[kj] FW: jaz date change 4 spoken word

[Brendan Quinn]

The more people there were, the more effort was needed to keep things
running.

 

I disagree, it's only a question of scale. Our productivity has been
increasing for a long time and I believe is still increasing (broadband,
computers, advanced machinery, automation, unified communications etc). More
people require more support infrastructure only in terms of numbers, not
necessarily in terms of that % of the population required to support the
rest.I believe the opposite is true.

 

Some history:

 

Back approx 10 000 years ago we invented / discovered agriculture. While
this required at least twice the effort of work as compared to hunting /
gathering, in order to sustain life, it resulted in a population explosion
because of increased surety of food production and storage of grains etc.
This increase in reliability and storage of food, and the fact that people
were less nomadic (and irrigation played a part too I believe) resulted in
the arrival of cities and city-states.(Jericho and Ur being a couple of the
earliest examples). The critical mass of people in a city and the relative
surplus of, and storability of food, despite the increased labour cost of
producing it, enabled division of labour and specialisation. So all of a
sudden you could afford people whose only 'job' it was to create written
records, tend the sick, track the movements of the planets etc etc (and
probably ticket hawkers and parking wardens and the like but I digress.)
Science and technical craft progressed, and productivity has been going up
ever since. Even in 1950 the average office user was far less efficient,
without the widely available use of computers, email, photocopiers, fax,
broadband, video conferencing, cellphones etc. And my point IS - while the
population increases, with commensurate increases in productivity and
automation, there is a decrease in the amount of people required to
accomplish any given task. I suppose you have to account for increased
regulation, complexity etc, but I believe that productivity and automation
has outstripped that by far. My conclusion being.a crapload of the jobs we
do now are POINTLESS. 

 

The manufacturing industry has been hugely automated, from its labour
intensive origins, so has agriculture (something like 2-3% of the population
in many western countries is all that's needed to run farms, down
drastically since early last century), and statistically, if it wasn't for
the explosion in growth of the service industry, unemployment levels would
be way high, or unions would have forced companies to use human vs machine
labour or something. I work in the service industry in a technical field,
but I believe there's people vastly smarter than me who will one day create
machines that are capable of doing what I do. Or machines that will create
machines that are capable of doing what I do. I mean, I started in IT on a
helpdesk helping users connect with dial-up modems. That job, all the
millions of people who do it (now a lot of it has moved to broadband routers
but similar task), will be evaporated as soon as someone solves the
technical problem(s) of creating a modem / router that you can plug in and
actually works without Joe user needing to do more than make one phone call,
once. And everything on up the chain.systems administrators will be cut in
half when most servers are simply a process running on a virtualised box in
a data centre and your average 10-user company doesn't feel the need to run
their own email server etc, they just plug all their PCs in to the net, log
in to their domain and off they go.ubiquitous super-high-speed broadband,
cloud computing, virtualisation, unified communications, voice over IP.it
all spells automation to me. A lot of the rest of the jobs will be shipped
out to India, Manilla etc. 

 

Re the weight thing, I stick to my guns..I've been training for over 20
years and have a fair amount of technical and practical knowledge about
health and the body's adaptation to exercise, you're preaching to the choir
in terms of the benefits of exercise. I guarantee you though if you took two
groups of overweight, unfit individuals with unhealthy lifestyles, and you
exercised one lot yet had no ability to influence their diet, and I
controlled the diets of the others with no ability to influence their
exercise, that I'd lose them more weight. And if you gave them to me for 12
weeks and allowed me to train and control their diets that I'd lose them
more fat & gain more muscle AND increase their athletic performance more.
And enjoy the whole process more too, with less injuries. 

 

Those biggest loser shows are fucking daft, on so many levels. That amount
of exercise and calorie restriction is excessive, you're more likely to
maintain a healthy lifestyle if it doesn't feel like living in a
concentration camp (!).1500 calories a day diets for men and 1200 for the
women. That'd drive me bonkers. I lose weight regularly, slowly, but
consistently, on 2500 calories a day. I wonder how many injuries those
people sustain going from no exercise to what they have them do, on joints
that aren't used to even 10 mins of walking, carrying 300lbs plus. It
doesn't send a healthy message at all.

