Hm. I always though the 1950s qualified for that title. As for the 'x-treme work' thing, it is closely tied to the 'x-treme sports' thing - ever noticed how Wired runs stories on various life-threatening sports (e.g. diving to ever deeper depths) with the same over-the-top presentation as the standard articles on the joys of capitalism? The physical, so contemptously discarded in the 1980s, returns as commodity, whose consumption is essential to maintain continuity with the ritual basis of status (particularly for masculinity - various yuppie scum males that I know go on and on about their 'adventures').
Central to these 'x-treme' thingies is the articulation of social relations through rituals of display. Check out 'extreme programming', a new programming methodology (http://www.extremeprogramming.org) which seems to have won converts in the 'open source' field. Central to this methodology is the idea that 2 programmers share one computer - i.e. no more web-surfing, etc. - instead, you get to constantly exist as part of the extreme programming team.
But does this affect all work, or only professionalised work? I don't have any hard data, but I suspect that this 'x-treme' shit is pretty much limited to young professionals. Not that that makes it irrelevant, I'm just pointing out what I think is a limit to this malaise.
As I've said before, how else can you manage a professional besides through identification with the job? There is a flipside, however - if work should be play, but we know that in reality it is not, the question of why work is not play poses itself forcefully. I.e. if the conditions of capital offer us a illusory resolution of a contradiction, does not the very hollowness of that illusion propel the question of work and play to centre stage? I think it does - thus the continued interest in the Situationists, for instance.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844 OpenPGP: 1024D/0517502B : DE5B 6EAA 28AC 57F7 58EF 9295 6A26 6A92 0517 502B