A(nother) Modest Proposal

In what seems to be a void of good ideas, we are happy to see that in the intellectual desert, a flower has bloomed. In recent comments, Jarred Kushner, the businessman, investor, and former government official, suggested that Gaza’s waterfront property could potentially be “very valuable.” While there are those who might consider it harsh, perhaps we should arm the Israelis with more powerful weapons to make Gaza safe for development. In that same light, aid should be extended to Ukraine so that we can continue to mine the sovereign soil for profits. While war is great for profits, it appears that it cannot be sustained forever and so we must explore other avenues to prop up the aging status quo.

It seems we in the West can learn a lot from our Saudi business partners who were forced to use lethal force to clear land for the city of the future. While Robert Moses began the process, we now must use the forces available to us to continue. Those who can afford it will prosper, those who can serve will rearrange the deck chairs on this titanic effort, while the rest must perish in the name of progress.

 

Employees Of The World…

A worker implies work whereas an employee implies an employer. Interestingly enough, the change in terms came about in the Industrial Revolution when the singular artisan worker became an interchangeable and plural employee. In conversing with the eminent Fletch, he reminded us that the term worker comes from the Middle English term wright, which is still used as in stone wright or playwright.  Again, the term employee came during the Industrial Revolution and is out of the French. We probably use the term worker more frequently as the term was used in the first translation of the Communist Manifesto. This was produced in Britain where the term worker is more like an independent contractor versus the employee who is hired to work a particular job with a more or less set schedule.

All this to say that when companies say, “no one wants to work” they seem to be talking about workers and not employees. People want to be engaged in what they do and not a slave to it. Employees have relations with the employer and by extension the product that they produce. Workers are detached, doing what is required of them without engagement. Look at Lyft and Uber drivers. They are there to provide a profit and service with little or no engagement with the larger organization and the larger organization has less responsibility to the source of its wealth.

Perhaps no one wants to be a worker but an engaged employee.

Fear the Light

While listening to the Afikra Podcast‘s discussion with Marwan Kraidy, we were fascinated by his take on recent media moving from the myth of a homogeneous media to the splintered idea of a consumer with many media. We thought about when there had been a similar diffusion and our thoughts went back to the Reformation, another time when a new technology led to the beginning of immense political and social change. As we have said, every new media seems to spawn a social revolution as information becomes more available and accessible.

Think of the similarities, Information controlled by few (The Church, the three major networks, and print media) to a place where technology allows free dissemination of information, (the Printing Press, the internet). Just as many in the Reformation considered it the end of the civilized world, we now feel that the internet, social media, and cell phones are bringing about another decline and fall – the Apocalypse. But remember that the word Apocolypse comes from  Apokalupto while the source for the word Apocalypse, in Greek, means to uncover or to make known what was unknown previously.  And is that not precisely the purpose of information, to illuminate the places that were previously dark?  Perhaps what we fear more than the end, is change.

 

The Illusion of Personal

As you know, there are times when we need to reexamine our words and their suitability to communicate what we really mean. Some believe the term fast food is no longer appropriate, as well as other favorites like Hot Chili and Jumbo Shrimp. It seems that now the idea of personal information needs to join those ranks of oxymorons. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t see another company that has suffered some data breach and learn that a great number of people have had their information stolen. Not only are there several sites for the latest on data breaches, there is even a Cybercrime magazine. Where do we draw the line between what is personal and what isn’t? We share so much of our lives in electronic communities, from selfies to sex tapes, how do we say, this is personal and this isn’t. Are we being fickle in saying you can see my lunch but not my medical records? Our address, email address, and phone number can be discovered but our social security numbers are sacrosanct. On the other hand we gladly give over all our “digital exhaust”  to media companies who are making billions off our information yet draw a fuzzy line between public and private. I could livestream my plastic surgery but call my medical records private. Hollywood stars can go sunbathing naked on the beach, but paparazzi can take, but not share the pictures. If we have learned nothing else, we should have learned that when profit is concerned, if we give an inch- we find a mile taken.

Economy Uber Alles

It has been fascinating to watch the current angst-filled parade of businesses decrying California moving to a wage of $20.00 per hour for fast food workers.  While not wailing, and gnashing their teeth at the indignity of having to compensate people fairly, there are more cries and lamentations that this will bring down the economy and small businesses. Of course, higher costs in other resources are either absorbed or passed on to the consumer but labor costs- they are the stuff of rants and shareholder panic attacks. Maybe these businesses need to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps and find creative ways to do more with less like they have been asking of workers for the last few years- the corporate equivalent of eating cereal for dinner. Perhaps we need to understand the prevailing idea that capitalism is non-negotiable. It is the 800-pound gorilla that must be fed (and not cereal at that).  Corporate loss is a moral shortfall.  Stockholders must be paid, and CEOs must be compensated no matter the cost. We are committed to the system above all else and if we need workers who can not live with the wages they are paid, the problem must be with the workers. Perhaps like the lyrics in Tom Jones’s Thunderball, [they]  know the meaning of success (their) needs are more, so [they] give less.

