Re: <nettime> Driverless cars, pilotless planes -- will there be jobs left fo...

[Flick Harrison <flick@flickharrison.com>]

On 2013-05-27, at 5:19  , Newmedia@aol.com wrote:

> Why do you think that this "class" or, if you will, those who fancy
> themselves to be the "post-modern priests" (as reflected by much of the
> conversation on this list over the past 15+ years) could possibly help
> provide "social order"?

Mark, I think you are pointing to a fringe element within this class he is
talking about (not "promoting").  Nettime hardly represent the entire
intellectual class.  To say it out loud is to laugh heartily!

According to StatsCan, there are 1,172,300 people employed in "educational
and related services" in Canada.

I think he is referring, for instance, to the schoolteachers who have
control of kids' minds and bodies 30 hours per week for the 12 years of
their school lives, then professors for another four... imbuing them with a
(protestant?) work ethic, an irrational attitude of submission to
authority, a sense of their place within the social machine, and a set of
specific skills to help them advance and survive within the current
structure, i.e. a self-interest in maintaining the status quo.

Then there is the entertainment / news nexus, which teaches us our roles
and aspirations within the social order.  Be a rock star, vote, make
friends on facebook, mow your lawn, fall in love and get married, etc.
This is a large powerful class, a multi-billion dollar industry.

I'd definitely include sport in this.  Learning to compete, dominate, and
even a certain concept of teamwork and dedication, self-improvement... but
also encouraging irrational attachment to geographic categories.

(Ha ha, I looked this up and it is hardly as powerful in Canada of course,
only 580,000 people but still - ahem - significantly larger than the
Nettime list).

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is public administration - the
military, police, tax collectors etc - surely as vital to the social order
as anyone.  Hardly thinkers - they add up to just over a million folks.

So these maintainers of the social order, in Canada today, make up 2.8
million in a labour force of 15M.  That's almost 18% of the workers!
Hardly something to leave out of any vision of the future.

Should we add healthcare & social services (1.7M), hardly something in
which robots will (or should) replace humans?  Hmm... perhaps robot
surgeons would actually be better but cyborgism would be as far as I would
want nursing to go...

FYI, these numbers come from

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/labr71a-eng.htm



-- 
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http://www.flickharrison.com

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