Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace
Written by Nikil Saval
Narrated by Stephen Hoye
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
You mean this place we go to five days a week has a history? Cubed reveals the unexplored yet surprising story of the places where most of the world's work-our work-gets done. From "Bartleby the Scrivener" to The Office, from the steno pool to the open-plan cubicle farm, Cubed is a fascinating, often funny, and sometimes disturbing anatomy of the white-collar world and how it came to be the way it is-and what it might become.
In the mid-nineteenth century clerks worked in small, dank spaces called "counting-houses." These were all-male enclaves, where work was just paperwork. Most Americans considered clerks to be questionable dandies, who didn't do "real work." But the joke was on them: as the great historical shifts from agricultural to industrial economies took place, and then from industrial to information economies, the organization of the workplace evolved along with them-and the clerks took over. Offices became rationalized, designed for both greater efficiency in the accomplishments of clerical work and the enhancement of worker productivity. Women entered the office by the millions, and revolutionized the social world from within. Skyscrapers filled with office space came to tower over cities everywhere. Cubed opens our eyes to what is a truly "secret history" of changes so obvious and ubiquitous that we've hardly noticed them. From the wood-paneled executive suite to the advent of the cubicles where 60% of Americans now work (and 93% of them dislike it) to a not-too-distant future where we might work anywhere at any time (and perhaps all the time), Cubed excavates from popular books, movies, comic strips (Dilbert!), and a vast amount of management literature and business history, the reasons why our workplaces are the way they are-and how they might be better.
Related to Cubed
Related audiobooks
A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thinking Machines: The Quest for Artificial Intelligence--and Where It's Taking Us Next Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Short Science Fiction Collection 003 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Once More to the Sky: The Rebuilding of the World Trade Center Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLive Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Make It New: The History of Silicon Valley Design Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rethinking Our Love Affair With Technology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe End of Work: Why Your Passion Can Become Your Job Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Number: A Completely Different Way to Think About the Rest of Your Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Generation Robot: A Century of Science Fiction, Fact, and Speculation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Steven Levy's Insanely Great Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tremendous Technology Inventions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Steve Jobs: A Day in His Life in the 1970s & His Wisdom Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Bullshit Jobs: A Theory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trade is Not a Four-Letter Word: How Six Everyday Products Make the Case for Trade Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Paper: Paging Through History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Sucker Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Totally Wired: The Rise and Fall of Josh Harris and The Great Dotcom Swindle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-made Landscape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Story Behind: The Extraordinary History Behind Ordinary Objects Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Workplace Culture For You
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Right Kind of Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rising Above a Toxic Workplace: Taking Care of Yourself in an Unhealthy Environment Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Radical Inclusion: Seven Steps to Help You Create a More Just Workplace, Home, and World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mean Girls at Work: How to Stay Professional When Things Get Personal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExecutive Presence: The Missing Link Between Merit and Success Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Subtle Acts of Exclusion: How to Understand, Identify, and Stop Microaggressions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When You Can’t Just Talk About It: How to Navigate Difficult Conversations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Artpreneur: The Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living From Your Creativity Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Trust and Inspire Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Unspoken Truths for Career Success: Navigating Pay, Promotions, and Power at Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Not Yelling: A Black Woman's Guide to Navigating the Workplace Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Outward Mindset: Seeing Beyond Ourselves Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fascinate, Revised and Updated: How to Make Your Brand Impossible to Resist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Cubed
40 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cubed is impeccably well-written, humming along at a steady pace, yet occasionally tepid in the earlier portions. Originally excerpted in N 1 (where Saval's an editor), the centerpiece of the book is an account of the cubicle's birth: originally designed to create a greater sense of freedom for the worker, but slowly whittled down until it achieved the very opposite.
To explain how the original ideals turned into a drab result, Saval has to deploy a methodology that serves as the template for the book as a whole, drawing from sociology, pop culture, and the economic determinants underlying both. At his best, Saval achieves the same kind of zeitgeist omniscience as Rick Perlstein's accounts of conservative history. But in some of the earlier chapters, this kind of omniscience can turn into a more drab New Yorker style, jumping from factoid to factoid without much of a thrust behind it. All the corners have been sanded off, which makes the prose a pleasure to read but lends it kind of a forgettable vibe.
After that account of the cubicle, though, Saval's book seems to become more lively and pointed, covering the rise of open offices and the latest playground-chic workplaces of Silicon Valley. And even the earlier parts have their own merits, taking the book's premise as a reason to detour through the introduction of women into the workplace, urbanization and suburbanization, and more. Saval's strength is in drawing out the sorta historical materialist reasons behind each change, even if he never gets close to that term.
All in all, the N 1 coterie continues to have an excellent batting-average when it comes to producing full-scale books—even if this work is pop enough to deploy a nonsensical subtitle. (300 pages later, I'm still waiting to find out what's "secret" about its history of the workplace.) Recommended! - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Too long, too much information and rather depressing. Blech.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A history of the office and office jobs, from nineteenth centtury clerks, to todays "knowledge workers", going through different management fads, worker aspirations and status, design ideas, office frustrations.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great general overview of the changing nature of the workplace from the early 1800s to today. Given the sheet scope of coverage, don't expect a lot of in-depth analysis. That said, the author builds nicely. My biggest complaint is that the reference section is a bit light. Additional footnotes, to additional sources, would make this a particularly good reference work for those interested in the future of work in the United States.
That said, definitely worth reading for those interested in the relationship between work and workspace. - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Too long, too much information and rather depressing. Blech.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An interesting little book on the history of office work - more architecture-and-design focused than I would have preferred, but illuminating nonetheless. (The more I read the more convinced I am that most of what passes for "work" in an office is 100% unnecessary in every way. But people gotta get paid, and for some reason we insist they spend 40+ hours a week doing it, so we keep making up things for them to do.)