Whoever said the system had to work for workers?

 

Because every day needs a little Tom Jones

 

 

No, this is soup and this is art!

It was a stupid joke my brother loved. It went something like this, Pete and Repete were walking down the street, Pete walked into a store, who was left?” of course the gullible younger me would always reply “Repeat” at which he would start again. It seems that we have some inherent comfort in repetition. As I write the small army of Chairman Mao statues look down from my desk, unchanging and invoking a forever that the Chairman hoped to create in his multiple images. It seems that in this age of constant media, we are aware of this echo chamber as we find more and more people want to make something true by endless repetition. Like Trudy in “The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe”  written by Jane Wagner & Lily Tomlin, we are confused when silk screens of endless cans of soup are art but soup cans stacked in the grocery store are only dinner. In the same way, repetition does not elevate myth or fiction to truth. While what is and is not art is always up for debate, the truth remains, like gravity, constant. No matter how many times we may say we don’t believe in it or that it doesn’t exist, it remains.

 

A lively diversion on this theme can be found here, Birds Arent Real.

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree

Somehow, we were not surprised when we heard the news that a “human”  robot had sexually harassed a female reporter at DeepFest in Riyadh last week. DeepFest, the world’s largest tech event was the scene for the introduction of Mohammed, the first Saudi robot in the form of a man. In this instance, Mohammed was working on his own accord and without human direct control.  There may be some who are shocked that a robot would work behave in such a way of their own volition, this should not be surprising. Again and again, we see the programs that run our robots are no better than ourselves. Algorithms have built-in biases that systematically disadvantage certain groups of people often based on cultural beliefs held by their creators.

And yet we say, “How can this be?” These are machines sent to deliver us from human drudgery. We believe this so strongly, we gave the first female robot more rights than its human, female counterparts in many countries. Sophia, another human-robot appearing at the Future Investment Initiative appeared without a head covering, an offense that has led women stoned to death or thrown into jail.  She was even given Citizenship… but can she vote?  We create machines that are a mirror of the dominant culture, one that treats women as property, restricts their rights, and even pays them less than men.

Alas, the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Selfies at Auschwitz

A few weeks ago there was an article about reenacting the Parkland school shooting for the jury– yes there will be live ammunition. While this is for a jury, one can only imagine that this is the next big disaster/immersion tourism wave. Why just read about it, why just sit on the couch and “experience” it through your VR goggles. Why see the Titanic, (so last disaster) when we can experience other people’s trauma from the emotional safety of knowing the outcome and not have to be emotionally engaged. What else would be the next step after carving our initials on the Colosseum (the tourists responsible said they didn’t know it was ancient, and why should they, isn’t there one just like it in Vegas?) or selfies at Auschwitz (having a wonderful time, wish you were here?). What better extension than watching and rewatching the same content, we know what will happen but we don’t have to really be involved. Perhaps we can make everything a backdrop for our own narcissism or hubris. There are only so many times we can have our picture taken at Death Valley with extreme temperatures as the backdrop, so why not recreate human disasters for our amusement? A sort of terrorist West World in a world where we use the lives and suffering of others to become content for our distraction and amusement.

Somewhere in Time

It seems that as the planet continues to warm, we are finding more and more animals and people preserved in ice. If there were a guiding metaphor for time, it may be that idea of someone, or something trapped in ice. Time and again we are confronted with shouting red faces urging a return to something. Be it putting the LGBTQ community back in the closet or Sun King CEOs who demand workers must return to the office or tempt the end of the business world or the goose-stepping politicians working to return the rights of women to what they were in the 1950’s

Inconvenient as it may be, time, as we know it, only goes in one direction. As much as some would like, the past is a closed room that we cannot go back to. The future is truly the only game in town and as much as we might like to, we cannot be both what we are and what we once were. While we like to think of ourselves and our nation that values human freedom and liberty but seems to fail that those ideas are fluid. Our society’s idea of freedom has changed over time, we (hopefully) no longer think that people of colour have no soul, a woman’s place is in the kitchen or that father knows best. Growth, like time, is a forward-moving process. Hopefully, we can learn to embrace the forward movement of time and learn to love growth as opposed to fearing change.

Created In Our Own Image

We have been thinking about AI-generated content and while we were initially concerned about it we have changed our thinking and gone from dread to a type of ecstasy. Indeed, if we can create a program to create content, why can’t we create a program to read it for us. Imagine the time we could save if we didn’t have to read all those AI news and popular interest pieces. It would free up our time for something like living our life. Taking a walk, talking to people, meeting friends- indeed the possibilities are endless. The companies that want their content read could pay for the AI readers to read it and perfect it for what could be human readers or more AI approval. Imagine a perfect feedback loop of AI approval creating its own content in its own image.