> I still contend that this list should Redesign work and not just do the same > old 19th century word games.
That is all very well, Ray, but LISTS do not redesign work -- any more than they compose symphonies or paint pictures. I've done my part in terms of designing an institution and a calibration tool to underwrite the transition AWAY from 19th century wet dreams about servants and nannies. The transition TO autonomous creativity I will leave to the specialists in that field -- not because it doesn't interest me but because it seems I seem to be the only one with the patience to listen both critically and empathetically to those over-intellectualized philosophers whose outmoded platitudes, if they don't actually rule the world, at least drown out any possible alternatives with their rude coughing. On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Ray Harrell <[email protected]> wrote: > One of the great pleasures of my life is working on the Beethoven > Hammerklavier Sonata. It's a life's work. > > I was working many years ago with one of the great opera coaches, an African > American woman named Sylvia Lee. She was married to the conductor Henry > Lee and because there was no work for black coaches in America she moved to > Germany to Munich to play and coach for the agents administering the > rebuilding of the German opera houses after the war. She became such a > success that she was later picked by Maestro Max Rudolf to come to > Philadelphia to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music to be his opera > coach. Ms. Lee would take trips to Washington, D.C. where she would play > for the Frederick Wilkerson studio. "Wilkie" was considered a great voice > teacher and was an African American/Cherokee. I was singing in the Army > Chorus at the time and studying with Wilkie and coached with Ms. Lee. An > amazing experience. One day Ms. Lee took me to the Library of Congress > where she looked all through the stacks for a certain book. Finally she > found it and sat down to read. I was basically just along to accompany her > not knowing why she was there. > > I heard her exclaim and say "Ray, here it is! You must come read this." > It was a passage about Beethoven going to some rich aristocratic SOB asking > for a stipend. The Aristocrat asked what he thought he would need. He > said: "I understand you give Goethe______. That would be fine for me as > well." To which the Aristocrat answered: "You Herr Beethoven are NO > Goethe!" Later when the man's carriage came down the road, Beethoven was > walking with Goethe and Goethe got over into the ditch to allow the carriage > to go by. Beethoven refused to step aside and made the man drive his > carriage into the ditch instead and as he rode by, Beethoven looked the man > in the face and said, "you see, I AM no Goethe!" > > Ms. Lee had dragged me to the Library of Congress just for me to read that > passage about the composer of the Hammerklavier. The man who after WWII > was the hero that brought the German people back from the abyss of Adolf > Hitler and all of this after he was dead. The man who wrote the > Hammerklavier when he was totally deaf. > > The stories about Beethoven and the wealthy and the local Burgermeisters are > legion. He told them that their grandchildren would be embarrassed to > admit their name because he would write something bad about them in his > musical scores or have a musical joke around their name if they didn't treat > the art properly. Remember that when Napoleon is praised there is always > the Beethoven Third Symphony with a destroyed dedication to Napoleon because > Napoleon betrayed Democracy and made himself Emperor. That was the first > thing I learned about Napoleon. That Beethoven spoke truth to power and > made a public show of changing the dedication of a great masterwork because > the man betrayed the people. > > How many butlers and nannies are latent great composers, painters, singers, > dancers trapped in the drudgery of the English Manor system? The same > system here in the American South that trapped the black Artists of Africa > and made them spend their lives chopping cotton and being raped by their so > called "masters." > > A woman who was on the street and not afraid to admit her story and how > Wilkie, my Black Washington voice teacher, pulled her out of the horror and > put her to work singing and writing is Maya Angelou the great American poet. > Wilkie used to say: "How many great voices are trapped in the South?" He > rescued quite a few as they filled the opera houses of Europe and the Jazz > halls of America. He was the coach for Gielgud's 1964 production of > Hamlet, the movie Porgy and Bess with Dorothy Dandridge and taught Paul > Robeson, Richard Stillwell and Roberta Flack. > > I still contend that this list should Redesign work and not just do the same > old 19th century word games. The real diamonds are human beings. > Economists cast these diamonds before the swine and say that it's nature. > Well crawl out of the hole folks. Science today is consigning these > economists to the same hole as the over intellectualized philosophers of the > 19th century. They love to play and talk amongst themselves but rarely > take a serious look at the whole problem and how to design genuine pleasure > and not the hokey "ownership society" shallow shit. > > REH > > Here's an URL that Mike Hollinshead sent me. It's interesting: REH > http://canadastonehenge.com/ > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sandwichman > Sent: Friday, July 23, 2010 4:01 PM > To: Keith Hudson; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION > Subject: Re: [Futurework] Servants and Nannies? > > "there is no reason to believe that these armies of servants and > nannies won't earn decent wages..." -- Annalee Newitz > > Such an oddly magical statement of untruth. There are plenty of > reasons to expect less than decent wages, beginning with current wages > levels for servants and child care workers, continuing on to trends in > wages over the last thirty years and concluding with the projected > elimination of other options resulting in a buyers' market for servant > labor. > > > On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 11:06 AM, Keith Hudson > <[email protected]> wrote: >> From Forbes magazine, 23 July >> >> Will Your Children Grow Up To Be Servants And Nannies? >> >> Reihan Salam >> >> >> >> Why the labor market of the future will be even more polarized. >> >> Will large numbers of today's children grow up to become servants and >> nannies in the homes of the digital