It’s true, we’re not the most physically expressive bunch of people on the planet.  But there was an interesting case study in body language last year thanks to two of our dourest political operatives.  And to make it all the more juicy, it was caught on camera for all to see.  I’m talking about the ‘revealing’ body language of Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson during a recent joint interview.

The BBCNI team wheeled in a body language ‘expert’ called Judi James to provide an analysis.  This made me smile for a few reasons.

First of all, I classify someone as an expert if they’ve conducted ground-breaking research or constructed a boundary-crossing application.  Appearing as a guru on on programmes like Big Brother and The Xtra Factor does not count.  Desmond Morris, Albert Mehrabian, Paul Ekman – that’s the level of person who I’d classify as an expert.

(The astute among you will see this as sour grapes at my not being asked to do it.  After all, I’ve delivered different courses at Queen’s University on body language over the years.  By rights I should be the local expert.  So there.)

Second, the analysis itself was rather banal, IMHO.  For instance, Judi noted the “deadpan delivery” of McGuinness as a sign of determination.  Deadpan delivery?  That’s what we do, Julie dear, that’s our national thing!  You might as well observe that Americans are loud and the Japanese inscrutable.  Cultural context, anyone?

Read here if you want to see how unconfortable I am with the extreme direction some body language interpretation is taking.  Or talk to a guy.  Try McGuinness or Robinson, if you think you’re deadpan enough…

I’ve been re-reading another one of Postman’s book recently,  the lesser known Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.  His thesis is that the US is the first modern culture to have shifted from a  technology-using worldview to a technology-dominated one.  This is one ‘culture war‘ that is not usually included in debate but that is far more deep-seated in the American psyche.

This isn’t a book review, so I’ll spare you the summary.  Postman considers the question of when America changed into a Technopoly, a state in which culture “seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology”.  To answer this question, Postman turns not to scientists or industrialists or politicians, but to a now almost forgotten management consultant.

Fredrick W Taylor published a book in 1911 called The Principles of Scientific Management.  Now just pause and ponder that title for a second.  Management is about managing people.  Taylor claims this can be achieved scientifically, that is, objectively, impersonally, mathematically.  People are reduced to bits of technology that require engineering.  Postman claims that this book…

…contains the first explicit and formal outline of the assumptions of the thought-world of Technopoly.  These include the beliefs that the primary, if not only, goal of human labour and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagues by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity; that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that the affairs of citizens are best controlled by experts.

Postman also has brilliant things to say about language and statistics as examples of ‘invisible technologies’.  But for now, I have a few questions.  How far has this technological mind-set, this treating people as bits of technology, infected our thinking on such topics as time management, psychometric testing, and the other tools of modern HR?  And when were human beings demoted to a ‘resource’ anyway?

Let me know if you can think of any more examples of Technopoly in the workplace.