Doing, or being Done Unto...

The history of groups of skilled people's relationships with employers is an interesting one, whether weavers in the nineteenth century, or accountants today. Skilled people form groups that enable them to shape the sector and their relationships with and as employers and in doing so become inherently resistant to anything that significantly changes the status quo.

Technology changes the status quo. What happens seems remarkably consistent. The cohesive groups that form and establish standards around their skill rejects technology that threatens them. Instead of "negotiating" with the technology and taking effective ownership of its use by becoming expert at it they compete with it. They negotiate with those in whose interests it is to introduce the technology, which is generally more productive, lower cost and less troublesome than humans. Then they lose. Technology always wins, and those who resist it find themselves specialised in a skill that is no longer needed in the same way. In…