Reader V observes:
“Almost any high-tech product can be produced outside of the First World… And low-tech products can be made anywhere. “
Today, things are not about making products any longer. That’s Fordism speaking, so let’s just let it go. The 21-st century will be about Big Data, handling information, processing data flows, quantitative methods, that kind of stuff. And people who can hop on that wave and ride it will make out like bandits. Also, people who can manipulate data, make something out of it. But there are very very few of them, which is why there is such a higher ed boom in the US.
This is why Windows 8 and equivalents are coming in so heavily. Windows 8 separates those who will handle data and those who will be excluded from any form of competency in this area. The opportunities to be a completely clueless consumer of technology who can only buy but not make, change or control are growing.
The creators of Windows 8 and Co are drawing a magic circle around themselves by schooling everybody into consuming and never daring to try to join their ranks of data handlers.
As Zygmunt Bauman has pointed out, we are arriving in a highly fluid state of modernity. People who are clinging to the desire for steady employment and permanent place of living are being left behind by the new system. This system is in the process of formation right now, but already those who want high-paying careers know that a CV showing you worked in the same place for 14 years condemns you on the job market. In my profession, people who got all of their degrees at the same place are valued very poorly. It used to be that employers looked at such CVs as a sign of a person’s stability and reliability. But that’s Fordism, it’s dead.
Clarissa's Blog 
“Windows 8 separates those who will handle data and those who will be excluded from any form of competency in this area. ”
I’m assuming that what you mean is that those who accept Windows 8 are makring themselves as future sheep readying themselves for the shearing?
“will make out like bandits”
Was the word choice intentional? Because my impression is that post-Fordism will essentially be like the USSR bandit wars, just on a worldwide scale and never ending…..
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“I’m assuming that what you mean is that those who accept Windows 8 are makring themselves as future sheep readying themselves for the shearing?”
– Exactly.
“Was the word choice intentional? Because my impression is that post-Fordism will essentially be like the USSR bandit wars, just on a worldwide scale and never ending…..”
– Our bandit wars were about a grab for resources in the absence of anything we could call “a state.” In late capitalist societies, all of the resources have been firmly appropriated a long time ago and the state is super strong.
The desire to look for analogies to what is happening in the past and in other parts of the world is understandable. However, what is going on – this massive, enormous transformation – is challenging precisely because it’s new. It needs to be understood and analyzed in its own right.
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From a recent article by Douthat: “When economists look ahead to the possibilities awaiting our grandchildren, they often see this divide widening even further, as the digital economy delivers rich rewards to certain kinds of highly educated talent, while revolutions in robotics eliminate many of today’s low-skilled, low-wage jobs. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/douthat-leaving-work-behind.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0”
I hate Douthat but when one is right, one is right.
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“But it’s also possible to argue that as a rich, post-scarcity society, we shouldn’t really care that much about whether the poor choose to work. The important thing is just making sure they have a decent standard of living, full stop, and if they choose Keynesian leisure over a low-paying job, that’s their business.”
– This is exactly where the whole thing is heading. An enormous class of people will not have a place in the highly technological world of advanced digital technologies. Nobody is going to starve, of course, because late capitalist societies don’t allow for that. But this will be a very large group of people excluded from any possibility of work. And that is called marginalization.
Douthat is still an idiot because he tries to link all this to Obamacare in a very plodding, stupid way. This is obviously not about a single piece of legislation in one country. This is part of a huge global trend.
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Of course, once a fool always a fool. Here is how the article ends: “Both “rugged individualist” right-wingers and more communitarian conservatives tend to see work as essential to dignity, mobility and social equality, and see its decline as something to be fiercely resisted.”
The doofus doesn’t offer any suggestions as to how this trend can be “fiercely resisted” (other than repealing Obamacare.) The idea that the ONLY path to resisting this phenomenon is by offering free, high-quality education to huge numbers of people. There is simply no other answer.
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With all due respect towards free higher education – I do not quite see how it will help. Yes, the children of the poor will have equal chances to enter the data-processing middle class. (At least in theory, if we assume that otherwise the society will be purely meritocratic, and hiring decision will not based on corruption or patronage or simple people knowing each other.) And this is a good thing, of course. However, this will not result in the increase of the total number of middle-class data-processing jobs. The massive welfare Windows 8 underclass simply will not generate enough demand.
Next, let’s not be vulgar Marxists, so let’s recognize the importance of psychological factors along with economic ones. Having access to free education is not enough. Once the welfare windows 8 underclass becomes massive enough, and belonging to this underclass becomes more socially acceptable and less stigmatized, there will be more people who simply can not aspire to anything else because they do not know anything else, because everyone around them belonged to welfare class for generations.
