1. Read and translate the text in written form and ask 6 questions on it. While the mechanization of office work has been going on for over half a century, a revolutionary development has taken place in the last twenty years. Electronic equipment has been applied to virtually all branches of office work and its use is steadily expanding. The most important piece of equipment is the computer. A great deal of office work can be reduced to simple routine and routine operations are easy to automate. In some ways office work is easier to automate than the production of goods: figures and letters have none of the inconvenient natural properties of materials.
Although automation has been an important subject of discussion, it is often assumed that it doesn’t differ basically from earlier forms of mechanization. This assumption is not justified. The earlier office machines were designed to simplify and speed up particular operations, and involve little or no change in organization. Both punched card machinery and electronic equipment necessitate the introduction of computably rationalized system of work organization which eliminates many old jobs.
Automation also encourages the trend forward centralization of administrative and clerical functions, promoting the development of government, commercial and educational data processing centres. Further, there are growing possibilities for small and medium sized firms to use computers will the expansion of facilities for the hiring of the time on a computer. All this will affect the working life of an increasing number of office-workers.
The physical environment and working condition of office-workers have undergone many changes during last years. The automation of office work does have some beneficial effects on the physical environment and working conditions of employees. Lighting, space and cleanliness requirements are usually specified to ensure efficiency and low maintenance costs. But there are some unfavorable consequences. The office environment becomes much more like a factory, with a constant high level of noise and vibration from the equipment. Employees have to spend much more time on their feet and the speed with which the equipment operates frequently entails a rapid, continuous working pace.
Electronic equipment does not produce physical fatigue, as some mechanical equipment does. However there is pressure for fast work in the preparation of data to maximize the volume of work carried out by the equipment.
In the past there have been several changes in the nature of office work and in the type of skills required of office employees. The early machines eliminated a great deal of laborious routine work but did not displace skilled work. But introduction of automation necessitates an entire reorganization of work procedures and computably changes the patterns of skill requirements in the office. The impact depends largely on the previous degree of mechanization. Where a computer system is introduced directly into a manually operated office, the change will radically alter the organization of work procedures, produce very different skill requirements and substantially reduce the size of the staff. Where a computer system is introduced into an office having punched card machinery, there will not be so many changes and the reduction in the size of the staff will not be so great. In the automated office there is no need for a large number of semi-skilled workers. There is a need for a small number of skilled technical workers. In future the number of this will diminish as the highly skilled work is simplified and standardized.
Such development rises the problem of training and retraining for employment in the automated office.

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