Constructing Easiness—Historical Perspectives on Work, Computerization, and Women

Abstract

The assertion that technologies have made life easier and consequently better, often lurks in how we evaluate technologies. It implies an idea of history linked to modernity with its idea of progress. With my point of departure in the concepts of space of experience and horizon of expectation, I try to develop another understanding of history and a reassessment of how we evaluate technologies. Horizons of expectation of information technologies and developmental work are described and examined in the light of its impact on women's work, and how we envision power and authority. Finally, possibilities and dilemmas in women's lives within this reconceptualization is stressed and the conditions under which women may change their lives. Nothing says that the present reduces to presence. Why, in the transition from future to past, should the present not be the time of initiative—that is, the time when the weight of history that has already been made is deposited, suspended, and interrupted, and when the dream of history yet to be made is transposed into a responsible decision? Therefore it is within the dimension of acting (and suffering, which is its corollary) that thought about history will bring together its perspectives, within the horizon of the idea of an imperfect mediation. (Ricoeur, 1988:208)

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 25 citations exist upstream.