Comment by Arnt
9 years ago
There was a secretary for the group, not for any one professor.
If you'd visited in, say, 1925 the professors in the group might've had one secretary each.
9 years ago
There was a secretary for the group, not for any one professor.
If you'd visited in, say, 1925 the professors in the group might've had one secretary each.
That has more to do with those secretaries being replaced by computers than anything else. When everyone can type, and mistakes are easily corrected, you don't need people whose only job is to type anymore.
I'm Norwegian, not Swedish, but AIUI the societal trends were similar.
There's been a trend towards typing ability, yes, but hardly decisive. The old secretaries would do the bulk of e.g. organising conferences or the professor's travel, that's needs typing but not only typing.
The trend (in .no/.se etc) towards equality, against certain symbols of prestige, mattered a great deal. A long time ago having a secretary was a symbol of power, appropriate for Professor Dr. Lundman. At some point forgoing one became a symbol of modernity, and private secretaries became much less common, and the universities reorganised to provide specialised services such as ticket purchasers and maybe grant application writers instead of private secretaries.
>When everyone can type
I've spent some time as a troubleshooter of sorts in academia, and I can say that no, not everyone can type. Some are barely literate, especially when they have to use English rather than their native tongue.
Besides, secretaries do more than type. Online booking services have to a large extent replaced travel agents, but they are really just dumb shells on top of the travel agent's consoles, and consumes the user's time and attention.
As long as we don't have general AI computerising all but the most trivial tasks are going to be terrible to work with and waste a lot of time, especially when you have some kind of edge case and have to fight some business rules set up by some out of touch bean counter somewhere.
Certainly there's a trend away from private secretaries.
But the original statement was specifically about "ultra-low power distance societies, places like Sweden", and the process you mention is also taking place in the US, which (I believe) is not in that category.
Moreover, the statement added "the idea that anyone, no matter how important, is ever entitled to an assistant or secretary is almost anathema [in Sweden]." Yet I easily found a job position for a personal secretary.
That's why I would like a confirmation that M_Bakhtiari's observation is based on something stronger than hearsay or an assumption of how Sweden compares to not-as-low-power distance societies like the US.
I suppose it's taking place everywhere where assistant labour is expensive. Faster in the places where having a private secretary is old-fashioned, like Sweden.