I know, I know. I almost feel like I should apologize to my kids — when we started having them we had no idea their prospects would be so diminished. And mine are relatively fortunate. *sigh*
Absolute truth here. The defining revolution was the internet, and going from analogue to digital, and it has happened. Many so-called innovations we see today are at best tweaks, some of them comical – the WeWork guy, after crashing and burning, is “innovating” by becoming a landlord – and some of them tragic – self-driving cars that kill people: oops, still a few bugs to work out.
Obviously, new and better tech developments will come down the pike but the seismic shift that propelled people into new and better careers and improved existing careers has already occurred. There is simply not the societal mobility possible under late capitalism that existed even a couple of decades ago.
Eh. I'm not sure tech can be blamed out of context for much. About the only thing unique to it's a bunch of learning curves.
That is to say, you can't take it's downside out of the context of an ever more extractive economy and the corrupted state that allows and empowers that.
For example, crypto is tied more to an enfeebled state and decadent society than it is to "tech".
Radical as the iPhone is, it's essentially just a tool. If there's a problem with it, it's how it's used by people, not what it is.
Aug 17, 2022·edited Aug 17, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
What I remember is what was heralded as the potential of tech, freeing people from drudgery. Though I'm a fogey it now appears to me the drudgery has been built into the system. Even the hope of changing the system may not eliminate the drudgery. But we could do some things to ameliorate some of the drudgery if it weren't for attitudes held in spite of evidence.
I got in on the (FAR more localized) software dev boom in the 1980s. (Charlottesville, VA. Yeah, them days ain’t coming back.) Now I have to do two tech jobs to keep up. For once I am not being snide
I can’t speak to most of the occupations you’re discussing, but in the medical area, starting in the 1930s and advancing rapidly in the later 20th and early 21st centuries, it became increasingly possible to successfully treat illness and injury. The contrast between what my doctor dad had to work with when he started out, what was available to me in the 70’s and what we have now is astounding. I readily admit that sanitation and immunizations had the biggest impact - refrigerators, toilets and vaccines save lives! But the frustration of having only sympathy to offer patients with infections, cancer or heart disease has morphed into more procedures and medications than anyone (at least me) can keep track of. And the despised electronic medical record has made it possible for front line practitioners to review much if not all of a new patient’s medical history - no one misses the days when you had to request a medical record and wait hours if not days to get your hands on it. There’s a lot fucked up about the American medical nonsystem, from insurance to hierarchy, but technology is not one. I close by pointing out that all this technology has made it hard, if not neglectful, to practice in the little solo office of yore, much less from home.
Aug 17, 2022·edited Aug 17, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
Remember how tech was always going to eliminate drudgery and give us all more free time (see the many starry-eyed MST3K shorts from the 1950s and ‘60s, like the one about the Seattle World’s Fair)? Weird how the free time and benefits of productivity never came. The profits just flowed upwards while wages stagnated, and to compensate we got Amazon, Über, and DoorDash with which we could exploit our fellow workers.
Yes. OK, I just woke up too... <rant>The cynical gatekeepers of NewTech c. 2022 are keeping innovation, roll-out and distribution of anything that could be people-powered as you pointed out during the first tech boom(s) firmly in their grasp so no newbs can get a piece of that juicy pie anymore. It's much like before moving type/the Gutenberg press all over again, the 'elites' have it on lockdown and unless you're part of that gang all any tech-addicts can do is twiddle their thumbs and wait for this week's built-in obsolescence to frustrate and complicate life for 'us down here.' It really is a race to the bottom; when you said 'Tech is not making new opportunities; it’s making doordashers' I said PREACH out loud like a good Gen Xer. All anyone can really do now to get ahead on those platforms is try to get monetized... and the cycle continues. The entire concept of a people-powered high-tech democracy is six feet under. </rant>
I'd been working in warehousing and physical distribution for nearly 25 years when the Y2K crisis allowed me to turn a hobbyist's interest in computers and networks into a 2nd career in IT. They were so desperate for bodies that anyone who didn't run screaming at the sight of a command prompt could get hired, and luckily for me, my experience went back to the days when Windows was essentially a menu system running on top of DOS.
So I just can't understand why kids today can't simply invent a time machine and go back to when that sort of opportunity still existed. No initiative, I guess.
