ABSTRACT
The revolution in communication represents a profound shift from the notion of production as "things" to production as "ideas". The work environment is itself an environment increasingly dominated by generating ideas and the specialized hardware which feeds and nourishes valuable information. The essential characteristic of the information society as it now stands is the growth of knowledge industries that produce and distribute information rather than goods and services. For the notion of work has far outstripped in significance any notion of class in advanced industrial life. The vocational context of work implies a professional interest and commitment. Industry as a whole has now entered a phase in which labor intensivity has become a capital intensive. Survey research and its by-products are replaced by everything from the ethology of the workplace, the economy of exploitation, to the ideology of the special vanguard role of labor in class warfare.
