ABSTRACT
It has been 20 years since Shoshana Zuboff published her
In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and
Power (hereafter the Smart Machine), a profound study of
the work implications associated with the extensive invol-
vement of information technology in organizations. The
book rapidly gained recognition across a wide spectrum of
social science disciplines, including management and
organization studies, information systems, social psychol-
ogy, and sociology, and has been debated and quoted
extensively. Twenty years may seem an awfully long
time in this age of speed and rapid technological change.
But, the Smart Machine, as perhaps every great work, holds
out remarkably. The central themes of the book are equally
if not more relevant today. Key insights the author devel-
ops concerning the nature of information and its relation to
reality can be brought to bear on the analysis of phenomena
such as the emergence and diffusion of the Internet that
were not yet manifest at the time she conducted her study.
Indeed, later and significant works on the social and orga-
nizational implications of information technology draw in
one way or another on the legacy the Smart Machine has
