Intellectual Property

In every aspect of life a person can argue either something to be negative or positive. For example, a dog can be a man’s best friend for one person, but for another a dog could be a man’s worst enemy. For the purpose of this blog, I would like to show why exclusive rights are essential in the creativity of our world today. There are a number of people in this world that labor themselves everyday trying to create new products and services that will make life easier for the average consumer. This enables our country to develop and grow in all ways of life. On the other hand, there are people who create music, literary works, and images which are used to enhance a person’s life through emotion and creativity. Because products or services are in fact intellectual property of those who take time to create them, they are protected by exclusive rights known as copyrights. Copyrights give people of intellectual and creative aptitude an incentive to share their talent with the world around them instead of keeping their creativity to themselves. Also giving the individual the incentive to “share” while being protected, will also give the individual the opportunity to profit off of their talent. The one negative of copyright laws, is some tend to be too long. When this occurs creativity and innovation is decreased a substantial amount thus hindering the potential growth of society as a whole.

Employee Monitoring

These days, employers keep monitoring their employees in order to increase the productivity and the efficiency of their employees. This term is called as employee monitoring. There are many ways to monitor the employees, especially with the help of vast development of computer technology. Some of the examples are telephone monitoring and computer monitoring. As we live in the world of capitalism and to sustain the M-C-M' paradigm, employee monitoring is the best way for the capitalist to ensure that the process of profit-making keep going in every seconds. Every minute spent against the completion of the target is reducing profits and increasing costs. Sometimes, it is true that the employees are constantly wasting their precious time during work time to do unnecessary things instead of doing their jobs. Yet, the employers are not supposed to keep track of them at all times. Humans cannot do work constantly without rest. For instance, the movie entitled Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin might be the best way to illustrate this situation. At one point, Chaplin was taking a short rest in the toilet, but his employer scolded him and directed him to resume his work. Is having a short rest during workday, a wrong thing to do? Yes, I agree that employee monitoring is fundamental to maximize the productivity of the workers and the good quality of products. Nevertheless, according to Baase, employee monitoring diminishes the sense of dignity of the workers as they feel like they are being treated like machines, not humans. Therefore, employee monitoring might destroy the employees' confidence, causes stress and boredom. Eventually, this will reduce workers' commitment to do a great job and hence, reduce the quality of the product made by the company.

Technology in the workplace and the absence of worker benefit

While it is undeniable that technology has made our free time in general much easier and more convenient, the same cannot be said about the workplace. While the addition of new technologies allows workers to get more done in a smaller amount of time, this does not mean that they get to work less. The work they do does not remain constant. Instead, they are forced to work the same hours for the same pay, but end up getting more done. This ends up being bad for workers since less are needed in the first place. Thus, the addition of new technologies does not make the life of the worker easier. Those that are still employed work the same hours. Many find themselves unnecessary and are forced to find a new job, or possibly a new career. This is especially true in the manufacturing industry. There are machines today that can do the same work as several workers could do. These machines require less money to maintain than a worker, and do not ask for health benefits, convenient hours, or vacations. The implementation of machines has led many workers into obsolescence. This leads to higher rates of unemployment and subsequently lower wages for the average worker. As a result, new technologies have not really helped the worker. Instead, they have caused workers to lose their jobs, and do more real work for the same (or less) amount of pay. Technology may make our lives outside of the workplace more convenient, but it has not had the same effect on the workplace itself.

Freedom to work a real choice?

One of the main issues we have discussed in class is whether or not choosing to work a mundane, low-paying job is a choice. This comes down to whether or not you believe working a mundane, low-paying job is a forced choice or free choice, and also whether or not you believe that a forced choice is still a real choice. If someone is raised in an environment where they do not have much of an opportunity to become educated, one can hardly blame them for not being able to get a decent job. Luckily, in the United States, virtually everyone is guaranteed an average education up to the 12th grade. However, in third world countries, a good education is not always readily available. People from those third world countries, then, are forced to work jobs that do not allow for them to truly use their skills. They may not really have the opportunity to get a better job or start a business. Is their choice to work in a free trade zone a free choice then? If they have to choose between working at a free trade zone and starving (at no fault of their own), can one really say that that is a free choice? One can reasonably say that this is an unfair situation. Is this just something that will happen in a capitalist system, or is this something that should be addressed? Are unfair working conditions something people just have to “deal with”? Is the choice to work at a mundane, low-paying job a real choice or a forced choice? I would tend to say that it is a forced choice.

