View all notes
Available query params: commented=1, untagged=1
There’s license in the arts to question very normative assumptions. The engineering approach of designing infrastructures as living systems does still give me hope for how we might rethink human systems more broadly. But I continue to feel quite frustrated with the way that engineering as a discipline tends to frame problems as technical challenges. You’re supposed to scope out the political and social forces that are causing an environmental problem, and just slap a technical fix on the end of it. Even the work I was doing — that really nice, innovative, environmental work — was facilitating terrible housing developments full of huge McMansions. It seemed like my job was to make these wildly unsustainable projects just a little bit less bad.
So I started to get more and more interested in different kinds of questions. Like, who and what do we value? What do we think we need in order to have a good life? These weren’t questions we asked as engineers, but they were questions I could ask as an artist.
For example, as an engineer, your goal is to minimize risk to humans living in the environment, and to do this, you have to adhere to regulations such as human health standards. But the cost may be the capacity of other, nonhuman species to live and flourish. At some point, you have to think about how you weigh that cost. We urgently need to expand the definition of human health to also include the fates of other life forms. There was very little room in the space I was working in to explore these assumptions and the cost of designing from a solely human-centric perspective.
That balancing act reminds me of something engineer and professor Deb Chachra wrote in one of her newsletters. She wrote, “Sustainability always looks like underutilization when compared to resource extraction.”
That’s beautiful. Deb also writes about infrastructure as being care at scale, which I think is a nice way to think about it. Could there be a model where infrastructures don’t just care for humans, but also care for the ecosystems where they’re acting?
I’m obsessed with water leaks for that reason. If you look at a water pipe at the point where it’s leaking, you usually have these little gardens popping up, all these little ecosystems that are taking advantage of the water supply. There’s been fascinating research published on how leaks from water distribution systems in cities actually recharge groundwater aquifers because most of these systems leak 10 to 30 percent of their water.
Of course, there’s also research going on at MIT and all these engineering schools on how to to develop little autonomous robots that go into the pipes and find the leaks and plug them up. From the perspective of design and engineering, the system is not supposed to be porous; leaks are a problem, an inefficiency. But it actually takes more than just humans to make the city. What about the street trees that depend on those leaks? So then the question becomes: is there a way we can share resources with other species rather than completely monopolizing them?
[...] Gamification also serves the useful function of redirecting conflict away from capital, as workers become consumed with the more urgent task of beating the game.
When work took the form of a game, Burawoy observed, something interesting happened: workers’ primary source of conflict was no longer with the boss. Instead, tensions were dispersed between workers (the scheduling man, the truckers, the inspectors), between operators and their machines, and between operators and their own physical limitations (their stamina, precision of movement, focus).
The battle to beat the quota also transformed a monotonous, soul-crushing job into an exciting outlet for workers to exercise their creativity, speed and skill. Workers attached notions of status and prestige to their output, and the game presented them with a series of choices throughout the day, affording them a sense of relative autonomy and control. It tapped into a worker’s desire for self-determination and self-expression. Then, it directed that desire towards the production of surplus value.
As Marx remarked in his Grundrisse, "It is not the individuals who are set free by free competition; it is, rather, capital which is set free."
Finally, around hour thirty of playtime, the dialogue starts to repeat: my villager friends have run out of things to say. I feel that I have spent as much of my vacation harvesting bell peppers as I'd like.
hahaha this reminds me of my experience playing harvest moon (think about this more). there is no more novelty and i am merely supposed to grind away at this farm forever. is that what life is like, underneath? the novelty merely masks the horrible banality always lurking beneath?
After Apple recently won the race to surpass a $1tn valuation, CEO Tim Cook emailed staff to explain, “Financial returns are simply the result of Apple’s innovation, putting our products and customers first, and always staying true to our values.”
While seductive, this story is, like the Apple store itself, a managed fiction.
Apple’s system of operation is less the result of genius than of capture and control. Semiconductors, microprocessors, hard drives, touch screens, the internet and its protocols, GPS: all of these ingredients of Apple’s immense profitability were funded through public dollars channeled into research through the Keynesian institution called the US military. They are the basis of Apple’s products, as the economist Mariana Mazzucato has shown.
The company’s extraordinary wealth is not simply a reward for innovation, or the legacy of “innovators” like Steve Jobs. Rather, it flows from the privatization of publicly funded research, mixed with the ability to command the low-wage labor of our Chinese peers, sold by empathetic retailers forbidden from saying “crash”. The profits have been stashed offshore, tax free, repatriated only to enrich those with enough spare cash to invest.
some thoughs on this (relevant for book)
what apple has done (like most successful tech companies) is figure out how to put the pieces together (wtih ofc some creative control, innovation) in such way as to mint a ton of money. now, the big q is: is this good (intended behaviour), or is it bad (an aberration)?
something about profit's morality being socially constructed: if you forge money, or say forge/steal something and sell it, you're committing a crime. if you pay chinese workers a pittance to assemble devices based on tech you're cobblign together from various sources, you're innovating. this is considered legal because it's been created to be so - it's not a natural state of affairs. you could imagine alterantive systems where excess profit is essentialyl made impossible (or even criminalised) - workers must be better paid, prices must be lower, corporate taxes must be higher. whatever the rationale for allowing companies like apple to rake in profits in exchange for monopolisation supply chains doesnt seem worth it (not worth the costs)
[...] Apple's profits, at root, are a product of its power to control.
Apple's ability to govern its employees, supply chains, and image allow it to restrict behavior and creativity in its interests - try getting a genius to say "crash," the company to pay tax, or your music out of your iPhone. Apple's ability to assert proprietary control over public goods, from the town square to government research, allow it to generate income far in excess of anything it could hope to wring from its staff. Apple's performance of friendliness and innovation allows it to soothe customers while convincing both them and investors that it is the source of a happier, richer destiny. Apple's profit does not come from packaging the labor of the past, in other words, but from the power to organize the present in a way that makes others believe that is inventing the future.
damn this is great
Any player who looks too close will start to lose faith in the open-world game's promise of freedom. Compromises will always have to be made. Maps have to end, the plot has to be followed, and dialogue trees can only grow so far. Our virtual worlds aren't as free as we would like to think.
Neither, though, are our real worlds. Our gentrified neighborhoods and surveilled public spaces are just as limited and artificial as the cities and villages in our open-world games. They're the manufactured creation of developers, whether they're building software or property. In the physical and digital world alike, freedom is, in the end, a facade.
damn, good ending
How have the jobs changed within the gaming industry over time?
Similar to other parts of the tech sector, the game development industry is moving away from hiring people full-time and towards a gig model. It’s becoming commonplace to hire contractors and freelancers, instead of hiring full-time visual artists, sound designers, or writers for games. Or having fans submit speculative work to be used in games, paying them only a pittance.
We're also seeing executives increasingly try to pay people in exposure, particularly in the promotion of games. While most companies have dedicated marketing and community teams, there is also a trend towards trying to promote through “influencers”—often younger gamers with a sizable social media presence that will spend hours streaming their game sessions. If someone has a lot of views on their channels, the company will pitch a partnership, offering free games or flights out to flashy events—a moment in the sun. In reality, these people should be hired and paid a living wage to do this sort of promotion.
There is this very paternalistic way that all the game development companies treat their employees. We’re often told, “We’re one big family.”
And the workers are the children.
damn that's good