Computer mediation seems to bathe action in a more conditional light: perhaps it happened; perhaps it didn't. Without the layeredrichness of direct sensory engagement, the symbolic medium seems thin, flat, and fragile.

If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamicsthat present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.

Authority is the spiritual dimension of power because it depends upon faith in a system of meaning that decrees the necessity of the hierarchical order and so provides for the unity of imperative control.

Life is good when you live from your roots. Your values are a critical source of energy, enthusiasm, and direction. Work is meaningful and fun when it's an expression of your true core.

Learning has replaced control as the fundamental role of management.

Technological change defines the horizon of our material world as it shapes the limiting conditions of what is possible and what is barely imaginable. It erodesassumptions about the nature of our reality, the "pattern" in which we dwell, and lays open new choices.

Skilled workers historically have been ambivalent toward automation, knowing that the bodies it would augment or replace were theoccasion for both their pain and their power.