Dr. Future on Tue, 4 Jan 2000 10:12:54 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Dead Futures No.2 "The Knowledge Economy" |
Hey dudes, did anyone catch the "Trial of the 21st Century" on Channel 4 on Sunday night? Two sets of speakers had to debate the motion "This century will make life better, not worse" in front of an audience jury. (Immediately we are hopelessly trapped - how come no one realised that "How can we make life better, not worse" would make more sense? But where would be the fun in that?). Anyway, the middle part was devoted to work in the C21st and quickly centred on the impact of the Knowledge Economy. Some professor called Richard Silva or something took the stand and enthused about how selling information was going to result in more exciting and flexible work through plenty of lively exercise for the mind. But Anita Roddick of the Body Shop was sceptical of its influence. She pointed out that they were all sitting at tables and drinking from glasses and that we still seemed to be living in a world that was full of manufactured physical products. "But they're all made in the Far East now!" replied the prof, "and half of our toys are made in China!". Well, they say that academics never make very good politicians don't they? But it gets better (not worse). Then we had a lady called Pat from a group that researches employment practices speaking for the other side about how working in the information economy was very stressful and frequently offered low pay. She was cross examined by cyber cafe founder Eva Pascoe (looking very stunning in a lilac dress that perfectly complemented her long blond hair, etc, etc) who told her that work in the information industries like at call-centres in Inverness has provided employment for lots of people who had been made redundant from old manufacturing jobs. The researcher replied that work in call-centres was very stressful and that many had a turnover of staff of up to 180%. "But at least they have a job!" exclaimed Pascoe (her icy blue eyes glimmering in the studio lights like limpid pools), "that's better than nothing!" (yes, she said that). All this reminds me of a time I thought we had left behind when people believed that a market based on the trading of intellectual skills would be the logical conclusion of a developing economy. This seemed to be based on the assumptions that a) Manufacturing would soon be left entirely to automated factories so that no tedious human labour would be required, all those dreary service jobs and cleaning chores would be taken over by some combination of robot butlers and general purpose dish washing machines, b) There is something intrinsically superior and more satisfying about work that is carried out through the intellect as opposed to physical labour. No one seemed to expect that what actually happened was a redistribution of new kinds of work along similar lines of social status as before. At the end of the program the audience voted and came to the conclusion that in the C21st we would be having great sex, but that work would be more stressful and society would be more divided than ever. But we would be having great sex though... # 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