not quite sure where this is going, so a rambling we go…
this week during lunch, a friend explained how her dad ended up working at home depot. after he graduated form business school in his 20s, he went straight to work for a medium sized company. he was an upper-level manager at the company when it was bought out by staples. staples removed most of the upper management and replaced them with younger people who earned smaller salaries. dad went to an agency to help place him in another job. the agency basically said, “look: you’re too old to get another job with the same salary and benefits. no one is going to hire someone your age anymore. sorry.” dad becomes extremely depressed. he also stops hanging out with his friends because he became ashamed that he’s not working and making money. they used to play golf and travel and since his income stopped, he couldn’t keep up with the group’s social habits. the only place he could find a job was home depot. turns out, many of the other men working at home depot were in similar situations. they were managers, tech workers, specialists, etc., and were let go in the process of a company changing hands. this group has become a support group. no one likes what they’re doing, but at least the have each other.
this is the story of jobs disappearing. yes, some jobs disappear by shipping them overseas, but jobs that get shipped overseas tend to not be high-skilled. when companies buy each other, lay people off to downsize, and then never replace those positions, that’s how good jobs disappear.
why is no one talking about this? why aren’t republicans talking about how their get-rich-quick business practices are destroying middle-class jobs? their constituencies jobs?
next post: this report i just read details that most australians are being educated for jobs that are at medium to high risk of being automated away soon. and this statement:
​a couple of weeks ago we were having a conversation at work about something and my colleage, curtis ogden, said two things that stuck with me. he regularly says things that stick with me for a long time so here’s just these two:
“it’s not just about empowering, but also about working with power.”
this really reasonated with me because i find myself in a very specific conceptual loop regarding social change work [link to future post about non-profit work and lukes’ three dimensions of power]. the loop goes like this: oppression exists. the oppressed attempt to liberate themselves. the oppressors give a little wiggle room, but ultimately just shift and deepen their oppressive tactics (usually first by allowing some legal changes to be made, but then by creating backlash and new systems of oppressions - example: the prison industrial complex as an evolution of slavery).
empowering is imporatnt, but working with existing power seems necessary as well. making change from the bottom up without also changing people at the top seems somewhat futile. history seems to indicate this.
“not just about creating networks but tapping INTO the fact that life IS already networks.”
part of the work at IISC is about giving people systems and network thinking tools and skills. but sometimes people who are new to this imagine that it’s something new. curtis rightly points out that networks are not new. life already exists and operates in networks. forests, oceans, deserts, pretty much all ecosystems have networked structure.
so the work of seeing our activities through a network lens isn’t new. it’s more like throwing off the problematic narrowness of western individualism and the desire to dissect and analyze piece by piece (that’s not an elegant phrasing, but is there a word that is the opposite of holistic?).
coffeeshops for the people was a resource that would help us figure out which coffeeshop was best to go to work in on any given day based on the needs of that day.
when?
we worked on this project from 2014-2015.
where?
in the coffeeshops of boston.
why?
​for better or worse, we are the coffeeshop generation. during grad school we worked in coffeeshops all the time. however, how productive we were was dependent on the amenities of the shop:
wifi (price and speed)
seating
availability of outlets
on a regular basis, erin or i would genuinely (and eventually jokingly) say to each other, “i really wish i had a map that told me which coffeeshop nearby had good wifi so i could go work there for a few hours.” the coffeeshop wifi map was intended to answer that question.
how?
there are two parts of the how.
first, the data. erin and i initially collected the data manually and put it into a spreadsheet. eventually, we built a google form. he, his girlfriend rebecca, and i all have used the form to collect data.Â
second, the map. i was really excited about learning mapbox and github so i built a couple of prototype maps
this first map was a test of one type of data viz. darkness of the circle was to indicate quality of internet, dotted vs solid circle ring was for whether the internet was free or not.
the second map was just icon based location markers but i figured out how to get the data to populate onto a sidebar. i think i was following this tutorial [link coming someday], but then my master’s thesis happened and i dropped everything i was doing, heh.
what’s left to do?
build a dynamic form so a contributor knows how much data they need to collect and add. if the chairs have been counted already, they just need to do an internet speed check.
an alternative to the form… we had the crazy idea of creating a desktop or phone app that would help automate some of the data collection (like running the internet speed check). however, some of the data would likely always need to be gathered manually (like number of seats and access to outlets), but the app could still support that data gathering.
“what do you do?” this question is like an invasive weed. it’s everywhere and SO annoying. after asking for someone’s name, it’s usually one of the first questions that gets asked.
the question bothers me because it shows just how much we (middle-class americans) identify ourselves by our work. your job and social value are indicated by what you do to earn money. the worst part is that the question isn’t as explicit as that, but everyone knows what it means. it actually has lots of potential as a broader question. and yet, i can count on two hands the number of times someone has answered that question without telling me what they do to earn money.
although i don’t think identifying strongly with work as our primary identity has ever been a good idea (#industrialcapitalism), as our economy evolves, i think we absolutely have to get away from this pattern.
so, i’m developing alternatives to this question.
i think i’ll build a tool for it (probably something like this). in the meantime, here are some of my favorites.
what’s your favorite way to spend time these days?
if you had one more hour to live, what would you do?
what are you dreaming about these days?
what’s your story? [this question comes in 5, 10, 20, and entire-evening varieties]
if you had to die tomorrow, how would you choose to go and why?
in general, i hate shallow conversation and small talk. so these questions are an attempt to get beyond those things. life is short. go deep or go home.
i’ve noticed (as have many others) that many americans move through life in a strange state of conscious unconsciousness. this shows up in many ways, but here’s just one example. (middle class) american children are often raised to:
do well in high school,
go to college,
find high-paying work,
find a partner,
get married,
by a house,
have 1-2 kids,
retire,
die.
people make conscious decisions along this prescribed pathway. sometimes they even stop to think really critically about the choices. but they generally don’t stop to question the entire pathway.
sometimes it looks like being a doctor because that’s what your parents did. or going to law school because you like arguing and writing. maybe you did a ton of research about which medical school to attend, but never stopping to ask, “why do i really want to be a doctor? do i even want to be a doctor?” this lack of radical (as in looking at the roots) questioning is what gretchen calls drift and i have called societal inertia.
gretchen’s interview added a point i’ve never really thought about but is so accurate. the thing about drift is that it’s not actually that easy. in fact, drifting through life might actually make it harder. for example, i can’t tell you how many medical and law students i’ve met who actually don’t want to be doctors or lawyers. i also can’t tell you how many people i know who attend college for a specific subject and never work in that field (there are many other issues that contribute to that specific problem, but drift is definitely a fundamental one). drifting, despite it’s lack of mindfulness, doesn’t mean that the pathway is easy. unfortunately, people put in a lot of work to do things and get to places they don’t actually want to be.
a book I used to love (i think by christian pastor, rob bell) had a serious chunk all about how the momentum given to us by our parents finally runs out during or right after college and then people are like… wait wtf am i doing? so true. can’t even tell you how many people i have run into over my college years for whom that is the story. the worst part is it’s actually the story for many, many more, but some people haven’t actually realized that that’s their story yet. some are even in denial of it. =[
what i’m curious about is this: what if taking time to be intentional about life choices makes things easier? i have a strong hunch that finding out what you’re passionate about and doing that makes life go much more smoothly (and it’s also better for everyone else).
