Labor organization with the express aim of putting an end to Surveillance Capitalism.
Google and Facebook can’t withstand a sustained disruption of their workforce, which is why they spend so much time paying lip service to social issues. They have to create a constant illusion of concern for rights and justice to prevent their employees from actually demanding them.
> Labor organization with the express aim of putting an end to Surveillance Capitalism.
The article is talking about the extensive surveillance of an authoritarian government that heads a planned economy. What does it have to do with capitalism?
Regulatory capture is a dominant force in western capitalism. To the extent that is “planning” the economy, the article could be talking about the US. We certainly have a more extensive surveillance apparatus.
From what I can tell China keeps most of its oppression inside its borders, at least compared to the US.
Look up forced labor in immigrant prisons, or the 1,000,000 current cholera cases in Yemen / estimated 7,000,000 victims of famine coming soon — the US is actively working to expand that humanitarian disaster as you read this.
Also there are 100,000’s of legal immigrants we’re planning to send back to failed economies and war zones. All of that is happening today. If you go back a decade for more context, you can add torturing civilians to death, establishing narco states, etc, etc.
I was going to add “funding terrorism” to my list of past events, but I just remembered we’re actually in the middle of active military strikes that are meant to help Al Qaeda ground forces.
All of these violations of basic human rights were very profitable to campaign donors.
To make it worse, from what I can tell, some members of our congress think it is appropriate to let the president replace the head of the FBI with a yes-man specifically to block an investigation into the president’s ties with organized crime and foreign powers. That will give him some degree of legal impunity, and also control of a massive domestic surveillance apparatus (much of which consists of commercial entities).
How did this happen? Trump hired a foreign-owned company (Cambridge Analytica) to use the tools of surveillance capitalism to squeak through the electoral college with a record-low percentage of the popular vote.
Sorry for the long-winded answer, but that roughly summarizes the state of survelliance capitalism in 2018, and what it has to do with the article.
Labor organization is one option, that I think is widely unattractive to this industry.
What about Labor Disorganization. Simply stop working in "the industry". Simply stop accepting ego-stroking emails from recruiters. Simply stop playing their shitty game. Quit, quit, quit.
Stop buying new shit. Pay down your debts. Get away from consumption & move towards genuine ownership of the means of our own production.
Use some fucking bitcoins and stop paying taxes to a corrupt and oppressive regime.
Agreed. But the hard problem is "How do you sell tech workers on labor organization being necessary".
The whole culture depends on pampering and aggrandizing tech workers as individual heroes for whom collective action would only hold them back. You have to overthrow the entire mainstream worldview about employment in tech before you can get a foothold on that front.
"Drier", eh? I've seen them. I aspire one day to own such a thing :) A little over 50% of UK households have one, compared to 85% in the US, so they're common but by no means ubiquitous.
Could you please elaborate on why washing your stuff inside out helps? I would think what's inside rubs against the other side of the inside, and wears out just the same.
Assuming a heterogenous mix of clothes where some of them have external features that are more damaging to other clothes in a washer, and some have external features more prone to damage, inside-out helps even with front-loaders.
Of course, much of this can be addressed by separating different types of garments, but that can be a lot less resource and time efficient to do really well.
Washing inside out doesn't help with front loading machines. Top loaders with agitators will damage the fabric though, and washing inside out will help there.
had never thought about that - I've lived in Japan for 14 years where we hang dry, and yes, I have some pretty old stuff that is still in fine condition
That you've so internalized this oppressive ideology as natural or just is why I imagine people like Schifter feel so hopeless in the face of their circumstances.
Perhaps think on this before dismissing another's life so glibly.
No, I've just done a lot of CBT. Killing yourself for a chance at a NYT article is flawed thinking, plain and simple.
I graduated at 2009, after the recession, with a degree that wasn't particularly useful. I was unemployed for a long time, but I figured out how to lower my standards, get something to survive on, and then use that foundation as an opportunity to retrain myself. It's hard, but it's not impossible, and millions of people take new jobs that are in different fields.
People are angry at your tone, but you’re correct. The evidence shows that disproportionate gender representation in STEM is the product of social conditioning, not anything innate:
I often see debates here about how tech workers should or shouldn’t organize because they’re too highly paid, etc. But what if they organized to protect something more simple, like warehouse workers fundamental humanity?