  _____  

From: gathering-bounces at misera.net [mailto:gathering-bounces at misera.net] On
Behalf Of The Exorcist
Sent: Friday, 20 March 2009 11:32
To: A list about all things Killing Joke (the band!)
Subject: Re: [kj] FW: jaz date change 4 spoken word

 

Re: Soulful job

While there are people that do work in fields they enjoy. Many do not.
In order to obtain something you generally need effort and input. In the
earlier times
we all hunted and farmed. As our
families/tribes/clans/states/countries/nations expanded
there was a need for more room, food, shelter and other basic necessities.
The more people
there were, the more effort was needed to keep things running. As humans
evolved there was
need for better ideas and technologies to help us keep up to pace with our
burdens. Some had it
easier, some had it harder. Some were able to work in the
political/scientific/cultural fields other
worked in the manual labor field. (White collar/ Blue collar)

Our inherent nature is one of survival and we do what we can in order for us
(as individuals) 
and our families to survive to he best of our capabilities. 
(Well most. And some unfortunately become psychotic/raving lunatics)
A poor man/woman had to go beg for food and money no matter how demeaning
he/she might find 
it in order to provide. Is it something they looked forward to? I doubt it.
Is it worse then having a shitass job?
In my mind, yes. Nevertheless, it was done.

Re: Automation/Technology
Let's take a writer for example (without going to far back). The writer used
to spend time writing
on pen and paper. It took him quite a while to finish his publication. We
then had the advent of the typewriter.
Suddenly, the amount of time it took took him to write was cut in half (if
not more). A while after we had the
word processor/PC and the time to write was yet once again shortened.

Would one say to the writer. "Hey You! Stop writing. You've done enough! You
used to publish one book a
year and now you need to do 3? You have more free time now, why are you
doing this?" 

With the advent of computer technology, (bigger, faster) work tasks can be
done much faster.
On the other side however we found more uses and applications for the PC and
ventured out
into more fields. The fact that something can be done in a shorter amount of
time does not mean
(as I see it) that someone just needs to stop doing things. Life is a
pursuit, a quest, a goal, an achievement.
Humans are not automatons (well, not yet, though society seems to be pulling
that way) and constantly
search for something (whatever that maybe). Singers write new songs, Writers
write new books, Inventors
invent new inventions (that one sounded weird).

Re: Obesity
There is big, fat, overweight and obese. Obese is already far past the
borderline of unhealthy.
There are of course MANY factors to Obesity. It does not change the fact
that it is unhealthy.
Nor does it change the fact that exercise helps. 

Exercise has been shown and is recommended to people who suffer from stress,
depression, anxiety.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/depression-and-exercise/MH00043

People deal with stress in many ways and it has many side effects.
(I always have had a hard time sleeping. Mind is always active and 
I've been told to try and relax a bit. Though I definitely don't have the
over-eating issue)

Exercise is also important for people with health issues. For example -
Diabetees.
http://www.cdc.gov/DIABETES/faq/exercise.htm

Look at the little kids today that outweigh average teens and plenty of
adults.
There are many reasons for it, be it anxiety, depression, not coping with
school work, peer abuse,
physical ailments, a shitty diet of only fast food because the parents are
to lazy to cook
or can only afford Mcdonalds/Wendys/BK.

Exercise is beneficial there as well. Whatever the cause, Exercise has it's
purposes and
DOES help with weight issues and many other physical and mental aspects of
an individual as well.

BTW.... Before you reply, kindly let me finish the reply to the previous
letter so we can keep it in one thread. :)





No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 8.5.278 / Virus Database: 270.11.19/2010 - Release Date: 03/19/09
19:03:00


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://four.pairlist.net/pipermail/gathering/attachments/20090320/b8605ece/attachment.htm>