RE: https://mastodon.social/@Daojoan/116339351277198152
Much of this goes back to Tim Ferris and his "4-hour Work Week", in which call center workers for hire in Asia did what people want AI to do now.
It's no mistake that many things labelled "AI" between then and now were, in fact, those same workers in Asia or Africa.
@watters I think it's funny that people wanna roast Ferriss for this book when it makes much of the same arguments that the critically acclaimed "Bullshit Jobs" does, just way ahead of it's time: both observe that a massive fraction of office activity is economically unproductive, both notice that people performing busyness theatre are miserable, both suggest the 40-hour week is a social construct rather than a productivity necessity.
Graeber just wants a political solution to this, while Ferriss considers it pointless and has an individualist outlook
@budududuroiu I think the proposed responses / solutions to an identified problem are more defining characteristics of a work than the identified problems those solutions purport to solve.
With that in mind, criticism of 4HWW makes a lot of sense.
Cameron Watters
Bogdan Buduroiu