There's no doubt that factory conditions, and even office conditions,
             in the nineteenth century and the first third or more of the twentieth were
             dangerous, stress-inducing in the extreme, as Carol Hymowitz and Rachel
             Emma Silverman pointed out two years ago in an article for ITworld.com. In
             addition to the real physical dangers of industrial-society workplaces,
             they noted that letters by business tycoons, commodity clerks and assembly
             line workers in the early twentieth century were filled with complaints
             about no one having time to stop and give a stranger directions, or take
             time with the family or for community service. [1]
             Thankfully, they don't pretend to say that just because it was a
             current reality back then, it's OK for it the same sort of clock-oriented,
             production-hungry attitudes and behaviors to prevail now. The authors open
             with the case of an attorney who has five children to put through college
             and a retirement nest egg to build. He is stressed by those factors. But
             he is more stressed by the fact that he's working longer and harder not
             despite labor saving' technology such as cell phones and email, but
             The authors seem to say that this scenario, multiplied by millions of
             other lawyers, doctors, sales executives, factory workers, and dot-commers
             gives a reliable picture of workplace stress at present. [2] That may be
             so; being tethered to various devices that can ring, jangle or otherwise
             fetch us any time of the day or night means there is no private time, no
             downtime.' It makes people into little more than cogs in other people's
             life machines,' expected to contribute their two-cents' worth on demand so
             that everyone else's life will run smoothly, like a well-constructed, fully
             Is there an ethical component to that' Indeed there is, but possibly
             not one that can be managed or legislated. While one is at work, one is
             supposed to be ...