typewriters lacked a keyboard, and when they got one it was usually modelled on that of the piano. Nor did they have a ribbon. That didn’t make its appearance until 1841; in most earlier machines the keys were inked by rollers or carbon paper.
Making Lies Work for You at the Office
Morning Edition, April 4, 2007 · A new book argues that honesty may not be the best policy in the workplace. From Hire to Liar: The Role of Deception in the Workplace says lies and misinformation may not be so bad — they're an essential part of how business gets done. Steve Inskeep talked with the author, David Shulman. The author's note here says that you teach anthropology and sociology at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. Is that a lie? No, that's the actual truth. What's so good about lying? One of the things that lying does is, it may not have a lot ethical virtues but it has a lot of functional virtues. Sometimes, one of the virtues of lying is to be able to bypass certain rules [that] people would think are unfair or oppressive to customers or clients. Link to NPR interview: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9318961
From Hire to Liar in The Guardian: From Hire to Liar, by David Shulman (Cornell, £9.95) This sociological study of "The Role of Deception in the Workplace" is sure to elicit anguished or chuckling recognition from anyone who's ever worked in an office: much like a Dilbert cartoon with scholarly footnotes. Illuminatingly, Shulman spends the first part of the book talking to private detectives and analysing the deceptions sanctioned by their jobs (pretending to be from the tax office on the phone; claiming to be delivering a bunch of flowers in order to serve a subpoena). He then draws parallels with the informal - but often no less Machiavellian - strategies of deception pursued for survival by workers in ad agencies or management consultancies. New hires pretending to learn more quickly than they do, executives blithely passing on tasks to others, whole cultures of casual lying - the author even makes a careful taxonomy of ways to "goof off", or not do any work at all. Link to full review: http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/roundupstory/0,,2041379,00.html
Additional Coverage: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0703230666mar26,0,4780403.story?coll=chi-business-hed http://radiotime.com/ProgramDetails.aspx?ProgramId=372 http://lafayette.edu/news.php/view/9863/
|
 |  |
