Are colonising more and more occupations. At first they dealt only with scientific data, then big-scale data, then words and then small accounts.
In 1979 the first visual display terminals came to The Canberra Times. Within a short time computers killed off one profession and colonised another. There are now virtually no typesetters and no typing pools. That occupation is killed off, and another occupation, the journalists who create the words, are colonised. Much the same thing has happened in accounting. Once there were those who repetitively keyed in figures and on the other hand those who manipulated and interpreted those figures. Now those two groups have been fused. Those who solely practised the repetitive task have been killed off (occupationally) and the rest have been colonised.
Lawyers firms, too, are being taken. Government departments have succumbed, though more slowly. And nearly all of academia has been colonised by the beige boxes. Many meetings have been replaced by electronic mail.
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