Work and Technology: A Bibliographical Essay

Abstract

A complete library of writings on the interface between work and technology would include everything from Aristotle’s reflections in the Nichomachean Ethics about machine replacements for slaves up to the latest rationale for automation. The task of producing a definitive catalogue for that library would be not Herculean but Procrustean in view of the fluid definitions of “work” and of “technology,” the many related topics that touch on either, and the wide variety of specialists who have addressed them. But only a subset of these works contain or invite deliberations with philosophical import; and fewer still are authored by professional philosophers. Such qualifications notwithstanding, there does exist a literature that can be subsumed under the title: Work and Technology in Philosophical Perspective.