PeteM
Diamond
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2002
- Location
- West Coast, USA
I just stumbled across a talk by this guy: Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day: Craig Lambert: 9781619025257: Amazon.com: Books
His main point is that most of us spend several unpaid hours a day doing jobs that someone else used to get paid for.
We've increasingly become our own secretaries (Word), accountants (Quick Books), and travel agents (Expedia). We pump our own gas, pack our own bags and checkout ourselves at the grocery. We even buss our own tables at fast food places while some places are trying to replace the wait staff with tablets. We find our own stuff in stores (or just order online), play bus driver for our kids in many school districts, and maybe dispatch our own taxis (Uber). We're our own product experts and consultants, searching online for answers to everything, with advice either provided for free or paid for by the usual suspects.. Even high tech work isn't exempt. Many of us spend a couple hours now and then as our own IT experts (Googling some error message). We go to doctors mostly for second opinions, having checked our own symptoms first. And in each visit to that doctor, we spend the first 15 minutes in the waiting room as our own data entry clerks.
One of the more telling arguments for me was with "free" services like Facebook, loyalty programs, Twitter etc. Some folks "donate" a couple hours a day on Facebook, liking this, adding friends, and so on.. But it's Zuckerberg that's making the billions. While many of us aren't on things like Facebook, we may sort through MSC 30% promotions, check LinkedIn, or just post to PM. I had an medical experience where a startup wanted my DNA and that of everyone else who had a good response to a cancer drug. The author likens this to the old age of oil extraction. There were these giant pools of oil for the taking; and the main cost was extracting it. Today we have giant pools of consumer information, also worth billions, and the main cost is extracting it. Only this time we and our personal data are the "oil."
I didn't hear various illnesses being discussed by the author, such as dementia, but more and more of us are spending person-years of our lives as unpaid nurses, drivers, form filler-outers, and so on. More unpaid labor. Women, of course, have been complaining of unpaid child-rearing and homemaking labor for years. But not so long ago, a family could live on a single income. These days we need twice as many jobs (both spouses working) to stay even -- with both spouses picking up the upaid labor portions.
All this is a bit different than the do-it-yourself ethic many of us grew up in. When we built or remodeled your own homes WE actually got paid for it in terms of saving tens to even hundreds of thousands of dollars. When we fixed our own cars (back before auto companies thought of themselves as proprietary software companies), we had direct savings. Now, when we toil away wandering through Home Depot, at a self-checkout counter, or in building Facebook's more perfect understanding of the buying habits of 1+ billion people, the rewards flow disproportionately to the owners of the automated systems. Even if the benefits are split 50-50 with the customer, there's still the customer doing the work for free and someone else out of a job.
The point was also made that capable people used to go from jobs in the mail room or as a secretary up the ranks to CEO. What happens when there aren't any mailrooms or secretaries left; just email inboxes we manage (for free) ourselves?
This isn't an anti-technology rant. I don't see us turning back the clock on automation and information systems. They ought to be freeing our time for better things. Is is, however, a question of how do we deal with all those jobs that have disappeared or in the process of disappearing? These jobs aren't coming back, not even in China.
At one level, there's still plenty of work yet to be done. The streets in too many towns have potholes and litter. Pipes, bridges, and schools need replacing. Kids need more attention, earlier in life. There most be a score of high priority do-betters: healthier food, better healthcare, more R&D in dozens of fields, more time with out kids, appliances that don't crap out in 30 days, packages that arrive undamaged, new planets to be discovered, and on and on. Problem is, the average person has neither the time (all that unpaid labor) or the money (the general depression of wages in this new economy) to pay for all that.
So, what's the answer? What do we do in an age of fewer and fewer entry level jobs -- and even knowledge work becoming automated? The glib answers might be "education" or maybe "motivation" but the costs of an education are rising and college grads with average skills may still fall short.
His main point is that most of us spend several unpaid hours a day doing jobs that someone else used to get paid for.
We've increasingly become our own secretaries (Word), accountants (Quick Books), and travel agents (Expedia). We pump our own gas, pack our own bags and checkout ourselves at the grocery. We even buss our own tables at fast food places while some places are trying to replace the wait staff with tablets. We find our own stuff in stores (or just order online), play bus driver for our kids in many school districts, and maybe dispatch our own taxis (Uber). We're our own product experts and consultants, searching online for answers to everything, with advice either provided for free or paid for by the usual suspects.. Even high tech work isn't exempt. Many of us spend a couple hours now and then as our own IT experts (Googling some error message). We go to doctors mostly for second opinions, having checked our own symptoms first. And in each visit to that doctor, we spend the first 15 minutes in the waiting room as our own data entry clerks.
One of the more telling arguments for me was with "free" services like Facebook, loyalty programs, Twitter etc. Some folks "donate" a couple hours a day on Facebook, liking this, adding friends, and so on.. But it's Zuckerberg that's making the billions. While many of us aren't on things like Facebook, we may sort through MSC 30% promotions, check LinkedIn, or just post to PM. I had an medical experience where a startup wanted my DNA and that of everyone else who had a good response to a cancer drug. The author likens this to the old age of oil extraction. There were these giant pools of oil for the taking; and the main cost was extracting it. Today we have giant pools of consumer information, also worth billions, and the main cost is extracting it. Only this time we and our personal data are the "oil."
I didn't hear various illnesses being discussed by the author, such as dementia, but more and more of us are spending person-years of our lives as unpaid nurses, drivers, form filler-outers, and so on. More unpaid labor. Women, of course, have been complaining of unpaid child-rearing and homemaking labor for years. But not so long ago, a family could live on a single income. These days we need twice as many jobs (both spouses working) to stay even -- with both spouses picking up the upaid labor portions.
All this is a bit different than the do-it-yourself ethic many of us grew up in. When we built or remodeled your own homes WE actually got paid for it in terms of saving tens to even hundreds of thousands of dollars. When we fixed our own cars (back before auto companies thought of themselves as proprietary software companies), we had direct savings. Now, when we toil away wandering through Home Depot, at a self-checkout counter, or in building Facebook's more perfect understanding of the buying habits of 1+ billion people, the rewards flow disproportionately to the owners of the automated systems. Even if the benefits are split 50-50 with the customer, there's still the customer doing the work for free and someone else out of a job.
The point was also made that capable people used to go from jobs in the mail room or as a secretary up the ranks to CEO. What happens when there aren't any mailrooms or secretaries left; just email inboxes we manage (for free) ourselves?
This isn't an anti-technology rant. I don't see us turning back the clock on automation and information systems. They ought to be freeing our time for better things. Is is, however, a question of how do we deal with all those jobs that have disappeared or in the process of disappearing? These jobs aren't coming back, not even in China.
At one level, there's still plenty of work yet to be done. The streets in too many towns have potholes and litter. Pipes, bridges, and schools need replacing. Kids need more attention, earlier in life. There most be a score of high priority do-betters: healthier food, better healthcare, more R&D in dozens of fields, more time with out kids, appliances that don't crap out in 30 days, packages that arrive undamaged, new planets to be discovered, and on and on. Problem is, the average person has neither the time (all that unpaid labor) or the money (the general depression of wages in this new economy) to pay for all that.
So, what's the answer? What do we do in an age of fewer and fewer entry level jobs -- and even knowledge work becoming automated? The glib answers might be "education" or maybe "motivation" but the costs of an education are rising and college grads with average skills may still fall short.