The most dramatic example, perhaps, is the rapidity of access to information and the speed of its processing, which make possible a considerable increase in the number of operations and lead to an intensification of the work tempo. Given the formalization and abstraction of the work processes inside programs, the employees are now more isolated and they often find it impossible to ask a colleague for advice or information. A kind of silent revolution is now producing profound changes in the social life of our communities as it affects the identity of individuals, organizations and groups. Take the example of the most central human activity, work. The form of collective organization inherited from a developmental phase based on the need to gather in the same space management, machinery and workers, has now been basically altered by the possibility of office automation.
Machines act far more rapidly than human beings . . .
An intelligent understanding of their mode of performance may be delayed until long after the task which they have been set has been completed. Conclusions One of the most considerable qualities of the literature presenting the opposite judgements and opinions of the social sciences on ecology, on the one hand, and technology and automation, on the other, if there are any, is the variety of totally conflicting findings reported by various authors and schools. Technology is described both as a great liberating agent and as a device which will reduce human freedom. Fast technological change from human, or machine, mediated work to computer-mediated work leads to changes in how workers adapt to their particular work environment. Under these new conditions, ecology becomes suddenly a more complex and multidisciplinary operation than it has been in the recent past.