Introduction: Communication and the World of Work

Abstract

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen is the start of one the foremost books on communication. In George Orwell’s 1984, communication in a future society is reduced to a tool that corrupts our thoughts while BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU and the thought police is looking for thought crimes.5 Orwell has provided one of the most powerful images of where society can go when human communication is deliberately distorted, corrupted, abused, and misused. Even though the year 1984 has long since passed, present society, work, and communication have obviously not yet reached an Orwellian stage. However his apocalyptic scenario remains with us. Undoubtedly, Orwell emphasised the importance of communication in shaping our society, our thinking, and how damaging the misuse of communication can be as it reaches into the heart of our society. As much as in 1948 when Orwell wrote 1984, today, and in a hopefully non-Orwellian future, almost all societies and their accompanying work arrangements exist through communication. Ever since modern mass production ended feudalist peasant life some time between the mid-18th and the early 20th century, demands on communication at work have been on the increase. The way we work is continuously being reshaped and with it the demands on communication. With the continuous rise of modern post-industrial work arrangements, communication has become an ever more important aspect of our present and future working and social lives.