Did you feel confident in the little talk to the machine? Was it even a real talk? Or did you straight decide not to talk to it? The computer was programmed to answer in a certain way. But it also restricted your talking to within certain parameters and would not accept other answers. This little chat in the beginning was designed to make you think about how many things in our lives are controlled by computers. Nearly everything is 'fully realised in electronic form, in the zero-oneness of the world, the digital imperative that defined every breath of the planet's living billions' (DeLillo 2003: 24).

Why do you think I embedded the topic of technology and management in a horror house? In a user-friendly torture chamber? In a horror house you want a certain thrill, you expect to get goose bumps. Dark light, surprising horrors around every corner, but everything would look so different in bright light. Scientists tell you that technology is good for us, a benefit for us all. Well, here the light is dimmed but the torture chamber you have entered is still user-friendly. Technology makes our lives easier. Think about cars, telephone, the Internet, a toaster, mobile phones. But without all this sophisticated technology would we have computer viruses? Fatal car or plane crashes? The running of digital minutes dictates our rhythm; we get stressed, burned-out - user-friendly, mega-cool and super-fast.

Technology is not developed by Saints or a Samaritan institution. A company or an organisation is behind much inventions and what do you think what goals the companies have? Philanthropic visions of a better world? Benefits for all? Bullshit. In a capitalist society companies want to make money. Funding for research is given by companies that want to see results that fit within their strategies. Scientists often cannot see research anymore as an 'open field', they have to concentrate only on projects for which they receive corporation-funding.

I want to take a closer look now at different forms of organisations:

	the 'non-cyborganisation' (maybe that what you would call a 'normal' organisation)
	the 'cyborganisation'
	the cyber-organisation' (Reality Mirror World)

Looking at structures of organisations has to do with systems thinking, cybernetics and was defined by N. Wiener as 'the study of the control and regulatory of complex systems' (1948 as seen at Carleton University).

The normal or the non-cyborganisation is very dependent on the definition of cyborganisation. When you define a cyborganisation as a complex system that consists of human and non-human parts, the notion of the non-cyborganisation never exists, as we define what is human by what it is not. We can draw a border around us because we are not part of the (artificial) desk, computer, pen or paper. Therefore I like to define a non-cyborganisation as an organisation that is not heavily dependent on technology. A cyborganisation is a new type of organisation where technology and human are so merged with each other that it is no longer possible to divide it into the hard technological and the soft human side. A cyber-organisation exists only in cyberspace, not in our 'real' world.

When the 'normal' organisation changed into a cyborganisation, thanks to technology of all kinds, the world leaped into a post-industrial society. In 1992 'only 17 % of working Americans now manufacture anything, down from 22 % as recently as 1980' (Reich 1992 as quoted in Dery 1996: 3). The world, interlinked by computer networks, is dominated by immaterial goods like enormous financial transactions, Hollywood blockbusters, trends that vanish immediately after arising, TV programmes. Signs and images have replaced goods. (Link: Reality Mirror World) The values and moral concepts of cyborganisations are not layed down or rooted in a place somewhere; they are constantly shared, changed or renewed by their members. Data is collected, converted into information and knowledge, and stored, used, transformed, transmitted in the cyborganisation. Cyborgs follow the instructions the machine gives them. Our whole system is already a machine 'organized not by neurons or electrons but by dollars'. It does not matter if you work as a manager in a sophisticated position or if you have a McJob. The system (the cyborganisation) tells you what and when to do and it teaches you to think in logic blocks.

'Computer power eliminates doubt. All doubt rises from past experience. But the past is disappearing. We used to know the past but not the future. This is changing… We need a new theory of time' (DeLillo 2003:86). DeLillo sees in the computer a force that eliminates one of the basic human features: to question things. The cyborg is also described as a 'self-regulating man-machine system' (Clynes and Kline 1960 as quoted in Smith 1998), a cyborganisation thus is also self-regulated. The question is to decide between a) who regulates what or b) what regulates whom. Is it like in the worlds of the Terminator, the Borg or Neo where technology has already taken over the power? If we define ourselves as cyborgs now, can we still define ourselves as humans in the same sentence? If our world is a cyborganisation, can non-cyborganisations still exist?

Hard stuff, isn't it? Maybe you should go have a little break in the...