bourgeoisie? There is good reason to >> believe that the answer is yes. >> >> The most pressing issue of the day remains sky-high unemployment. There > is, >> however, almost no consensus about how to think about the the depth of the >> problems facing the U.S. labor market. Many believe that the staggering >> unemployment rate is purely cyclical. Karl Smith, an economist at the UNC >> School of Government, has written a post on "the myth of structural >> unemployment", arguing that "the structure of the American economy hasn't >> changed that much in the last 24 months." >> >> Yet one wonders if the last 24 months are the right place to look. In > Wired >> for Innovation, MIT economist Erik Brynjolffson and Adam Saunders of > Wharton >> offer an insightful portrait of how the U.S. economy has evolved over the >> last decade. Their analysis strongly suggests that the shift toward a more >> IT-intensive economy will lead to even more polarization of the U.S. labor >> market. Brynjolffson has dubbed the "Great Recession" a "Great >> Restructuring," adding gravitas to arguments advanced by thinkers like > Jeff >> Jarvis and Richard Florida who've argued in a similar vein. "As growth >> resumes," Brynjolffson writes, "millions of people will find that their > old >> jobs are gone forever." >> >> Smith is undoubtedly right that we can't neglect the cyclical dimension, > and >> that journalists and would-be visionaries have a tendency to grasp at >> sweeping rather than narrowly tailored explanations for high unemployment. >> In Smith's view, for example, construction employment will likely recover, >> as the building boom of the 2000s was not out of step with the earlier >> building boom of the 1970s. But consider the following counterfactual. As >> Barry LePatner argued in Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets, the >> trillion-dollar U.S. construction sector is unusually fragmented and >> undercapitalized, and thus ripe for consolidation. Economic as well as >> environmental imperatives could drive consolidation, leading to a >> construction sector that is leaner, more skill-intensive and more >> IT-intensive. This would mean far higher productivity. And it would also >> mean that the labor market position of less-skilled construction workers >> would deteriorate. >> >> There will, of course, always be a place for less-skilled workers, albeit > at >> low wages. At a certain point, wages in the informal sector might look > like >> a more attractive alternative. Discouraged workers who've stopped looking >> for work in the mainstream economy would, in this scenario, remain on the >> margins. Indeed, the steady deterioration in the labor market position of >> less-skilled men is one key reason why male labor force participation has >> declined so markedly over the last 30 years. The pressing question is >> whether we are likely to see this trend accelerate. >> >> Between 1973 and 1995 U.S. labor productivity grew at an average rate of >> 1.4% a year, a rate that means living standards would take 50 years to >> double. In contrast, the 2.7% growth rate in productivity from 1948 to > 1972 >> doubled productivity in 26 years. And that earlier period is remembered as >> an economic Golden Age, when working and middle class Americans saw >> extraordinary progress in their living standards and the U.S. economy was >> without peer. >> >> From 1995 to 2000 the productivity growth rate increased to 2.6% per year, >> almost matching the Golden Age. As Brynjolffson and Saunders observe, this >> productivity boom was traced to the deployment of IT investment across a >> wide range of sectors, particularly retail. The more interesting >> productivity boom, however, occurred between 2001 and 2003, when the >> productivity growth rate hit 3.6% per year. This productivity spike was >> driven less by investments in IT than by investments in organizational >> capital, a catch-all term for productivity-enhancing business practices. >> >> The authors observe a sharp divergence between firms that successfully >> transformed themselves into effective digital organizations and those that >> did not. Very bluntly, digital organizations flourish while others wither >> and die. Brynjolffson and Wharton economist Lorin Hitt identified the >> defining characteristics of digital organizations, and the most striking >> were those centered on valuing the strongest performers within an >> organization: In digital organizations, employees are empowered to make >> decisions and they are subject to performance-based incentives. Recruiting >> and investing in top performers is a high if not the highest priority. >> >> The logical implication is that the transition to digital organizations is > a >> recipe for even more inequality. In "Performance Pay and Wage Inequality," >> economists Thomas Lemieux, W. Bentley MacLeod, and Daniel Parent maintain >> that the increasing use of performance pay can account for "nearly all of >> the top-end growth in wage dispersion". Assuming this pattern holds, there >> is no reason to believe that we will see any decrease in wage dispersion. >> Quite the opposite: The most skilled workers will cluster in digital >> organizations, and wages at the top will continue to expand at a healthy >> clip. >> >> This raises the question of what will happen to those trapped in the low > end >> of the labor market. Recently, the cultural critic Annalee Newitz offered > a >> provocative hypothesis: "We may return to arrangements that look a lot > like >> what people had over a century ago," Newitz writes. As more skilled women >> enter the workforce, and as the labor market position of millions of >> less-skilled workers deteriorate, we'll see more servants and nannies in >> middle-class homes. While this future might seem disturbing at first, > there >> is no reason to believe that these armies of servants and nannies won't > earn >> decent wages. But let's just say that this isn't the future most of us >> envision for our children. >> >> Reihan Salam is a policy advisor at e21 and a fellow at the New America >> Foundation. The co-author of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the >> Working Class and Save the American Dream, he writes a weekly column for >> Forbes. for Forbes. >> >> Keith Hudson, Saltford, England >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Futurework mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework >> >> > > > > -- > Sandwichman > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > -- Sandwichman _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
