Below is an exerpt from a talk that I gave a long time ago. Probably 20 years ago. It is about technology and community and deals with the topic raised.
============================================== It is by now a cliche to say that information technologies are changing the way we work, play, learn--live our lives. Like electricity, the automobile and the steam engine, information technology is radically altering our economy. In the same way that the early assembly line and automation involved the substitution of machines for people we now see a substitution of computer-based machines for people in the service sector. Automating service delivery carries with it benefits and costs. The benefits include speed and access, as well as new products and services. The costs include a change in our local communities. As we create new applications for information technology we are at the same time creating new ways of social interaction. There is a subtle but important interaction between technology and society. The type of technology developed and the way in which it is used affects the way Canadians interact with each other. Information technology is changing our communities. Computer networks such as Internet and Freenet are creating new communities that are global, rapidly evolving and range from the most exotic subject areas to the chit-chat of everyday life. While the wonder of a global community is evolving, our local community--the one inhabited by everyday people--is slowly but surely changing. Two or three years ago McDonald's adopted the slogan, "At McDonald's we do it all for you." We have heard this jingle so many times we rarely pause to reflect on what it really means. Consider what happens when you go to McDonald's. In the act of purchasing, the sale is punched into a computer terminal which keeps track of sales, inventory, and worker performance. We pick up the food at a counter, pick up straws, napkins, etc., we consume the food and dutifully throw away the refuse. Finally, we replace the tray in a stack of used trays. . So, in reality, at McDonald's we do it all for them! The banks would also like us to do it all for them. The success of automatic teller machines, and soon, home banking, is leading to a computerized marketplace where people interact with machines. We are accustomed to doing it all for them at supermarkets. We take the product off the shelf and place it on the checkout stand. Some markets would have us bag our own groceries. Soon, purchasers in supermarkets will be offered the option of 'self-service.' They will be able to wave the laser scanner over the bar codes that are found on virtually every item in the store. And if doing this saves time, harried consumers might find it attractive. As each new labour saving device is installed we applaud the time saved and increased productivity brought by the technology. Rarely, if ever, do we reflect on how the technology is changing our local communities. As more and more consumers are 'doing it all for them,' workers are displaced and communities are changed. Activities that used to be undertaken by service station attendants, bank workers, restaurant owners, full service supermarkets, etc., have disappeared. The new community without people is one with "Neighbourhood Watch." It's one that hires security guards. Productivity advances in one area lead to rising costs in another: the relationship between the decline of service workers and the rise in security guards tells one story of our changing communities. Inexpensive computing power has made possible the self-serve gas station. Here we pump our own gas, and pass money or a charge card to someone behind a bullet-proof glass. By substituting our labour for an attendant we have displaced workers and, according the automobile association, the number of automobile breakdowns has increased. Service station attendants used to check many items under the hood; harried consumers today are too busy or too uninformed. Here too productivity gains in one area lead to increased costs in another. There is a continuing substitution of machines for service workers who used to populate communities. Service station attendants, bank tellers, operators of local restaurants, etc., have all given way, thanks to information technology, to a situation where citizens go about with credit or debit card in hand and accomplish their many errands by interacting with computer-based machines. What takes place is the transaction itself--no more 'small talk', no more extra services, no more extra anything. At the heart of a community, or a family or a nation is cross-subsidization. It's the equivalent of the mythical Boy Scout helping the 'little old lady' across the street; but can also be those transfer programs from the richer provinces to the less well off; or the many little things that members of families do for each other without maintaining too close an accounting. Having people in place that pump gas, operate local restaurants, or work in banks means that--people being people--something else will happen other than the strict transaction of putting gas in the car or making a deposit. Some talk is exchanged, 'how's the weather' or 'how are you feeling' or some notice is made of one sort of the other. When the people are replaced by machines, when only the economic transaction itself takes place we quickly notice the loss. We notice that there were many extra benefits associated with having people deliver services. It is these benefits--this cross-subsidization--that