New Books in Systems and Cybernetics Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management
Apr 3, 2023
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Rise Of The Pre-Digital Communication Regime
- The 20th-century business communication system evolved from 1880 into a coherent pre-digital regime of memos, typewriters, and filing systems.
- Joanne Yates studied how ideologies, technologies, and genres co-evolved to enable managerial control through communication.
From Gothic Novels To Business Genres
- Yates began as an American literature PhD writing about the Gothic and transported the genre concept into business communication.
- She used the familiar notion of genres to analyze memos, reports, and letters in organizations.
Follow Strange Archival Patterns
- If you find something odd or repeatedly appearing in archives, pursue it; anomalies can reveal important histories.
- Yates recommends following surprising archival patterns rather than assuming nothing of interest lies there.