"Will the new information technology represent an opportunity for the rejuvenation of competitiveness, productive vitality, and organizational ingenuity?"

Zuboff raises a positive, almost hopeful question here. Can the new technology of the future cure what many are pointing out as a problem with modern industry, that is, lack of quality, threatening monopolies, and a largely inefficient office environment?  Here again is a suggestion that the Industrial Age's way of doing things is growing ineffective and out-dated. It may be time for computer technology to redefine how we work and why we work. Several aspects of office and factory routines can be viewed as meaningless left-overs of the Industrial Age.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 "What aspects of the future of working life can we predict, and what will depend upon the choices we make today?"

The first half seems to be unanswerable. Technology and some aspects of society are changing so rapidly that any prediction made now may be dismissed as no longer accurate shortly after. The second part of the question also seems somewhat rhetorical, as we may venture to say that the future totally depends on the present's actions, but we can only say for certain what choices we should have made once the initial opportunity has passed. Speculation as to which issues are most important now is highly subjective.
 
 
 
 

 Zuboff's answers to these relate very closely to those for the previous two questions:
 
1)  The new technology is ultimately used to "bully" workers into total loyalty. The real power of the future will lie in the ability to employ novel ideas and ways of doing things.

              OR

2) As was mentioned before, the new technology causes increased sharing, interdependency, and collective responsibility.

So these scenarios support the position that decisions need to be made swiftly on the issues of technology to better the chances of facing the more positive scenarios offered in the text. These points add closure to this section of the book's introduction and provide a transition to more detailed discussions appearing in the full text.