Then, I am not entirely sure that the relatively small data-processing middle-class will be willing to support increasing Windows 8 welfare class via taxes. And the free higher education of top of that… That’s why my OPTIMISTIC prediction involves some begrudging but peaceful drift towards some sort of Communist system. Which in this case will not be officially called “Communist”, it will be capitalist system with some 80-90% level of taxes. 🙂 🙂 And more realistic scenario involves massive free-for-all shootout. Which will probably be won by NRA folks. I am hoping to survive thanks to skills acquired in the SU. 🙂
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What is the deal with Windows 8?
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It doesn’t even have a Start menu button! You can’t even turn off your own damn computer! It decides when it wants to shut down on its own (usually when you are in the midst of something important.) You have no control over the damn thing! I hate it!
OK, I feel better now.
It isn’t just me, though. People who are in IT hate it even more and for the same reason.
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What is it for if it is this unusable — for whom have they designed it, for what use?
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For people who use 3-4 apps and don’t want to go further than that. The screen features your apps, you touch the icon with your finger, and the app opens. It’s super simple. A computer becomes like a TV set. You sit and stare at what you are given.
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The automated-ness is why I always hated the Mac but Windows has gone that way, too, since the 90s. In the office they do not allow Linux and I am thinking of switching to Mac when I can.
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Oh, I see … it is what my father hoped the Mac would be.
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What is this office in which the don’t allow Linux?
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The following is my experience of trying to use my dad’s Windows 8 laptop which doesn’t have a touchscreen.
UGH…
1. Turning the computer on and off is a multistep process which takes longer even with keystrokes.
2. The Metro screen is puke inducingly bright.
3. It requires you to tie itself to an MSN account. I have an MSN account but I don’t think their online apps are that great. And I don’t necessarily want my MSN info populating my computer.
–Trying to read a document online from the MSN account makes the computer demand that you download Office 365 — which it doesn’t in Windows 7 and below.
4. If you want to use a browser the normal way (with tabs) you’ve got to go to the desktop and the system keeps trying to take you to the metro screen.
5. OMG, this switching back and forth makes the laptop s-l-o-w.
6. I haven’t even tried to use any work programs yet.
7. I haven’t seen a touchscreen on which you’d want to do serious typing or work and I’ve used Ipads…
Yeah, I’m a Luddite. I’m not what Mike calls a power user, but since I like to read multiple sites at once, open up music streaming and write, it pisses me off.
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” It requires you to tie itself to an MSN account. I have an MSN account but I don’t think their online apps are that great. And I don’t necessarily want my MSN info populating my computer”
– Yes, yes. I hate that.
‘If you want to use a browser the normal way (with tabs) you’ve got to go to the desktop and the system keeps trying to take you to the metro screen”
– It’s like the stupid thing has a life of its own. And I suspect it’s doing things I don’t even know about.
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OK, so it is useless.
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I have that dastardly system (Windows 8), but I am not at all afraid of it. Consider this. Even when I express myself in clear prose, the majority of people cannot seem to “understand” me, because I do not fit into one of their neat categories of identity. So a computer or an impersonal data collection system? Much less so. Besides, I am always changing.
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I’m confident that even Windows 8 cannot defeat a true warrior. I confess, however, that it has reduced me to yelling and throwing objects across a room.
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I now have to versions of skype on my machine — an inferior one and one with a better interface. But it will not let me close the inferior one is I inadvertently open it, so then I have a lot of noise resounding if somebody sends me a series of IMs.
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Windows 8 requires people to start MSN accounts even to access Skype. Horrible system, horrible.
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I agree. and then you can’t sign out because a notice comes up and says you have been signed in — only I signed in through the other version of skype, so I can’t close this one.
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I downloaded Microsoft Word and everything else in the Office 2013 suite from school because my sister’s laptop didn’t come with it. I saw her computer was 64-bit and installed the appropriate version of Office. But when I went to unpack all the files, I was told there was a 32-bit compatibility program running that needed to be uninstalled before I could run a 64-bit program. I went to delete it, and low and behold, it was part of the Windows 8 package that is completely inaccessible. It wasn’t even listed as a program. I jumped through hoops within hoops within hoops just to get her laptop to accept the download. I had that problem trying to install a better antivirus, too. I have never had these problems with any computers before–just the ones that have Windows 8. It’s annoying and time-consuming.
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I’m currently trying to figure out how to get my HP printer to print using Windows 8.1.
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IN Japan you can download apps to your phone that will give you a personal warning if your train is going to be delayed. Your phone can also notify you if you are walking past a store offering discount deals, by using GPS.
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