automation in the textile industry. Despite cotton textiles becoming one of the largest sectors in the British economy, real … wages for cotton weavers did not rise for decades. As E.P. Thompson emphasized, automation forced workers into unhealthy … factories with close surveillance and little autonomy. Automation can increase wages, but only when accompanied by new tasks …

The machine tells the body how to work: "automation" and the postwar automobile industry -- The electronic brain …'s tired hands: automation, the digital computer, and the degradation of clerical work -- The liberation of the leisure class …: debating freedom and work in the 1950s and early 1960s -- Anticipating oblivion: the automation discourse, federal policy, and …