What Are We Supposed to Do?

I am old enough that I remember when computers first came into modern American life.  At the beginning, video games were really lame, even though we thought they were cool.  Okay... there really was only one video game called "Pong" and we thought it was really cool.  The geeks told us that one day there would be a computer in every household.  As I recall, most of us wondered why.

Stores moved from little stickers that had a price on them to bar codes.  Often the bar code did not include a price that a mere human could read.  As stores switched systems there were often glitches that made customers have to wait before they could buy whatever it was they were buying.  The clerks all said the same thing: "This will make it much more convenient for shoppers in the future."  Really it wouldn't ever help the shopper.  It just made inventory easier so the stores could hire fewer people.

I was in Salt Lake one day after they had just installed self service scanners in Albertson's grocery store.  I told the clerks (who all happened to be Bosnian immigrants) that they should fight the move.  One of them explained that it would make their jobs easier because customers could check out on their own.  That isn't how it works.  The jobs don't become easier, they just go away.

The geeks still say that computers do the mundane things so we have free time to be creative.  Really?  I don't know of anyone who works for a computer company that only works 40 hours a week.  When I was working in software, I had a couch in my office for nights when I couldn't make it home to my family.  Free time for whom?

Here are  a list of modern workers who now have plenty of free time: secretaries, typing pool workers, store clerks, sign painters, printers, postal workers, newspaper journalists... I think you get the idea.  So we've freed up a lot of time for these people and now they can go out and be creative.  We've simultaneously destroyed the arts programs in public schools, so they are going to have to figure it out on their own.  Theoretically they could use the web for this but it seems it's mostly used for stuff like this kitten video.  (I have to admit that I didn't watch it all the way through.)