If anyone knows the colleague to whom Chomsky refers to below I'd be
appreciative if he let me know who it is. Thanks and enjoy.

Transcribed from Noam Chomsky _Capital Rules_ track 12 "Automation:
Protecting the Rich from Market Discipline" available online at:
http://www.worldmedia.com/archive/index.html

"Containerization, and computer controlled machine tools and that kind of
stuff were developed in the state sector and they were developed in very
specific ways. There's nothing about automation that says that it should
be a weapon in the hands of management. [It] could be exactly the
opposite. The technology is quite neutral--it doesn't really care how it's
used. You can develop automation so that it's a weapon to drive people out
of work and to increase managerial prerogatives or you can develop
automation to put more power into the hands of skilled machinists and get
rid of management. The automation is completely neutral.

"There's good studies of this actually by a guy who is a colleague of mine
at MIT who didn't get tenure in part because of these studies. But they're
very solid work which points out that the automation was in fact designed
specifically to deskill workers and to add levels of management. [It's]
very antieconomic-efficiency but very useful for class struggle and hence,
yes, there are these weapons now--automation--which are driving people out
of work. But that's because they were designed that way--not in any sense
inherent in the technology.

"Automation, robotics, and all of that stuff could all be fine things to
just get rid of dirty work and get rid of management (which you don't need
anyway) and get rid of owners and just put control in the hands of the
workforce. You can do that. But, of course, it's not designed that way.
And in particular when it works through the state sector, as it did, you
can be sure it won't be defined that way."