Mike Weisman on Tue, 13 Jun 2000 06:40:36 +0200 (CEST) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> The Ideology of Immateriality |
Sorry to have to clarify this for everyone, but what is happening, at least in the US, is at once more complex and less mysterious. Fortunately, its also right in front of your nose for anyone who cares to take their eyes off their laptops for a moment. That great sucking sound you hear is the rush of fairly well educated college graduates flowing into all kinds of jobs in the technology field (very broadly defined) after about twenty years of unemployment or underemployment. Obviously, few of these people have computer science backgrounds because those fields of endeavor didn't even exist ten years ago, much less twenty years. Although some have retrained by taking classes in BASIC or web page design, many are self taught. They are the pool of employees for companies like Microsoft, Oracle, or Amazon, where someone with a Ph.D. in Classical Greek can get a pretty good job if they can write HTML, work a database, or have a real world background like (gasp!) working in a bookstore. Here, in the best of all possible worlds, many of these people held jobs over the last twenty years in a variety of underemployment situations. They worked in bookstores and bistros, carpentry, light construction, ski instruction, taught English at community college, or had a folk music band. When they got sucked up (in income at least) into the techno vortex, they left behind them thousands of jobs in every field of endeavor. The situation is well documented here. Waiters in good restaurants now get paid vacations, health club memberships, and investment plans, because its difficult to find anyone to fill service industry jobs. My carpenter can't work on my project because he is taking his family to Denmark to study energy conservation for a few months. My other carpenter now installs Ethernet networks in homes and doesn't do remodels anymore. The woman that used to cut my hair now works as a network admin. My yoga guru doesn't have time to teach because she builds web pages for the world's largest company. And so on.... But of course it all flows downhill. Anyone interested in work has no problem finding it these days in many areas of the US, and if they are having trouble they can probably move somewhere else. The low end jobs are now paying quite well. My gardener is paid $25 hour, which is more than what I make. It is this second wave effect that has really wiped out unemployment in huge numbers, and it is what will wipe out unemployment in Europe soon. It is not necessary for everyone to go to work for a dot com; only a few have to go to open up new jobs for many more. And I haven't even begun to discuss the growth in the service sector for jobs for people with no time, like picking up dry cleaning and delivering meals... No need to thank me, Mike cisler wrote: > > In my presentation at tulipomania I showed the chart of the kinds of jobs > produced here in Silicon Valley. In absolute numbers they were: computer > engineers, systems analysts, general managers, programmers, janitors, waiters, > guards, ,math/sci engineers, and receptionists. the diagram is here: > http://www.jointventure.org/siliconvalley2010/images/fig5.gif > > That means that the hotbed of innovation is producing few middle class jobs > (except programmer) and lots of service jobs plus tons of temp work, but that's > a whole other trend. > > In other regions I'm sure there are less tech jobs being created and more > service jobs. > > Steve Cisler > > ---------- > >From: Tom_Gray@mitel.com > >To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net > >Subject: Re: <nettime> The Ideology of Immateriality > >Date: Mon, Jun 12, 2000, 12:47 PM > > > > > There have been many claims that the new economy is producing only 'McJobs.' > > However is there any evidence of this. We are experiencing one of the greatest > > booms in historry with an enormous creation on non-inflationary wealth with > > major increases in employment and income. What evidence is there that this is > > marked only by a large incease in the number of minimum wage jobs? > > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net -- Please respond to: Mike Weisman popeye@speakeasy.org _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold