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 The Workforce Is About to Change Dramatically

Been kind of curious how this evolves. Longer than the recent pandemic, having grown up in an era where much software development occurred over the Internet. Ironically, much of my need to technically be in the office revolves around some piece of hardware needing to be within reach not around access IT resources. In practice, I tend to prefer working from work, even if it means pants are required.

The ‘90s and ‘00s likely prepared us for many things being work from home centric. We’re now able to work from home better than ever before for numerous office tasks. I’m sure that’ll just continue to grow with how things have been going regardless of what going back to normal might look like.


Or, you know, maybe not. Perhaps the best argument against the telepresence revolution is not only that people are creatures of habit but also that pandemics have historically done little to arrest the growth of cities and leisure. “The 80-year trend is that the richer society gets, the more it spends on leisure and hospitality,” says Adam Ozimek, the chief economist at Upwork. 


To this however, I say: “80 years ago, good luck sitting on your bum playing Xbox!”

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Reading a page about the local movie theater planning to re-open, I couldn’t help but be amused. In the sense, yes, they’re taking it seriously and have defined sane policies; amused in the sense that I can see what antics are liable to follow.

And then there’s another aspect of the world’s current situation: the notion of releasing film available to rent a stream, ala Amazon. ‘Cuz I’ve only waited about thirty years for Instant Cassettes to be a thing.

Passing Thoughts: BIMF

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Someday someone needs to create a build tool called BIMF: Build It Mother Fucker.

Bonus points if you get Samuel L. Jackson to provide voice over for your error messages 🤣
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The scale of getting things done:

  1. Urgent and important.
  2. Urgent but not important.
  3. Not urgent but important.
  4. Not urgent and not important.
Or for a visual que let’s borrow one from Wikipedia:
While it took me a long time to learn about the connection to president Eisenhower, I’ve generally found this decision matrix a pretty good way for classifying things. It works really well. Because urgency controls attention, and importance determines making sure it happens, which leads to much doing.
And then there’s what I call The Class 5 Full Roaming Vapor–something that is not urgent, but is important, and that makes you feel like having a shot of whiskey in the mean time. These kinds of things: you can kinda picture smack dab in the middle of the chart, lol.
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There are times when I get up, and think it’s almost sad to disturb such a comfortable goonie bird with fur.

Basically spent the night with Willow where my leg goes, Corky by my opposite hip, and Misty in her spot to my left. Which she had to vacate as part of getting up. But comfortable Willow was moving for no body, lol.

And then there are times when I think I ought to dispense treats after breakfast: less I someday meet my death at their paws, lol.

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I Tried to Live Without the Tech Giants. It Was Impossible.

Most people don’t go to such an extent to avoid the big tech companies, even for an experiment it is a bit super thorough. But makes a solid point.
“Critics of the big tech companies are often told, “If you don’t like the company, don’t use its products.” My takeaway from the experiment was that it’s not possible to do that. It’s not just the products and services branded with the big tech giant’s name. It’s that these companies control a thicket of more obscure products and services that are hard to untangle from tools we rely on for everything we do, from work to getting from point A to point B.”
Perhaps the question we really should be asking ourselves is whether or not these companies are a necessary evil.
Would such services exist, or be anywhere near as good without the help of such companies? Miss Hill points out the dominance of Google Maps and the interaction with things like Uber, and I think that’s kind of key. We had GPS navigation long before we had Google Maps and smart phones, but which would you rather use? Part of what made Google Maps what it is today is the insane investment: sending people and hardware off into the wild blue yonder to build a better dataset than simply importing maps and satellite photos could. Who the hell has that much money? Well, Google did. Some clown in their parents garage might be able to kick start the next Apple or Amazon, but they’re not going to be able to afford to run Google Streetview without monopolistic funding.
As things worked out, I’d say Amazon turned out to be a pretty great idea. But twenty six years ago: we’d probably forgive you for thinking Bezos was crazy instead of anticipating he would become several times richer than God, building one of the world’s most well known enterprises along the way.
See, we build our success upon the success of others—and our success is often in enabling others to succeed. The question is can we do that without the ginormous bankrolls and the infrastructure that entails.
I’d like to think we have yet to see the last great American tech company. But without a governmental strongarm, I don’t think we will ever see these empires displaced. Not until landmark paradigm shifts cause them to exit a market, or for profitability sake they choose to exit or destroy one. You’re not going to beat Google Maps unless they’re incompetent and you’re hyper lucky and clever at just the right time: or they choose to shutter the entire operation. That’s just how it works at scale.
Yes, I’m pretty sure that we should refer to them as monopolies. But are they ones we need, or are they ones we can ill afford? As someone who long resisted Google and Facebook, I find that a very intriguing question.