is lost with the continuing shift to machines for delivery of services. It is often these extra things that people did 'for nothing'--a smile, a hello, looking out on and for the community, that now have to be created or contracted for. When we remove service workers from our communities, we remove the many other things that were done as they were pumping gas, cashing our checks, and bagging our groceries. While doing their jobs they also engaged in small talk with clients, noticed people on the street. They were an information source. They kept track of people. They noticed a lost child, a suspicious looking individual, a person who suddenly became ill health. They were the people who checked under the hood, provided special services for the elderly or infirm. They were a fundamental part of the community. With each deletion of an individual from the community not only is there a loss of income and spending power, there is also the loss of another pair of eyes and ears and heart--the loss of a person, which after all, is the soul of the community -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2011 2:47 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Vanishing interstices I wrote this to a friend but FW came into it as I wrote. It occurred to me that it might not be very much OT here. I haven't much re-edited it for FW except to obfuscate DG's name. DG is a digital tech wizard, friend of a friend whom I've only met once long ago. This exchange relates to a recent happenstance email encounter. --- Hi B -- Did you send my comment on his remark to [DG]? (Recap:) dg> As a race, we are about to give up the, shall we say, self dg> sufficiency of what it was that got us here. There is so much to dg> say, yet so much ambiguity in a future that a technologic positive dg> feedback loop can bring us. Or maybe not just us. How would we dg> know once we cross the threshold or singularity or whatever you dg> want to call it? We approach the threshold as the Monstrous Blobs grow and exfoliate and the vast space in which they float is gradually reduced to mere interstices between them. We cross the threshold when the interstices between the Monstrous Blobs become discontinuous. Regrettably, neither we, the motes of biomass in the interstices nor they, those within the Monstrous Blobs, can have a sufficiently global view to determine just when that has happened. I think it has already happened. Telecom infotech has hastened it. I think I may have to write a whole rant on this. --- [Later] I still haven't written the rant but I may yet. This is on topic to the FutureWork mailing list I'm on, as well. Some of William Gibson's characters had this notion of "when it changed". That cusp in Neuromancer was very science-fictiony. In the Bridge trilogy, the change at the end of the last book was science-fictiony, too. But a couple of guys with special abilities grasped that it had "all changed" once before, agreed that it was some time in 1911, that the death of Pierre Curie under the wheels of a horse-drawn wagon in 1906 was somehow a trigger. When it all changed.... My FutureWork pals haven't got the "when it all changed" notion but I infer from their remarks (or short essays) that they intuit such a thing. Candidate loci are Nixon's repeal of Breton Woods, Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers, repeal of Glass-Steagall under Clinton and others. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is the most recent one. If it has "all changed", one (or all) of those may have been triggers, releasers, what you may call it, but "when it all changed" has to do with the interstices. Too late at night to do a real rant now but here's an example: Gas stations. Oil companies are Blobs, have been during my lifetime. But gas stations were interstitial -- or at least an interface with the interstitial. Really dumb guys could pump gas, do oil change and lube, change tires. Smart guys with little education could be really good mechanics. Guys of moderate or even mediocre abilities could run a gas station biz. Ex-cons could work in gas stations. Gas stations, certainly rural ones and even many urban ones, were social foci, technology foci. All of this was, in a sense, infrastructure for people who lived in the interstices. Now there are no gas stations under that rubric. There are self-serve pumps, usually with an attached "convenience" store, wholly owned by a Blob oil company and run by a franchisee who operates out of a ring binder. Yes, there's a clerk or three but there's no pride, no texture, no fabric to being a minwage clerk. I once worked for half a year next to a genuine retard. He was a whiz grease man and took pride in his work. He wouldn't have been able to do clerking right and wouldn't have taken any pride in it if he had. So the oilco Blobs have squeezed together, squeezed one part of the interstitial landscape almost out of existence. There are still a few stand-alone repair shops, some as adjuncts to junk yards, but they're now more or less isolated examples. This particular kind of interstix has become a thinly distributed scattering of discontinuous cells. This has all happened since I worked as a mechanic in Amherst [Mass.]. Just one example. If you think of gas stations as a paradigm, you can spot other instances where interstices that once propagated social fluid have been squeezed into discontinuous cells of relative stasis. Your words for the day. Send them to [DG] if you're inclined. -m -- 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
