As information technology restructures the work situation, it

The scholar Shoshana Zuboff, known for her piercing insights into the age of surveillance and digital power, once declared: “As information technology restructures the work situation, it abstracts thought from action.” In this teaching, she reveals the profound transformation that information technology brings to human labor. Once, thought and action were bound together — the craftsman’s mind guided his hand, the farmer’s knowledge was written in the sweat of his brow, the healer’s wisdom was proven in the touch that mended flesh. Now, in the digital age, thought floats in abstractions, separated from the hand, encoded in systems, algorithms, and screens.

To abstract thought from action is to sever what was once unified. The plowman once knew the soil because his hands tilled it; the sailor knew the sea because his body swayed with the waves. Today, the worker commands machines, analyzes data, manages systems — yet often without touching the realities that underlie them. The mind calculates, the screen displays, but the body no longer acts. This distance grants power, efficiency, and reach, but it also carries a cost: a loss of intimacy with the world, a removal from the living rhythm of things.

History shows us this shift in many forms. Consider the Industrial Revolution, when hand-weaving gave way to mechanized looms. The weaver once knew each thread, felt its texture, and shaped its pattern with care. But in the factory, the worker no longer touched the cloth; instead, he pulled levers and tended machines that worked at a distance. Thought had become management, not creation; action became mechanical repetition. Zuboff’s words echo this same truth for our modern age, where information systems multiply this distance even further.

An example from our time lies in the realm of finance. Once, merchants and bankers dealt directly with goods, ships, and coin. Today, algorithms trade millions of shares in seconds, abstracting thought into mathematical formulas far removed from the human toil of production. Vast fortunes rise and fall, while those who labor to create the goods remain unseen. The world of finance demonstrates how information technology transforms work into layers of abstraction, where human presence is thinned into numbers.

Yet Zuboff does not speak only in warning. There is also potential in this transformation. The ability to separate thought from action allows humanity to imagine, to plan, to design at scales impossible before. An engineer can model bridges before building them, a doctor can simulate surgeries before cutting flesh, a teacher can share knowledge across oceans without stepping outside the room. The challenge is not that thought is abstracted, but that we risk forgetting the reality it represents. To live only in abstractions is to lose the grounding of life itself.

The lesson, therefore, is one of balance. Let information technology serve as a tool to extend thought, but never let it sever thought from the world of real action. Those who lead must remember that behind every screen are human beings, behind every dataset are lives, and behind every algorithm lies responsibility. To cultivate wisdom, we must reunite thought and action — reflect deeply, but also act justly; calculate numbers, but also see faces; design systems, but also touch the earth from which all life springs.

So, O seekers of truth, remember Zuboff’s warning: “As information technology restructures the work situation, it abstracts thought from action.” Do not let yourselves be swallowed by abstraction. Keep your feet grounded even as your mind soars. Let technology expand your vision, but let humanity guide your steps. For the true greatness of man lies not in endless abstraction, but in uniting the clarity of thought with the integrity of action, so that wisdom flows not only through circuits, but through the living deeds of our lives.