says Viscelli. Less popular are driv-
er-facing videos, and most recently,
computer programs that use videos
to watch drivers’ eyelids to see if they
are micro-sleeping or fatigued. That
said, Viscelli says, “Experienced
drivers already take monitoring in
their stride, and it will become ubiq-
uitous once safety benefits are clear
and documented.”
While questions continue to be
raised about the rights and wrongs
of employee monitoring, it appears
likely they will be swept aside by em-
ployers with increasing technological
ability to gather more information,
leaving employees with little choice
but to accept, sometimes reluctantly,
that workplace monitoring is all part
of the deal.
Further Reading
People data: How far is too far?, Deloitte
Insights 2018 Global Human Capital
Trends, https://www2.deloitte.com/
insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-
trends/2018/people-data-analytics-risks-
opportunities.html
Anteby, M., and Chan, C.K.
A Self-Fulfilling Cycle of Coercive
Surveillance: Workers’ Invisibility
Practices and Managerial Justification,
Organization Science, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2018
https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1175
Viscelli, S.
The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline
of the American Dream, University of
California Press, 2016
https://www.steveviscelli.com/book
Sarah Underwood is a technology writer based in west
London, U. K.
© 2019 ACM 0001-0782/19/4 $15.00
Truck drivers are among the most
accepting subjects of monitoring,
and often see surveillance as care,
rather than coercion. Steve Viscelli,
senior fellow at the Kleinman Center
for Energy Policy, and a lecturer in
the Department of Sociology at University of Pennsylvania, chronicles
decades of technology approaches to
monitoring in the trucking industry,
noting early disk recording systems
that could be used after the fact to observe basic information such as driving time and how fast assignments
were completed. They could not be
used for direct monitoring, making it impossible to decipher when
a truck would turn up at a location
and plan the driver’s next journey.
In the late 1980s, satellite solutions
emerged that could monitor trucks
in real time and allow future work to
be scheduled.
With many drivers joining the
trucking industry as a means of gaining independence, getting away from
the boss in the office, and being paid
for the amount of work they do, Viscelli expected satellite solutions to
have a profound effect on drivers’ desire for autonomy. However, he says:
“I was wrong. Most truckers didn’t
mind. For conscientious workers,
monitoring backed up what they were
doing and could show if they had a
problem.” Other technologies packed
into solutions provided instructions,
perhaps what drivers had to pick up
next, enhancing the earnings of drivers that are paid by the mile.
By the late 1990s, these systems, also
known as Qualcomms (as they were
based on Qualcomm chips), dominated big fleets. However, they could be
‘gamed’ to underreport driving hours
in electronic logs required by the U.S.
Department of Transportation, a situation that was not tenable as fatigued
drivers caused more accidents.
Viscelli describes GPS as the ‘new
frontier’ of monitoring, as it tracks
trucks when they are moving and
when they are at a location, helping both employers and employees
reduce downtime. Forward-facing
video is also finding favor with drivers as it helps to reconstruct accidents and can show plainly that a
car, rather than a truck, was at fault,
which is most frequently the case,
Truck drivers
are among the most
accepting subjects
of monitoring, and
often see surveillance
as care, rather
than coercion.
Milestones
Newest NAE
Members
Include
Computer
Scientists
Among the 86 new members
and 18 foreign members
recently elected to the National
Academy of Engineering (NAE)
are five computer scientists.
Election to the National
Academy of Engineering is
among the highest professional
distinctions accorded to an
engineer.
Individuals in the newly
elected class will be formally
inducted during a ceremony at
the NAE’s annual meeting in
Washington, D.C., on Oct. 6, 2019.
The computer scientists
newly elected to the National
Academy of Engineering (and the
reason for their election) are:
Joseph Y. Halpern, Joseph C.
Ford Professor of Engineering,
computer science department,
Cornell University, Ithaca,
NY, for methods of reasoning
about knowledge, belief,
and uncertainty and their
applications to distributed
computing and multiagent
systems.
Monica S. Lam, professor,
computer science department,
Stanford University, Stanford,
CA, for contributions to the
design of advanced compiler
and analysis systems for high-performance computers.
Robert T. Morris, professor,
Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory,
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, MA, for
contributions to programmable
network routers, wireless mesh
networks, and networked
computer systems.
Margo I. Seltzer, Herchel
Smith Professor of Computer
Science, School of Engineering
and Applied Science, Harvard
University, Cambridge, MA,
for engineering contributions
to databases, file systems, and
operating systems.
Claire J. Tomlin, Charles
A. Desoer Chair and professor,
electrical engineering and
computer sciences, University
of California, Berkeley, for
contributions to design tools
for safety-focused control of
cyberphysical systems.