That stal­wart of Amer­ican Cap­it­al­ism, the Ford Motor Com­pany has done a lot for social sci­ence. Trainee eco­nom­ists learn about Dodge Broth­ers vs Ford, tak­ing from the judge­ment either the text­book les­son that com­pan­ies are run to max­im­ise share­holder profit, or a les­son in sharp prac­tice from Henry Ford’s attempt to squeeze out minor­ity share­hold­ers by with­hold­ing dividends. Social his­tor­i­ans learn the com­pet­ing explan­a­tions for rais­ing employee wages (sta­bil­ising labour turnover or help­ing to gen­er­ate a con­sumer cul­ture by giv­ing work­ers enough spare cash to buy their very own new Model T). Soci­olo­gists might occa­sion­ally these days come across Huw Beynon’s exam­in­a­tion of indus­trial struggles around the Ford pro­duc­tion line in Liv­er­pool in the late 1960s, and would see the dur­ab­il­ity of Ford’s pro­duc­tion line as a way of organ­ising work. Eco­nomic soci­olo­gists from the late 1970s onwards have used Ford (and its decline) as short-hand for the shift to a new ‘post-Fordist’ mode of pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion: No longer ‘any col­our as long as it’s black’. Instead, any col­our you like (almost – the Ford Fiesta comes in just 10 col­ours). In a post-Fordist world, the fact­ory responds dir­ectly to the cash register. The story of the Ford Motor Com­pany illus­trates mar­ket ideo­lo­gies, glob­al­isa­tion and inter­con­nec­tions of pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion effectively.

And the new Ford­ism? Well, San­tos has left the US army and gone to work for Ford. San­tos checks how much work a body can man­age on the pro­duc­tion line. How many tyres can he unload in the heat before he col­lapses? Can he turn far enough to pick up that tool? Does that hurt? How long can he work for? But don’t worry, this San­tos isn’t hav­ing his phys­ical lim­its tested in some hot maquiladora. San­tos isn’t a per­son. San­tos is cyborg: soft­ware given human form to pro­duce a “dynamic eval­u­ation” of what sort of strain a per­son would be able to take. Under­stand­ing strain, say the research team at the Uni­ver­sity of Iowa, lessens the risk of injury to assembly line work­ers, and improves efficiency.

The body is mod­elled, its joint flex­ib­il­ity meas­ured, its strength assessed and quan­ti­fied. The fleshy mater­i­al­ity of a body is trans­posed into data, data, data. And in the end this will change the exper­i­ence of work­ing on the line. It will stand­ard­ise work sched­ules and restrict move­ment — because sci­ence will have gen­er­ated the best way of doing work. And I’m all in favour of sav­ing strain and lessen­ing dam­age. But I’m not quite sure this is what San­tos will do; Santos-data enhances Taylor­ism; it treats the body as a machine and makes no allow­ances for what it is to be a work­ing man on that line. To be tired one day, to feel.