I don't really have any strong opinions about this today . Everyone seems to be making valid points . Of course, especially Roy. I'll probably feel differently tomorrow but by then the moving finger, having writ, will have moved on.As it were.
I did have a conversation with a co-worker the other day that might be pertinent. She was complaining about the hours - one week there's hardly any work and the next 3 weeks they expect everyone to work 12-hour days. I said" well Karen,"( her name really is Karen)" That's just agriculture. 6000 years ago we'd probably be squatting along the banks of the Nile, planting rice in the muddy water hoping the crocodiles didn't get us, bitching to one another about how we were going to "learn to carve hieroglyphics and then by Isis, we'd be farting through silk"
I guess it's like Bob Dylan said
" we always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view."
My first thought on reading this was Ezra Klein (and "Ezra Klein" is usually NOT my first thought on ANYTHING). Made a name for himself in the early days when blogging was a free-for-all and anyone who could reliably produce content on a daily basis could rise to the top, parlayed that into a big following on Twitter, now bringing in the big bucks on Substack.
How would that work for a youngster wanting to break into the biz now? It's an attention-based economy, and a couple of billion people are screaming for your attention. It probably helps to be really hot, other than that, youngster, I got nothin'.
The Luddites get a bad name: they broke into factories & destroyed machinery not because they were scared of technological innovation, but because they knew those machines meant the end of their jobs & their livelihoods, their claim to societal regard (however puny that claim). In Capital Vol. I, Marx shows how these machines drastically reduced the cost of their labor-power to the capitalist, & so would impoverish the working class.
Information tech was no different, even if it transformed the commodity into abstract data. The sort of tech-gaming, gee-whizz-get-rich schemery that our Host observes above was just a distraction from the widescale alienation to come. Those fucked-up chickens have come home to roost at last — & here we are ready to lose all the benefits the labor movement earned for us: minimum wage, 40-hour work weeks, weekends, medical benefits, safe working conditions, & yes upward social mobility.
I know, I know. I almost feel like I should apologize to my kids — when we started having them we had no idea their prospects would be so diminished. And mine are relatively fortunate. *sigh*
Absolute truth here. The defining revolution was the internet, and going from analogue to digital, and it has happened. Many so-called innovations we see today are at best tweaks, some of them comical – the WeWork guy, after crashing and burning, is “innovating” by becoming a landlord – and some of them tragic – self-driving cars that kill people: oops, still a few bugs to work out.
Obviously, new and better tech developments will come down the pike but the seismic shift that propelled people into new and better careers and improved existing careers has already occurred. There is simply not the societal mobility possible under late capitalism that existed even a couple of decades ago.
Eh. I'm not sure tech can be blamed out of context for much. About the only thing unique to it's a bunch of learning curves.
That is to say, you can't take it's downside out of the context of an ever more extractive economy and the corrupted state that allows and empowers that.
For example, crypto is tied more to an enfeebled state and decadent society than it is to "tech".
Radical as the iPhone is, it's essentially just a tool. If there's a problem with it, it's how it's used by people, not what it is.
What I remember is what was heralded as the potential of tech, freeing people from drudgery. Though I'm a fogey it now appears to me the drudgery has been built into the system. Even the hope of changing the system may not eliminate the drudgery. But we could do some things to ameliorate some of the drudgery if it weren't for attitudes held in spite of evidence.
"mild downfall to goose the tension in the second act, followed by a big comeback"
As succinct as can be, and as true...
Back to work, boyo – those pizza boxes won't fold themselves!
I got in on the (FAR more localized) software dev boom in the 1980s. (Charlottesville, VA. Yeah, them days ain’t coming back.) Now I have to do two tech jobs to keep up. For once I am not being snide
I can’t speak to most of the occupations you’re discussing, but in the medical area, starting in the 1930s and advancing rapidly in the later 20th and early 21st centuries, it became increasingly possible to successfully treat illness and injury. The contrast between what my doctor dad had to work with when he started out, what was available to me in the 70’s and what we have now is astounding. I readily admit that sanitation and immunizations had the biggest impact - refrigerators, toilets and vaccines save lives! But the frustration of having only sympathy to offer patients with infections, cancer or heart disease has morphed into more procedures and medications than anyone (at least me) can keep track of. And the despised electronic medical record has made it possible for front line practitioners to review much if not all of a new patient’s medical history - no one misses the days when you had to request a medical record and wait hours if not days to get your hands on it. There’s a lot fucked up about the American medical nonsystem, from insurance to hierarchy, but technology is not one. I close by pointing out that all this technology has made it hard, if not neglectful, to practice in the little solo office of yore, much less from home.
