Between Empowerment & Patronization: 40 Years IT

… a look back by Matthias Melcher + cautionary tale as subtext

In summer semester 1973, I took my first programming course. This is now forty years ago — time for a retrospect. What were the most impressive steps forward?

....Many of the great novelties ignited hopes that were bigger than the reality emerging later. This was especially the case when the first personal homepages promised a big democratizing effect. I dreamt that these (after being registered in the various decentralized branches of a virtual library) would offer me a direct glimpse onto the book-(mark) shelves of scholars across the globe — without mediators, gatekeepers, or pay walls. Then later, RSS seemed to be another try on this any-to-any topology. I should have known that this was at odds with monopolizing interests whose patronization and stultification goes so far....No doubt, these 40 years were exciting.

Between Empowerment and Patronization: 40 Years IT | x28’s new Blog

David Graeber, ‘On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs’ »

David Graeber, ‘On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs’ »:

But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning of not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all of the people whose job it is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.
These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”

…in Strike! Magazine.

How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way … to ensure that rage is directly precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems to be a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A would without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish…

On definitions: Retirement

…what is it? For that matter, what is work? What is your time worth? Is compensation (someone else's valuation) the only way to measure the worth of your time? Validation by others, even those you have no respect for?

These questions I put to myself every time I fill out a form or choke back reaction to statements implying my time is worthless (and thereby of less meaning so I should be happy to be imposed on and exploited). So evocative of attitudes expressed about the Victorian angel of the hearth or 50s homemaker…but implying even less value for also being lazy, old or both. 

I'm in the market for a new term altogether: I'm not retired, I'm _____ …what? Repurposing or reinventing myself. I've used "curator of myself" and rather like it. Retirement is when you get to decide both what your time is worth to you and what to do with it. 

In economics, “retirement” has no definition.  Or rather, it has several definitions, none of which are any good. 

First off, there’s self-defined retirement. When do people say they’re retired? Turns out it depends, and it depends on a lot of things....People can still be working and say they’re retired. People can be out of work and say they’re not retired. As people get older the lines between unemployment and retirement start to blur.

nicoleandmaggie (proprietors of Grumpy Rumblings) continue

Anyhow, this is all to say that we at grumpy rumblings think it is lame ...[to] argue about what the definition of retirement is. There is no technical definition. They don’t own the term.  Nobody really does. Except, of course, the self-defined version, and we social scientists know that the self-defined term means different things to different people. 

And that’s ok.

On definitions: Retirement | Grumpy rumblings of the (formerly!) untenured

#ocTEL, Friday April 5

Another large online course to get lost in and never quite up to speed, literally or figuratively.

Finally found my password, logged in and updated my profile ~ now catching my breath  for reflections and first impressions and exploring the forum. Considering mailbox confusion of the past few days, made worse by a sluggish (uncooperative) computer, multitasking may not be my best strategy.

Mail chaos not withstanding (or forums), I like the atmosphere. The organizer has a good (and realistic) handle on structure/ design, is laid back and neither prescriptive nor worried overmuch about disorder ~ "messy is part of the process." Scott is here. Otherwise, I haven't noticed anyone else I know but may turn out to be wrong. Helen might be too.

I'm trying to read through as many introductions as possible to get a feel for the group, which may be less than realistic. So far there seem's to be a preponderance of IT managers. I'm watching for participants with similar interests. I thought my own were getting clearer and more solid but, yet again, the closer I get or think I am getting, they loose both clarity and substance... as though solidity "melting into air." By the time I get to keyboard or notepad... it's gone, vanished into the mist.

Blood Horses

…Review of John Jeremiah Sullivan's 2004 memoir about his sportswriter father: here because it is not food or local, nor quite places along the way but does relate to work I have done and a significant part of my life that I strangely and perhaps illogically avoid (Welsh Notes and next generation horse/pony pictures excepted).

Sullivan's British publisher, Random House, clearly took note and has now released his first book, Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son, which came out in the States in 2004. It takes just one subject,...Writing a successful book about horses is no easy feat, as Sullivan points out on a couple of occasions. "Beasts do not make good protagonists," he notes early on, "for the simple reason that unless you are younger than 10 or have money riding on their success or failure, it is hard to identify with them fully." Sullivan follows the example of others and weaves in stories of "human beings whose fates run more or less parallel to the track". In his case, it is most prominently his father, Mike Sullivan....Blood Horses also details the journey of thoroughbreds from the Middle East to the west. 

Blood Horses by John Jeremiah Sullivan – review | Books | The Observer

The New Industrial Revolution

A coming wave of robots could redefine our jobs. Will that redefine us? By Jeffrey R. Young

Baxter is a new type of worker, who is having no trouble getting a job these days, even in a tight economy. He's a little slow, but he's easy to train. And companies don't hire him, they buy him—he even comes with a warranty. 

Baxter is a robot' 

....

Still, the question of whether robots are helping or hurting the work force has become a serious policy issue. Georgia Tech's Christensen, the keynote speaker at the trade show and a leading pro-robot spokesman, has argued to the Obama administration that new robot workers can help bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States that have moved overseas.... But he said they "got convinced," and he pointed to a recent move by Apple to move more production of its computers to the United States because automation made it cheap enough. The professor recently helped update a white paper sponsored by the National Science Foundation laying out a "National Robotics Roadmap" for the country 

....

Bledstein said he may write something more about automation and how it has changed the middle class, and he mentioned that he would continue to teach and do research as long as he can. He wants to keep working. He thinks every professional does, as long as the work is meaningful. "People I know who have really retired, they have really deteriorated quickly," he said. "Work is far more than just a practical category. It's fundamental. We need work." 

Read all of The New Industrial Revolution - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Social isolation

…trumps loneliness as early death indicator in old age, according to a new study. Unless being active and connected on social media networks counts to counter physical isolation, I'm toast. Truly screwed, thank you very much. 

Social isolation in old age significantly increases the risk of an early death and outstrips loneliness as a factor associated with mortality, a UK study has found. 

The new findings, published in the journal PNAS, are based on a study of 6,500 men and women aged 52 and older enrolled in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing in 2004, and assessed the participants’ risk of death through to March 2012. 

The study assessed social isolation based on marital status, frequency of contact with family and friends, and participation in community organisations.

Read the rest of Social isolation trumps loneliness as early death indicator in old age