Isolation and technology: the human disconnect

Abstract

Management control over production has often meant control over one means of production: people. There is evidence of the use of social isolation to control human behavior throughout recorded history. Traces the development of social isolation through the multiple lenses of management, economics, psychology, sociology, engineering technology, social psychology, and communication science and presents a taxonomy of perspectives for discussion. The taxonomy is further elucidated through the assignment and distribution of 13 organizational factors for both the objective state and subjective feelings of social isolation as linked to advances in telecommuting and other off-site “open collar” work.