281 The Business of Slavery

Ben Franklin's World

Liz Covart

Society & Culture, History

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2020

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We live in an age where big businesses track our shopping habits and in some cases our work habits. But is the age of data new? When did the “age of the spreadsheet” and quantification of habits develop?  Caitlin Rosenthal, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management, leads us on an investigation into the origins of how American businesses came to collect and use data to manage their workers and their pursuit of profits. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/281 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 137: Erica Dunbar, The Washingtons’ Runaway Slave, Ona Judge 🎧 Episode 140: Tamara Thornton, Nathaniel Bowditch: 19th-Century Man of Business 🎧 Episode 173: Marisa Fuentes, Colonial Port Cities & Slavery 🎧 Episode 176: Daina Ramey Berry, The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave 🎧 Episode 253: Susan Clair Imbarrato, Life & Revolution in Boston & Grenada REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ben Franklin's world is a production of the
0:02.8	Omaha Institute. Hello and welcome to episode 281 of Ben Franklin's world.
0:18.0	The podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and events of our early American past have shaped the present day world we live in.
0:26.0	And I'm your host, Liz Kovart.
0:29.0	We live in an age of data.
0:31.0	Some of this data tells us about the world around us, while other data tells
0:35.0	us about, well, it tells us about us. Governments and companies collect a lot of data about us.
0:40.8	From what test scores we achieved in schools to what our internet
0:45.0	searches and social media posts say about us as individuals and as consumers. We live in an age
0:51.5	where big businesses track our shopping habits and in some cases are work habits.
0:57.0	But is this age of data new?
0:59.0	When did the age of the spreadsheet and the quantification of work habits develop.
1:03.0	Caitlin Rosenthal is an assistant professor of history at the University of California
1:07.6	Berkeley and a former business management consultant with McKinsey and Company.
1:11.6	Caitlin is a scholar who seeks to answer the questions of
1:15.0	when did big businesses start tracking individual work habits?
1:18.0	And how did having data about these individual work habits,
1:22.0	allow them to pursue profits, and act ethically,
1:25.1	or perhaps not so ethically,
1:27.6	towards their employees.
1:29.8	And what Caitlin found is that the age of business data collection and scientific management
1:34.4	based on that data collection isn't an invention of the late 19th or early 20th centuries
	...

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