[ICTs-and-Society] Dematerialising the workers: the shrinking labour content of ICTs

[Bob Hughes]

I hope this is an appropriate question for this list.

I'm looking for information on the labour content of electronic 
products over the past, say, 30 years. How many steps are involved, 
for example, in assembling an iPad, compared to an early PowerBook?

Surface-mount technology must have eliminated enormous numbers of 
jobs and stages of assembly. Likewise the move from disk drives to 
flash memory. Not to mention the consolidation of whole 
sub-assemblies into single chips. ... which is where the 
job-elimination gets confused with (what looks like) genuine product 
enhancement, greater reliability, etc.

I'd say that's because only one kind of innovation is allowed to 
thrive under capitalism: that which relieves the 'manufacturer' (a 
courtesy-title!) of the embarassment of having to share his place at 
the trough with actual working people. If so, what other innovations 
were there, which withered on the vine but might have led to a rather 
different world from the one we have today?

Here's one source that I've found on the labour-content question:

"Capturing Value in Global Networks: Apple's iPad and iPhone"
Kenneth L. Kraemer, Greg Linden, and Jason Dedrick. July 2011

They worked out that the labour cost (to Apple) of a $499 iPad was 
$10. - but I don't know what that means in terms of person-hours or 
stages of assembly, or what the proportion might have been for 
earlier laptops and desktop machines.

Best regards,

Bob Hughes

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