"Must the new electronic milieu engender a world in which individuals have lost control over their daily lives?"

Zuboff appears worried that employers will have the capabilities to monitor their employees through computer technology to such an extent that every action done by the worker will be seen by the supervisor. This could even mean monitoring a typist's keystrokes. Employers would, of course, justify such invasions as necessary to ensure efficiency and quality control.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

"Do these visions of the future represent the price of economic success or might they signal an industrial legacy that must be overcome if intelligent technology is to yield its full value?"

With this question the author makes another of several references to differentiating the industrial revolution and the predicted ensuing industrial age. In this one particularly, she hints that the onslaught of new intelligent technology we are witnessing indicates the coming of a second revolution and that the one we refer to as "industrial" is soon to be obsolete. Zuboff is asking here whether the the the industrial age can coexist with the new computer age or if thought patterns associated with the former will hinder full development of the future.

The first half of the question  suggests that from a situation ordinarily thought of as desirable, a strong economy, may come a "price," a result that is more than we really want. She seems to be asking whether we are moving too quickly from one advanced step to another (one computer technology to an even better one) without time enough in between to evaluate the likely effect of what we have made (can this this new technology infringe upon our privacy, independence, and culture?).

Zuboff offers these scenarios to answer these questions:

1) Managers increasingly isolate employees because they feel threatened by ever more accessible information to their employees. They "struggle to retain their traditional sources of authority." Employees react to this by cold obedience to authority and the handing over of personal responsibility. They conform to the attitude of "just following orders."

                    OR

2) The relationship between management and labor transmutes from that of rank to that of interdependence. They come to rely on each other in order to deal with the vast amounts of data and knowledge. Work relationships, writes Zuboff, grow more "intricate, collaborative, and bound by mutual responsibilities..."