Do you have a website for your products? I would be interested in seeing your work. REH
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Monday, July 12, 2010 3:10 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: More dismal stuff Keith Hudson wrote: > But the basic nature of economic transactions remains exactly the same as > then -- and probably the same as in 75,000BC when sea-shell necklaces were > traded over long distances. Only the extent that getting food is the same to day (eating a hamburger at McD's is the same as eating a rabbit you killed with a stick) or that shelter is the same today (a 70-storey condo keeps the rain off just like a grass hut did) as 75,000 BC. C'mon, Keith, nothing that humans do today is the same as it was, say, 12,000 years ago -- before Sumer -- except biology itself. To the extent that your allegation has any merit whatsoever, it's so simplistic that it's very nearly vacuous. Most entities that engage in trade today aren't even people, they're corporate entities and most of the people of which these entities are composed have never seen the material objects or substances traded and know virtually nothing about them but their prices. For such people, the "real" world is paper, computer data, hand-shake deals and legal constructs. What you and I think of as the real world is for them a sort of virtual or conceptual figment. Digressing somewhat, I wonder if the "conceptual art" movement wasn't some kind of social precursor or indicator of this trend. Around 30 years ago, when I was still trying to dance with the art establishment, I thought of applying to the Banff Centre for a residency. So I talked to someone there, asking about their sculpture studio and how well it was equipped for my kind of metalwork. The Banff rep seemed uncertain about how this should matter to me. She said, "Well, you know, most of our sculptors don't actually make *objects*." Ah, right. Sculptors who, yew know, just have *ideas* and then market themselves into prominence. That, in itself, is a sort of conceptual art piece about the people who make "economic transactions" in the greater economy. Our biz is, well, business, y'know? Tangible stuff like carrots or shoes or appendectomies are a bothersome externality. My recently retired college room mate had a career as a banker. Not in the executive suite, though. He once described his job as "in the 70s, traveling around the world selling money, and in the 80s, traveling around the world trying to get it back." One story he told me about "getting it back" involved an Alaskan fish processing business that had defaulted on a big loan. So he flew to Alaska, only to learn that the boss had simply vanished; the power company had shut off the power months before so several huge commercial freezers were full of rotting fish; and the individual skippers of the company-owned boats had seen the writing on the wall and simply buzzed off into any number of remote Alaskan coves, taking their boats with them. So my friend personally had a look at the community with a collapsed industry, with guys suddenly out of high-paying work but (for a few, anyhow) newly acquired boats of dubious provenance, with a reeking mess in the middle of town. But he was an exception, just, by banker's standards, a low-paid minion. His bank, as an entity, only cared or even wanted ever to know about, how much cash could be recovered from the wreckage. No, Keith, the economic transactions that make a difference today are only superficially (or perhaps theoretically, in the least complimentary sense) like the late Paleolithic trade in sea-shells. -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
