financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations
provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones
It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is exactly what is not supposed to happen
Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat)
working 40 or even 50 hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organising or attending motivational seminars
The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger
The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political
And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them
Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at
they all become so obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their co-workers might be spending more time making cabinets
It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.)
plagued with debts and a newborn daughter, ended up, as he put it, “taking the default choice of so many directionless folk: law school
Now he’s a corporate lawyer working in a prominent New York firm. He was the first to admit that his job was utterly meaningless, contributed nothing to the world, and, in his own estimation, should not really exist
I would not presume to tell someone who is convinced they are making a meaningful contribution to the world that, really, they are not. But what about those people who are themselves convinced their jobs are meaningless?
(Answer: if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call “the market” reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody else.)
should you meet them at parties and admit that you do something that might be considered interesting (an anthropologist, for example), will want to avoid even discussing their line of work entirely
This is a profound psychological violence here. How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist?
Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work
in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it
There’s a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with, what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law?
Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should b
You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralysing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyse London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people
It’s even clearer in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers (and not, significantly, against the school administrators or auto industry managers who actually cause the problems)
It’s as if they are being told “but you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?”
If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job
The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the – universally reviled – unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) – and particularly its financial avatars – but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value
Colleges and Universities Using iWorx Physiology Teaching Kits
CANADA
Alliance University College
Brandon University
Camosun College
Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine
Carleton University
Concordia University, College of Alberta
Cornell College
Durham College
John Abbott College
Malaspina University
McMaster University
OntarioTechnical
St. Francis Xavier University
St. Peter's College
Toronto Rehab Institute
Trinity Western University
Universite Laval
University College of the Cariboo
University of British Columbia
University of Guelph
University of New Brunswick
University of Ontario Institute of Technology
University of Ottawa
University of Saskatchewan
University of Toronto
University of Waterloo
University of Windsor
University of Victoria
DensityDesign develops research projects in the domain of visual representation, stemming from a design perspective. Our research interests include theoretical and epistemological reflections on visualizations and analyses of their cognitive underpinnings, in addition to the development of large frameworks for data visualization and ad-hoc solutions for speculative narration. We adopt an open approach to visualization, working from visual storytelling to visual analytics. Design is, thus, treated more like a proper language than a tool. We use this language in practice to define a new-visual-epistemology.
permission of a specific ‘owner’ who has to defend the integrity of his module.
different assumptions and effects.
The free-form model connotes more of a sense that all users are on the “same level," and that expertise will be universally recognized and deferred to
the creator of an entry is spared the trouble of reviewing every change before it is integrated, as well as the need to perform the integration
the owner-centric authority model assumes the owner is the de facto expert in the topic at hand,
and all others must defer to them.
the owner must review all modification proposals, and take the time to integrate the good ones.
The owner-centric model is better for quality, but takes more time, while the free-form model increases scope of coverage and is very fast.
'equipotentiality'
rules are generated within the community itself, though mostly in the early phases. After a while, they tend to consolidate and they are a given for the new participants who come later
a process of socialization is crucial to eventual acceptance . The process is akin to the tradition of artisanship, which has been used in the three-degree system of original freemasonry as well: apprentice, companion (fellow craft), master. But it is implied rather than formalized.
Crucial to the success of many collaborative projects is their implementation of the reputation schemes.
Promote entrepreneurship among students and members of the Montreal Community
Support students with their entrepreneurial ventures by means of advising, funds, bank account, networking opportunities and much more
Network with local business organizations and make their resources available to club members
Give anyone with a project in mind the opportunity to form their team, take a leadership position, and bring their idea to an end