Hi Jay, everyone,
I think Giddens explains Marx very well that technological change is
inseparable from the dynamics of the economy -- being the way capitalists
compete through tipping the balance of labour and capital by developing new
technologies to decrease the value of labour, and to drive up profits. A good
comtemporary example of this process is the change in html authoring, in which
new tools such as 'Claris Home Page', 'Adobe® PageMill", "DreamWeaver", "Cold
Fusion", and so on, have made it so anyone can develop web content with little
technical skill.
By example, Lenny, who is part of the crew building the skatepark near my home,
and who spends a lot of time pouring concrete, told me in a recent conversation
of how he was first a web developer. He earned $40/hour, then $20/hour, then
only $8. Lenny realized he had to do something else.
He is now one of the team of Airspeed Skatepark LLC, who are in the business
niche of building skate-boarding parks. It is a labor intensive business, with
tasks that can not easily be routinized -- so traditional builders consistently
try to replicate their work and fail. What is interesting, is to watch as the
crew works, a group of young men and women with a very high degree of
flexibility in accomplishing their shared tasks. They come together over a
problem and solve it together. Almost everyone of them also skate, so they
bring knowledge of how the park should function to its design from the very
beginning.
I'm doing a photo documentary, and it appears at:
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/barowy/sp/NBPT.skate.park.html
The important point being that I'm convinced that weighting in the
consideration of social, technological, and economic aspects of activity is
best done if situatedly balanced.
bb
=====
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Aug 01 2001 - 01:01:23 PDT