(no subject)
Feb. 22nd, 2022 09:36 amCory Doctorow recently wrote:
The thing is, I have a lot of sympathy for the “Things used to be simple” complaint, primarily because it’s somewhat true. Over the past 50 years, the complexity of modern life has grown enormously.
A lot of that change is to our benefit! 50 years ago “He had a heart attack” meant “he” was dead: now it means that he has to take a suite of drugs and make significant lifestyle changes, and that’s a lot of work.
But it also means that he and his family (and probably his employer) now have to wade through a ton of paperwork to validate his insurance claims and his co-pays and the side-costs of in-network vs out-of-network and so forth. Corporations have done a hell of a good job of pushing “customer service” out onto the customer, so that the knobs and dials and slots of operating any complex bureaucracy are fully exposed but it’s up to you to navigate them.
Cars are more complicated. Telephones are more complicated. I love my Instant Pot and it’s surely made my life better and I can surely cook many more things in it than ever before, but even its ridiculous simplicity bewilders my mother. All forms of insurance are more complicated. Email is complicated. Every knowledge job now involves eight different websites with a hundreds of different options.
It takes time to learn these things. It takes effort and skill to discern what’s useful and what’s not. Corporations could have made our lives easier, but they chose instead to make it harder because that’s where the algorithms say the profit lies: an “optimal amount” of minimual support and let the customer do all the unpaid work of proving they’re deserving of the corporation’s attention.
The US Government is likewise captured by the notion that, in order to get the government’s attention, you have to be desperate, you have to be dogged, you have to be relentless in pursuing “the general welfare” promised to us in the Constitution. They’re not going to just give that shit away… what do you think you are, an equal citizen?
We could have a simpler, easier world. Corporations could have helpful service centers staffed by people actually trained to know what’s going on, instead of out-country sweatshops staffed by people reading off a script. The Government could make many forms of public assistance as easy as Social Security (“We’re you born? You’re enrolled. We’ll call you when you’re 65.”) but our pain-driven ideologies insist that if you’re suffering, you have to suffer more to get any justice.
There is more to do every day today than there was 50 years ago, and we don’t have the time needed to digest it all. The human brain needs a short nap after every major learning experience or it can’t simply absorb the information. Our brains still have the responsiveness needed to avoid leopards on the savannah, not a constant stream of doomscrolling.
The right wants a “simplicity” that means not having to think twice about their reaction to a person of color, preferably by not having any persons of color anywhere nearby. They want a “simplicity” that means not having to memorize someone’s pronouns– it should just be obvious. They want a “simplicity” that means not having to know a single word of a non-English language.
They’re not going to get it, but in the struggle they’re going to hurt a lot of people. What they want is not the America our founding fathers ever wanted:
Much could be done to bring the world around to Washington’s point of view, mostly by giving us all more time to think about things, to learn things, and to make learning and growing be heroic, rather than corrupting. But we can’t do that if we’re at the mercy of corporations who have no incentive to help their customers anymore than is necessary to vacuum our wallets.
The thing is, I have a lot of sympathy for the “Things used to be simple” complaint, primarily because it’s somewhat true. Over the past 50 years, the complexity of modern life has grown enormously.
A lot of that change is to our benefit! 50 years ago “He had a heart attack” meant “he” was dead: now it means that he has to take a suite of drugs and make significant lifestyle changes, and that’s a lot of work.
But it also means that he and his family (and probably his employer) now have to wade through a ton of paperwork to validate his insurance claims and his co-pays and the side-costs of in-network vs out-of-network and so forth. Corporations have done a hell of a good job of pushing “customer service” out onto the customer, so that the knobs and dials and slots of operating any complex bureaucracy are fully exposed but it’s up to you to navigate them.
Cars are more complicated. Telephones are more complicated. I love my Instant Pot and it’s surely made my life better and I can surely cook many more things in it than ever before, but even its ridiculous simplicity bewilders my mother. All forms of insurance are more complicated. Email is complicated. Every knowledge job now involves eight different websites with a hundreds of different options.
It takes time to learn these things. It takes effort and skill to discern what’s useful and what’s not. Corporations could have made our lives easier, but they chose instead to make it harder because that’s where the algorithms say the profit lies: an “optimal amount” of minimual support and let the customer do all the unpaid work of proving they’re deserving of the corporation’s attention.
The US Government is likewise captured by the notion that, in order to get the government’s attention, you have to be desperate, you have to be dogged, you have to be relentless in pursuing “the general welfare” promised to us in the Constitution. They’re not going to just give that shit away… what do you think you are, an equal citizen?
We could have a simpler, easier world. Corporations could have helpful service centers staffed by people actually trained to know what’s going on, instead of out-country sweatshops staffed by people reading off a script. The Government could make many forms of public assistance as easy as Social Security (“We’re you born? You’re enrolled. We’ll call you when you’re 65.”) but our pain-driven ideologies insist that if you’re suffering, you have to suffer more to get any justice.
There is more to do every day today than there was 50 years ago, and we don’t have the time needed to digest it all. The human brain needs a short nap after every major learning experience or it can’t simply absorb the information. Our brains still have the responsiveness needed to avoid leopards on the savannah, not a constant stream of doomscrolling.
The right wants a “simplicity” that means not having to think twice about their reaction to a person of color, preferably by not having any persons of color anywhere nearby. They want a “simplicity” that means not having to memorize someone’s pronouns– it should just be obvious. They want a “simplicity” that means not having to know a single word of a non-English language.
They’re not going to get it, but in the struggle they’re going to hurt a lot of people. What they want is not the America our founding fathers ever wanted:
As Mankind becomes more liberal they’ll be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality. - President George Washington
Much could be done to bring the world around to Washington’s point of view, mostly by giving us all more time to think about things, to learn things, and to make learning and growing be heroic, rather than corrupting. But we can’t do that if we’re at the mercy of corporations who have no incentive to help their customers anymore than is necessary to vacuum our wallets.
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