“someone coming out of that experience with some of its glittering prizes”
Now I have the Simple Minds song “Glittering Prize” stuck in my head.
Remember how tech was always going to eliminate drudgery and give us all more free time (see the many starry-eyed MST3K shorts from the 1950s and ‘60s, like the one about the Seattle World’s Fair)? Weird how the free time and benefits of productivity never came. The profits just flowed upwards while wages stagnated, and to compensate we got Amazon, Über, and DoorDash with which we could exploit our fellow workers.
Yes. OK, I just woke up too... <rant>The cynical gatekeepers of NewTech c. 2022 are keeping innovation, roll-out and distribution of anything that could be people-powered as you pointed out during the first tech boom(s) firmly in their grasp so no newbs can get a piece of that juicy pie anymore. It's much like before moving type/the Gutenberg press all over again, the 'elites' have it on lockdown and unless you're part of that gang all any tech-addicts can do is twiddle their thumbs and wait for this week's built-in obsolescence to frustrate and complicate life for 'us down here.' It really is a race to the bottom; when you said 'Tech is not making new opportunities; it’s making doordashers' I said PREACH out loud like a good Gen Xer. All anyone can really do now to get ahead on those platforms is try to get monetized... and the cycle continues. The entire concept of a people-powered high-tech democracy is six feet under. </rant>
I'd been working in warehousing and physical distribution for nearly 25 years when the Y2K crisis allowed me to turn a hobbyist's interest in computers and networks into a 2nd career in IT. They were so desperate for bodies that anyone who didn't run screaming at the sight of a command prompt could get hired, and luckily for me, my experience went back to the days when Windows was essentially a menu system running on top of DOS.
So I just can't understand why kids today can't simply invent a time machine and go back to when that sort of opportunity still existed. No initiative, I guess.
I don't really have any strong opinions about this today . Everyone seems to be making valid points . Of course, especially Roy. I'll probably feel differently tomorrow but by then the moving finger, having writ, will have moved on.As it were.
I did have a conversation with a co-worker the other day that might be pertinent. She was complaining about the hours - one week there's hardly any work and the next 3 weeks they expect everyone to work 12-hour days. I said" well Karen,"( her name really is Karen)" That's just agriculture. 6000 years ago we'd probably be squatting along the banks of the Nile, planting rice in the muddy water hoping the crocodiles didn't get us, bitching to one another about how we were going to "learn to carve hieroglyphics and then by Isis, we'd be farting through silk"
I guess it's like Bob Dylan said
" we always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view."
or like David Byrne said " Same as it ever was."
“I’m not sure how many people over forty know this. But I bet everyone under forty does.”
I know it now. THANKS, SLEEPY JOE!
My first thought on reading this was Ezra Klein (and "Ezra Klein" is usually NOT my first thought on ANYTHING). Made a name for himself in the early days when blogging was a free-for-all and anyone who could reliably produce content on a daily basis could rise to the top, parlayed that into a big following on Twitter, now bringing in the big bucks on Substack.
How would that work for a youngster wanting to break into the biz now? It's an attention-based economy, and a couple of billion people are screaming for your attention. It probably helps to be really hot, other than that, youngster, I got nothin'.
The Luddites get a bad name: they broke into factories & destroyed machinery not because they were scared of technological innovation, but because they knew those machines meant the end of their jobs & their livelihoods, their claim to societal regard (however puny that claim). In Capital Vol. I, Marx shows how these machines drastically reduced the cost of their labor-power to the capitalist, & so would impoverish the working class.
Information tech was no different, even if it transformed the commodity into abstract data. The sort of tech-gaming, gee-whizz-get-rich schemery that our Host observes above was just a distraction from the widescale alienation to come. Those fucked-up chickens have come home to roost at last — & here we are ready to lose all the benefits the labor movement earned for us: minimum wage, 40-hour work weeks, weekends, medical benefits, safe working conditions, & yes upward social mobility.
Bye bye