In het teken van de robot, automatisering in Nederland

Workers at glowing terminals in bank data centres, automated assembly lines at Volvo and Philips, control rooms at Hoogovens and Akzo, military flight simulators, and classrooms introducing teachers and hobbyists to the Apple IIe and Commodore 64 appear across this documentary survey of early computerization in the Netherlands. Commissioned by the Rijksmuseum in 1984—shortly after IBM introduced the personal computer to the Dutch market—photographers Michel Pellanders and René de Wit spent two years recording how automation was reshaping factories, offices, laboratories, and everyday life. Their photographs examine the shift from physical labour and manual card indexes to monitoring, coding, and screen-based work, showing both the efficiency of the new technology and the changing relationships between employees, managers, and machines. Published to accompany the exhibition held at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam from March to September 1986, the book combines Pellanders and De Wit's documentary series with essays on labour and technological change by Folkert Catz and Ruud Vreeman.