One question that this raises is whether what goes on in the decorated shed is going to become more banal or less. Linda Duxbury, who teaches business at Carleton University, argues that with the impending retirement of the baby boom population, employment will become a sellers market - people who are looking for jobs will be scarcer and will have the upper hand. But one wonders if they really will. Perhaps they will be paid a little more, but have to work longer hours and be run off their feet. Some of the work Duxbury is doing on work/life balance suggests that people in managerial positions are already working at the exhaustion level.
Good questions and observations, but a bit diferent from some of the points I was trying to make (which is OK...)....
We're going to have a lot of aging persons, and relatively few young persons. There probably are different options. We could improve productivity and cut waste (like advertising and competitive duplication of production...)
The young persons may be made to work longer hours for less pay to themselves (more of the product of their labor going to support the old people).
The old can be made to work until they are physically or mentally unable to work any longer. I.e., retirement will for many persons not be an option. This is the future I think is going to become reality.
Women can be coerced and/or cajoled to become more re-productive so that there will be more young persons to provide for the old persons and the earth will become even more conjested by hyper-population. Some persons like this option.
It's also possible that life will be better in Europe than here in the U.S., which, as the Chaplin who the army is either prosecuting or persecuting said in the pepers yesterday, he loves America and wants to live here -> just in better times.
I think the idea of the "transparent factory" is worth thinking about, even if as something we won't be able to enjoy in our work life because we live in a neocon instead of a social welfare country.
Cheers!
\brad mccormick
Ed
> Volkswagen is advertising a new factory in Dresden,
> with the theme of:
>
> transparency
>
> See: http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/
>
> You will probably guess that this idea appeals to me, along
> with the location of the factory in Dresden (why couldn't
> they have built it in Newark NJ USA, or maybe even
> on the site of the former World Trade Center in NYC USA???).
>
> I have no idea how far VW is going to carry this
> theme, but the very words contrast antipodally with the
> watchword of postmodern architecture (which, to the
> best of my knowledge, is one of America's contributions to
> the cultural world of the late 20th century):
>
> the decorated shed
>
> A decorated shed, in case you don't know what it refers to,
> is a glitzy veneer facade which covers up a banal lifeworld
> within.
>
> Perhaps the heritage of Universalizing Culture in The West
> is not so dead in Europe, so that the future may
> not belong only to the Chinese after all. As a different
> NYT article recently suggested, the United States is
> becoming a source of cheap labor for Europe (I posted
> a little piece of my own experience here, working for
> Grolier Publisher after the French firm Hachett(sp?)
> bought the company and in no way provided working
> conditions similar to France here).
>
> As Koffi Anan said about Saddam Husein's Iraq, we need
> more "transparency".
>
> \brad mccormick
>
> --
> Let your light so shine before men,
> that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
>
> Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
>
> <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
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--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
