That's like saying without knives and forks we wouldn't know how to eat. We use the tools of our trade because they're there to be used, but any job that is not specifically about IT can be done without it. It would just be done differently.
yes. its a lot more owrk doing books the old way and keeping track of receipts etc but it is possible. most office workers i know... especially yanks think sending an email is actual work.
Theres no way would be able to produce reports covering the data we need to report on without a computer.
The longer and the more technology becomes embedded in jobs the more it engenders and generates larger amounts of admin, online paperwork, data etc etc. It encourages work to become more about forms and information. If we stopped using computers suddenly most people in any line of work that wasn't the service industry or manual labour - making coffee, cleaning, fixing roads, whatever, would no longer be able to properly do their jobs and then people in the service industry and manual labour roles would soon have to stop because their offices would grind to a halt.
not true.. with the amount of people you current have yes but in the olden days there would be a veritable army of people doing the job.
That's not my point at all. You're isolating part of the job that suits your argument. HR is just the modern word for what used to be called personnel management. This has been done for centuries - it just required people to have a set of skills which are now being lost through dependence on technology. This is true of so many occupations, or just strands of modern life - like having a panic attack if you go out without your phone. I was apprenticed in printing - an image manipulation part of it that most people wouldn't even know existed so difficult to explain, but everything was done by hand or with chemicals. During my time it became almost entirely computerised and those coming into it later wouldn't have a clue how to do the job if there were no computers. But it can be done- it just needs a different set of skills. Getting used to the way things are done blinds us to the fact that there are always alternatives.
You can say the same about most industrial revolutions In the start the steam power drove thousands into factories making more and more cotton cloth etc. the amount of people required to to make that cotton would have been massive but increased automation meant more from the people the same can be said later of increasing automation in farming where the farm labourer was all but eliminated by machinery the same can be said of more and more automation in the manufacturing industries. In my second job over 5 years we doubled output with the sample people employed due to greater automation and the jobs changed from manual labour to machine minding. that was lucky cos the volumes supported it. if the ame volumes existed the workforce would have dropped the same can be said in secretarial pools up and down the country.. or financial services flowing to india etc etc.
yes and these days origination and plate work is 95% computerised and laser cut. it costs less and so more can be made. and so forth and so on. YOu get more variety in shorter run but whether that is of actual value who knows. now you can get a print press that is digital and theres no make ready etc etc so its all just about cost.
Obviously you know something about it so I can explain. I was a colour retoucher and planner in an origination department that took things through to the plate-making stage. It was a highly skilled job that required a 5 year apprenticeship, and even then you still had a lot to learn. I worked on some of the first computerised scanners when they were being introduced -within 2 decades or so it was entirely digital and people were being given six months training to do the same job. In one sense that's an improvement, but it meant that a more thorough understanding of the principles were lost, and newer people were at a loss to correct things that didn't quite work out as expected. They were taught to operate the machine, rather than understand the process. My point to Bisc was that technology facilitates the job - it's not fundamental to it.
My original point was I wouldn't be able to do my job without a computer. I agree that other ways to do other areas and as you say hr clearly existed before but my work isn't really hr. it's reporting really and being able to generate the info I do now without a computer would be near on impossible or would take god knows how long to manually go through every bit of info and manually write down and tally up what's what. Ive obviously only ever grown up with computers so hard for me to appreciate how things were done before hand, just sounds like a different world when I speak to some of the people that have been here for a while and done some parts of their job without a computer that
I realise that mate, that's why I was making the point. See my subsequent post. You wouldn't believe how much my industry was changed by computers.
the plate making must have been a very long job. The laser technology and plate making now means you can remake the plates for a job every time and within 24 hours. plastic printing is still more old school i guess.
I don't understand how they used to do my job without computers. They would have had to send in hard copies of every plan/drawing/design document for every aspect of an Oil rig/tanker/bulk carrier/container ship/yacht etc etc and flipped through each page. Now it's all sent in electronically by PDF and they still complain about how long it takes us to review everything. Maybe I'm on here too much.
You also mentioned cost earlier. When I started in the 70's the job had 3 priorities: quality, speed and cost - in that order. The customer paid whatever was necessary to get the job done properly, because they took pride in their product. It was subsequently turned on its head, and cost became the predominant consideration. This is mostly true of the wider world, and why standards continue to decline in many areas.
And yet they did do it, presumably? It's actually a bit scary to see how quickly basic skills are lost, and how screwed so many would be without computers.
I'm sure what you report on now is much more detailed compared to that in the past. All the extra little details someone could fill in and just pivot for the answers was probably not available and only the most important data was collected.
I was in a company in uni on a tour and say a car pressing plant system. they made tools out of polystyrene by hand sharing the master mould that way. they had 50 draftsmen desks arrayed in the offices upstairs working on vast A0 plans of tools and draw everything out. not rather than that they prbably have 5 guys on high end pcs doing the same and outsource the tooling to china digitally I can only imagine building an aircraft carrier in wwii or a spitfire from blueprints. but in the end it all divides down into little parts an individual works on. Its just about man power. we used to wonder how did they build the pyramids too.
Why the **** is there a sensible conversation taking place on this ****ing thread? Anyway, thanks for your heartfelt sympathies and birthday wishes. I'm going the Cheese for my free 10 pints.
