International Workers' Day: twelve factoids to keep REAL meaning in work
or outside it, of course. Your choice.
"International Workers' Day, also known as Labour Day in some countries and often referred to as May Day, is a celebration of labourers and the working classes..."
That is the encyclopaedic definition of today's holiday.
This, is my own tiny contribution to the holiday: some food for thought for the same labourers, including those not blessed with enough spare time and bandwidth to read digital newsletters.
What good is work when many scientists, not hippies, basically say that "starting next Monday [in 2018...], an awfully big lot of people worldwide should really just sit still and smell the roses"?
What chances work has after this year, when everybody and their chatGPT prompt pump out headlines about "Artificial Intelligence" killing jobs, so quickly that none will be left by the time you have finished reading this newsletter?
My first answer to the unavoidable quest for meaning in post-digital work, which will be a recurring theme of this newsletter, is below. Thanks in advance for reading the factoids, and possibly their links too, and letting me know what you think.
ONE: Lots of people already "work only 20 hours/week. The rest is organizational overhead"
TWO: So, the "real reason for the slump in productivity" may indeed be the return to offices
THREE: But more telecommuting? Forget such conspiracies! People cannot telecommute because that would destroy real estate prices, and make poor Bezos cry
FOUR: Artificial Intelligence won't cause Unemployment, because "technology is already illegal in most of the economy"
FIVE: Still, some people use ChatGPT to do more full time jobs...
SIX: ... and English-speaking college students use it to steal the livelihoods of poor ghostwriters in Kenya
SEVEN: In the long run, the future (of work) may be "female (sorry about that ladies)". Except in places that will give jobs to avatars, rather than real women
EIGHT:Is it time to switch from "Made in Italy/USA/Your Country Here" to something like "Made by Humans or Human-Made, and specifically look for it? Anti-AI Labeling all the way down?
NINE: Most people "make their living being mediocre, by definition."
TEN: "With money, poverty is empty of meaning. It's not a judgement on your life and works. It doesn't mean no one likes you, that you're obnoxious or boring". So said the Last Man Who Worked For Money
ELEVEN: The war showed conclusively that, by the scientific organization of production, it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world. Not the war in Ukraine, no: World War 1, one century ago. This whole factoid is a literal quote from Bertrand Russell’s 1935 Essay “In Praise of Idleness”.
TWELVE, but not less important, especially if you have kids thinking to college: avoid at all costs the "dull desperation to keep said kids “marketable".
What do YOU think? Does any of the factoids matches YOUR experience of work? Please tell, share this invitation to do the same, and of course (continues below)…
