joanna bujes wrote: "The truth is they don't have a clue on how to manage intellectual labor. They try to do it as it were an assembly line. Doesn't work. Offsourcing Hi- tech means managing intellectual labor accross great geographical, cultural, and sometimes linguistic divides. Not what I would call a recipie for success."
The Talyorists long ago dropped any distinction between types of labor. Intellectual, manual labor, it's all the same thing to them: actions geared toward a result, measured in time and price. Some nuts have been harder to crack than others, but the development and now near universality of computer and communications technology changes everything. The true limit to capital's drive to abstract us is our own resistance, not the 'inefficiencies' that result when they hit up against geographical/cultural/linguistic barriers. (very much agree with Doug's point on this - we have to change the terrain of debate to win the argument) They will likely be able to overcome these limits, that is if we let them. Speaking of water-cooler conversations, on one front, the wonks are hard at work at continuing to annihilate distance. They're slobbering over the possibilities of telepresence via internet2, and I've been noticing a lot of talk about how it allows for 'hallway' or 'watercooler' conversations. And they've also stumbled onto the future workplace of the networked prols: the telecubicle! http://www.advanced.org/tele-immersion/board/cubelabel.html Cheers, Jonathan ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
