{ brad brace } on Wed, 14 Jun 2000 03:00:49 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: [Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> The Ideology of Immateriality |
I don't quite buy-it... Gilded Age 2.0 Once again american society is profoundly imperiled by a yawning chasm between the obscenely wealthy and the chronically overdrawn, between sublime fantasy and sordid reality. (And, your $25/hr Silicon Valley gardener probably _needs that to survive in an inflated, duplicitous market where the average rent (SF) for a 1-bedroom apt is $1900/mo.) /:b On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, Mike Weisman wrote: > 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... The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG Project >>>> since 1994 <<<< + + + serial ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/b/bbrace + + + eccentric ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/bb/bbrace + + + continuous ftp://ftp.teleport.com/users/bbrace + + + hypermodern ftp://ftp.rdrop.com/pub/users/bbrace + + + imagery ftp://ftp.pacifier.com/pub/users/bbrace News://alt.binaries.pictures.12hr ://a.b.p.fine-art.misc Mailing-list: listserv@netcom.com / subscribe 12hr-isbn-jpeg Reverse Solidus: http://www.teleport.com/~bbrace/bbrace.html http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net { brad brace } <<<< bbrace@netcom.com >>>> ~finger for pgp _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold