January 16, 2003
On Blog Sisters, Jennifer Balderama wonders what she’s doing with her life. It seems to me that, like the rest of us, she’s living it – as best she can under the circumstances.
Unemployment is rampant. Gambling is out of control for too many people. We are very close to a global war. Violence against women and children is as widespread as ever. Global warming is affecting where certain crops and plants are able to grow. Education budgets are being decimated. “Sophisticated computers, robotics, telecommunications, and other cutting-edge technologies are fast replacing human beings in virtually every sector and industry - from manufacturing, retail, and financial services, to transportation, agriculture, and government.” (quoted from here)
These days, if we have any kind of income, have any people who love us and whom we love, can afford to have computers with Internet access – we are the lucky ones. If we can read and write grammatically, if we are not in great debt, if we have cars that run and rooms without vermin, we are the lucky ones. We are really lucky if we have health insurance and all of our teeth. If we are not overweight and/or depressed, terminally forgetful, hungry, lonely….and on and on and on……
We think we have come so far from “either you eat the bear or the bear eats you,” but maybe we haven’t. Life has always been a dangerous crapshoot with no guarantees.
Living (as most of us here in Blogaria do) among the lucky ones makes it easy to forget that there are more unlucky ones than there are lucky.
Back in the mid-90s, I read Jeremy Rifkin’s The End of Work.
The world, says Rifkin, is fast polarizing into two potentially irreconcilable forces: on one side, an information elite that controls and manages the high-tech global economy; and on the other, the growing numbers of permanently displaced workers, who have few prospects and little hope for meaningful employment in an increasingly automated world…. Rifkin suggests that we move beyond the delusion of retraining for nonexistent jobs. He urges us to begin to ponder the unthinkable - to prepare ourselves and our institutions for a world that is phasing out mass employment in the production and marketing of goods and services. Redefining the role of the individual in a near workerless society is likely to be the single most pressing issue in the decades to come. .. Rifkin says we should look toward a new, post- market era. Fresh alternatives to formal work will need to be devised. New approaches to providing income and purchasing power will have to be implemented.
(Quoted from here.)
In a current update to his original book, Rifkin warns:
The great issue at hand is how to redefine the role of the human being in a world where less human physical and mental labour will be required in the commercial arena. We have yet to create a new social vision and a new social contract powerful enough to match the potential of the new technologies being introduced into our lives. The extent to which we are able to do so, will largely determine whether we experience a new renaissance or a period of great social upheaval in the coming century.
Today, I’m reading Shoshanna Zuboff’s book, The Support Economy: How Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism. (I’m reading it because I’m interested to know what kind of thinking is going on at lucky places and within the active minds of some lucky bloggers and thinkers.)
I’m only a hundred pages into it, but I am already bothered that it seems to be solely from the perspective of the lucky ones – the “consumers and employees,” the ones who will have good enough jobs to have disposable incomes in this brave new information-based economy. “For the new individual” according to Zuboff, “the purpose of consumption is life itself – the acquisition of the time and support necessary to pursue a life of psychological self-determination."
If Rifkin turns out to be right, and things keep going the way they are, it seems to me that we will find ourselves with a large disenfranchised, inadequately educated, and dangerously unemployed underclass; a much much smaller cadre of these self-determined and financially secure “new individuals;" and a bunch of us not-as-lucky ones in the middle who are expected to provide what Zuboff calls “deep support” to help these new individuals “meet the challenges of their intricate lives.”
Of course, Zuboff starts from a place that is optimistic about American capitalism and its ability to adapt to the changing needs and attitudes of consumers. And, of course, I’m neither an economist nor anyone even remotely knowledgeable about the potential of such systems to evolve into more human-friendly constructs.
I’m just a retired government employee, living on a pension and social security, a grandmother worried about the kind of world it will be when her grandson will have to learn how to find a way to eat the bear before the bear eats him.
And, as I surf and read and listen and read and watch, I have a growing feeling that Rifkin’s view of how it will go down is more realistic and accurate than Zuboff’s. But then, again, I haven't yet finished Zuboff's book.
On a related matter, tomorrow (Friday, January 17) at 9 pm EST on PBS (check local listings ) NOW with Bill Moyers takes a look into the digital future of intellectual property and the debate that has pitted private control against the public domain. You can tune in and share your views on the issues by joining the post-broadcast online discussion. I find it helpful to get non-blogger perspectives on these issues every once in a while. :-)
Comments now powered by HaloScan. Click here to read this entry's comments (if any), or to post one of your own.
Old Comments (5)
Gina Giuliano on 17 Jan 2003
Years ago (although it was already somewhat dated by then), I read Zuboff's 1988 book, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power. Since this is intercession, I took some time to "hunt" for my notes on the book.
This was an interesting exercise in itself; packrat that I am, I have boxes and boxes of old diskettes, and a couple of PC relics, where those writings could be.
Paper, supposed to be too impermanent in this digital age, came through in the end. After snapping an endless number of diskettes in A:>, and scanning a few C:>s, there under my desk, in a dusty box of graduate school work, was the print-out.
"Re - Zuboff. What a great book! So interesting. I'm intrigued by her idea that manual labor has no value because we reject things that are physical in nature. Does seem to be true, what with our deoderant loving society. On the other hand, physical labor does have some status to country folks. Not, of course, if you're talking about coal mining, but in some places, the idea of the independent contractor or small business owner has higher value than being a 'wage slave' for a big corporation...
I think the information age is only good for education if we keep reminding ourselves that the machines are merely tools. This is one area I disagree with Zuboff about, even today, when technology's power is increasing. I wonder if it would always have seemed so, to a spectator in a crowd watching the first steam locomotive."
Elaine on 17 Jan 2003
One of the things Zuboff's new book points out is what a very different paradigm from the Industrial Age we're confronting. The invention of the steam engine, the motor car etc. all resulted in more jobs -- manufacturing jobs, management jobs, supervisory jobs. Our age of smart machine technology is having the very opposite effect. But, as far as I've gotten in her book, she hasn't (yet?) really confront that fact. I just don't think that the world's best thinkers have given enough thought to the implications for society of there not being enough jobs. Having been addicted to reading social science fiction since high school, I've been imaginatively transported into various permutations of the kinds of future societies in which there are too many people and not enough resources of any kind, where technology negates opportunities for humans to work, even though humans need to earn a living. I guess that's why the points Rifkin makes seem so important to me. If we move toward some sort of socialist regime in which our basic needs are taken care of by government so that we don't have to pay for food, clothing, and shelter, then what? In some sense, that's where I am: I get money every month and no longer have to work. I can take care of my mother, do my knitting and sewing, read, write, tend my garden, sit around and think, etc. etc. But I doubt if a multitude of people would find that kind of life enough, especially if they were half my age.
I remember reading somewhere that there are two things that one must have to live a satisfactory life: meaningful work and a meaningful relationship. Depending how I look at it, I either have both or neither.
Are smart machines and sophisticated technologies making it harder for humans to have either? Or are they changing the nature of both, and, if so, into what? Will it be better or worse or just different? Is there something we should be doing to make sure it's not worse?
Maybe I need to get a job so that I don't have the time to think so much. Except, of course, there are other people out there who need that job a lot more than I do.
Gina Giuliano on 18 Jan 2003
Elaine,
How's lunch on campus sound? Noon Tuesday - 1/28 - Patroon Room?
Elaine on 18 Jan 2003
Gina -- Let's pencil that in. My former office from State Ed called to see if I would come in and meet with a task force that is trying to continue on where I left off on a project. They need to pick my brain (what's left of it) and I gave them that date as one on which I'd be available. I should hear from them soon and let you know. Where's the closest place for me to park near the Campus Center?
Gina Giuliano on 19 Jan 2003
Elaine,
Sounds good. I think parking is best in the Visitor's lot near the Circle in front of the podium - but let me check & let you know. It's not a terrible walk (but I'm not the best one to ask as I don't drive). If it isn't warmer by then a delay might be wise...