I understand that people have had different experiences working on the tech side of Amazon, some great, some terrible. And yet I would hope that we can all look at this and say “this isn’t something I’d want for myself, my family, or my friends. This isn’t how you should treat people.”
Amazon is more likely to respond to people on the AWS team pushing pack in a concerted fashion than the warehouse workers they’ve already shown themselves to see as disposable
Organizing to protect someone other than yourselves sounds more like a political party.
That would be a reason to join the Democrats, Greens, Socialists, lefty Libertarians, or Communists, and a reason to avoid the righty Libertarians, Republicans, and Constitutionalists.
Most likely he was cast aside so Google can cozy up better with the Trump administration. Schmidt was close with the Clinton campaign, which Trump himself noted when they met:
I think he was on his way out to a post in the Clinton administration as Google’s man on the inside. He’s mentioned his political ambitions in several interviews/profiles.
When that didn’t pan out, they didn’t see much use in keeping him around, especially in light of Trump’s penchant for grudges.
Suggesting, as that article does, that dating outside your marriage "in the age of #MeToo and the spotlight on sexual harassment in the workplace, might be problematic for Alphabet" is a heck of a leap. Leading a possibly non-monogamous lifestyle is sexual harrassment/assault? Wow.
I don't necessarily agree but or at all but the downvotes have made this alternative opinion too light to read. Chill out people.
Google isn't some benevolent entity. They've recently been on a hiring spree for Republican lobbyists (which most here consider much more evil than democrats). Personally I think both parties are not that different.
>Personally I think both parties are not that different.
It frustrates me greatly to see comments like this. It's worth taking a moment to even briefly skim the official platforms of the two major parties. They are profoundly different on a enormous range of substantive issues and policies.
Perhaps there are some issues on which the two parties agree, and certainly there are many political positions which neither party represents. That hardly means that the two parties are "not that different."
That's true for many issues like taxes, entitlements, gun control, immigration, healthcare, abortion, environment, etc.
However, it probably fair to say both parties have most candidates skewed to the middle on many of those issues. Lining up strongly with the party on all of those things doesn't win elections usually. And it's also fair to say both parties have members that will betray those base positions for wealth or power.
I can see why someone would call them similar based on frustration with a two party system that rewards moderates.
I kind of agree, in the sense that they are similarly ethical/reasonable. Their platforms couldn't be more different, but I don't see one party being evil and corrupt and the other party being good, which is what often seems to be the opinion online.
It's not about policies. Policies are entirely different but equally self serving.
I'm astounded that there are blacks living in ghettos but Nancy Pelosi shuts Govt down for people who are pondered to by speaking Spanish but paraded as having known no other culture and assimilated.
I don’t mind the downvotes or anything, but it struck me as strange that on the same day that it’s reported Google is pursuing partnerships with an entity as corrupt and demonstrably awful as the Saudi regime, people see this as outside the range of possibility.
Are you serious? Why can't it be that the CEO under performed and couldn't manage their increasing costs to pay Apple and Mozilla. Also, that they can't seem to sell consumer electronics unless they are low margin phones?
Because Schmidt isn't the CEO. (note that I also don't really think its politically motivated either, but that's certainly more likely than thinking that Alphabet is underperforming).
Dakuten(what you call “dots over letters”) are used to modify the way consonants are pronounced, not for emphasis, e.g to turn the character for “Ka”(カ) into “Ga”(ガ).
And the usage of katakana in the way the parent describes isn’t “tiring.” It follows almost the exact same pattern as words are italicized in English, where a word or phrase is represented differently from the surrounding text. Less common/standardized, but not tiring.
EDIT:
My bad on the bouten/dakuten confusion. Apologies.
As @chch mentions, the parent probably meant bouten/etc. I couldn't find an English article on it, but the Japanese Wikipedia page has examples and some cool CSS styling info that's related:
As for katakana, it really does depend. For common or short words, people usually don't have a problem, but if you throw a whole katakana sentence at a Japanese person they will often stumble and reading speed noticably decreases.
Their point about katakana was also correct - normally a word is either written in katakana or it isn't, regardless of emphasis. Using katakana for emphasis happens but it's not common, and would get tiresome very quickly.
Google and Facebook can’t withstand a sustained disruption of their workforce, which is why they spend so much time paying lip service to social issues. They have to create a constant illusion of concern for rights and justice to prevent their employees from actually demanding them.