Post by forkodak on Feb 16, 2013 20:07:46 GMT -5
Digital capitalism produces few winnersApple, Amazon, Facebook and Google might post huge profits, but many of their staff see little financial benefit
"But somewhere in the depths of Kodak's R&D labs, a few researchers invented digital photography. When they put it to their bosses, the conversation went something like this. Boss: "What are the margins likely to be on this stuff?" Engineers: "Well, it's digital technology so maybe 5% at best." Boss: "Thank you and goodbye."
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"Then there's the question of employment, a topic on which the big technology companies seem exceedingly sensitive. Facebook, for example, is given to engaging fancy consultants to produce preposterous claims about the number of jobs it creates. One such "report" claimed that the company, which at the time had a global workforce of about 3,000, indirectly helped create 232,000 jobs in Europe in 2011 and enabled more than $32bn in revenues. And Apple, stung by criticism about all the work it has outsourced to Foxconn in China, is now driven to claiming it has "created or supported" nearly 600,000 jobs in the US.
The really tough question that none of these companies really wants to answer is: what kinds of jobs exactly? Anyone seeking an insight into this would do well to consult a terrific report by Sarah O'Connor, the Financial Times's economics correspondent. She visited Amazon's vast distribution centre at Rugeley in Staffordshire and her account of what she found there makes sobering reading.
She saw hundreds of people in orange vests pushing trolleys around a space the size of nine football pitches, glancing down at the screens of their handheld satnav computers for directions on where to walk next and what to pick up when they get there. They do not dawdle because "the devices in their hands are also measuring their productivity in real time". They walk between seven and 15 miles a day and everything they do is determined by Amazon's software. "You're sort of like a robot, but in human form," one manager told Ms O'Connor. "It's human automation, if you like."
Still, it's a job. Until it's replaced by a robot.
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www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/17/digital-capitalism-low-pay
"But somewhere in the depths of Kodak's R&D labs, a few researchers invented digital photography. When they put it to their bosses, the conversation went something like this. Boss: "What are the margins likely to be on this stuff?" Engineers: "Well, it's digital technology so maybe 5% at best." Boss: "Thank you and goodbye."
"
*******
stuff
*******
"Then there's the question of employment, a topic on which the big technology companies seem exceedingly sensitive. Facebook, for example, is given to engaging fancy consultants to produce preposterous claims about the number of jobs it creates. One such "report" claimed that the company, which at the time had a global workforce of about 3,000, indirectly helped create 232,000 jobs in Europe in 2011 and enabled more than $32bn in revenues. And Apple, stung by criticism about all the work it has outsourced to Foxconn in China, is now driven to claiming it has "created or supported" nearly 600,000 jobs in the US.
The really tough question that none of these companies really wants to answer is: what kinds of jobs exactly? Anyone seeking an insight into this would do well to consult a terrific report by Sarah O'Connor, the Financial Times's economics correspondent. She visited Amazon's vast distribution centre at Rugeley in Staffordshire and her account of what she found there makes sobering reading.
She saw hundreds of people in orange vests pushing trolleys around a space the size of nine football pitches, glancing down at the screens of their handheld satnav computers for directions on where to walk next and what to pick up when they get there. They do not dawdle because "the devices in their hands are also measuring their productivity in real time". They walk between seven and 15 miles a day and everything they do is determined by Amazon's software. "You're sort of like a robot, but in human form," one manager told Ms O'Connor. "It's human automation, if you like."
Still, it's a job. Until it's replaced by a robot.
"
www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/17/digital-capitalism-low-pay