ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on computing in primary productive activities, or "work"—that is, the way computers mediate the basic subsistence patterns on which Sheffielders physically depend. "Work" or primary productive activity includes the things done by groups of humans to provide themselves and others with the physical means for day-to-day reproduction—food, shelter, clothing, energy, and well-being. The vignette is an example of how computerization is experienced in a subsistence workplace, a place where people make equipment for coal, an important source of energy. Computerization may have accelerated the relative advantage of producing food elsewhere, but the dependence of Yorkshire on other regions for food has a very long history. In the region itself, there were really only a few physically present forms of computerization relevant to food. MacDonald's had large new restaurants in the main up-market shopping precincts of Sheffield and Barnsley, where computerized point-of-sale cash machines were conspicuous.
