I’ve been reading up on the Efficiency Movement—a fad that swept through the US at the turn of the century, promising to eliminate waste, recalibrate the economy, and progress society as a whole. You basically had guys like Frederick Winslow Taylor, a management theorist during the Progressive Era, who would walk around with a stopwatch and a notepad, breaking down manual tasks and systems into a series of components that could be gauged to improve the smallest inefficiencies. It was adopted not only by factories and engineers but by architects, educators, academics, and the unlikeliest of workforces. It promised social prosperity, insanely ambitious levels of productivity, and a more monetised use of science.
While it mostly had a positive impact, it also had some unintended consequences. Revised roles needed less of everything—less brains, less independence. And when the Russians, for example, adopted the fad, failure to achieve Taylor-like efficiency targets led many Soviet workers to the Gulag. Uff.
Interesting stuff.