Computer and self-service

Joan Greenbaum's Windows on the Workplace has changed my perspective on how I see the effects of technological advances plus management objectives to workers. I used to think that technology made our life easier, saving time and costs as well as producing more quality products. This is the fact that is undeniable. However, technological advances also bring negative effects to the workers. Greenbaum's book is practically related to all three stories that Prof Perry put in the CRS sections and all the stories are different from each other but giving almost the same consequences. In the first story, computer kiosks are replacing the common ticket counters as to reduce ticket lines. If we look this from the positive side, several problems that always occur in the airport such as the delay of the flight due to the never-ending ticket lines and help with the regular issues of lifting plenty of bags could be avoided as the customers now need to check-in and lifting their luggage on their own. On the other hand, the cell phone check-in in the second story provides a new option for the passengers to buy airline tickets. All they need to do is just sending a text message to any airlines and then, they will receive a message that containing a barcode immediately, which is exactly the same as the barcode on the airline tickets. The second story is roughly the same as the third story, which is the latest way to order pizza by using text messaging. This helps to lower the waiting time to order pizza. Despite of all the positive effects, the manager tends to eliminate a number of workers as their jobs are being replaced by machines and computers. The technological advances have re-engineered the jobs so that the work becomes deskilled and divided up. In addition, the wages of the workers become lesser because their jobs have become less skilled due to the replacement with technological advances. If technology keeps replacing human's horsepower, what are the jobs that will left for us in the next few years?

computers divide white collar labor

In class we talked about the division of labor in the white collar workplace and relates to the division of blue collar labor in some ways. In the 70’s there was a trend of isolating people, tasks and jobs, and separating the head of information work from the hands of data processing. More and more tasks, particularly those in clerical areas and in the back offices, were being treated like manual work. Once computers became a common asset in the office they played a large role in the division of labor. For insurance companies computers were a rational step in integrating the handling of policies, cutting down paperwork, and speeding up processing. The company broke down all work tasks down into what they called “work units” and estimated that by the end of the phase-in-period, the decrease in the number of work units would have cut costs in half. The standardization and division of labor that were the mainstays of corporate organization also provided the principles on which the new computer programs were designed. I found this to be interesting because it appears that computers played a part in the division of labor, but it also seems that the division of labor played somewhat of a role in the development of computers. These computer applications continued down a path that supported the management objective of dividing labor and lowering costs. There were even programs developed to separate those who keypunched data from those who entered it on forms, and to separate customer relations specialists from clerical workers doing the record keeping.

Overworked

The standard way of thinking about the advance in technology has it that computers and technology will free us from hard work or physical labor. With technology, now we can build skyscrapers a lot easier compared to when the ancient Egyptian trying to build the pyramids. But, that and all of other sweet things about technology didn't mean that people will have to work less. In fact, many people now work even harder and longer than they used to. Why is this happening in today's community? I would say, capitalism and its profit- making paradigm is the reason.

With the division of labor in detail, workers cannot feel their job secured enough. Employers will expect only the best quality of work. Thinking of it in another way, what about the professionals? Most of them are still doing work even though they have left the office. E-mails and BlackBerrys (forms of computer technologies) made it impossible for these workers to have a clear boundary between work and personal life. These workers will have no excuse to have a nice and relaxed vacation since they can be reached anywhere and anytime. The employers don't care about whether your sister is getting married or your son is sick, all they care is that you do your work they are paying you for. If you refuse, easy, you'll lose the job. The point that I'm stressing out here is that, people don't have the time to rest or to spend with their family. And I think that is bad because it takes away one of the human's right.

Do 3rd World Countries Benefit from Oursourced jobs?

Who is to say that workers in third world countries are forced to take outsourced jobs? In fact workers in third world countries make their own decisions to work. Why do workers choose to work terrible jobs with low wages and long hours? I personally feel that workers choose to work these outsourced jobs with long hours and low wages because it is basically the only option they have. The reason that it is the only option is because arguably the outsourced option is the better option for the third world country workers. Third world workers are presented with a limited amount of assets. Whether it is education or income, third world workers lack the essential economic variables to create opportunity for themselves. Therefore it is the outsourced jobs that essentially create a “fraction” more of opportunity than what the workers had prior to their low wages and long hours. Thus, it is difficult for an individual to be critical of a “free trade zone” because workers in Jamaica experienced poverty even before the era of the free trade zone. It is the same for a large percentage of the Mexican population. Children leave school at the age of ten on average, the sixth grade, and begin working for their family, earning equivalent to two American dollars per week. Not only do the children lack the education to create opportunity for themselves, but now they are inevitably trapped to work more than forty hours a week for less than two dollars.

Cyberspace and our values

Lessig talks about cyberspace and how the changes in computer technology must be matched with changes in our laws or our values may be lost. He begins by speaking about liberty and freedom. He states that we build a world where freedom can flourish not by removing from society any self conscious control, but by setting it in a place where a particular kind of self conscious survives. We build liberty as our founders did, by setting upon a certain constitution. He tells us that by the word constitution he doesn’t mean a legal text but more of a way of life. They are foundations laid that structure and constrain social and legal power, to the end of protecting fundamental values. Lessig talks about how we can code cyberspace to protect or disappear values that we believe are fundamental. But what values should be protected there? What values should be built into the space to encourage what forms of life. He says that there are two values at stake, substantive and structural. These are the values that are entrenched through our constitution and bill of rights (freedom of speech, privacy and due process). There are four things that regulate and constrain our behaviors and values. Norms constrain us through the stigma that a community imposes. Markets constrain us through the prices they exact. Architecture constrains through the physical burden they impose. And law constrains through the punishment they impose. He spends a lot of time speaking of law and its affects on cyberspace. Some examples of this are copyright laws, defamation laws, and obscenity laws. They all continue to threaten ex post sanction for the violation of legal rights. Laws have a great influence on our lives and continue to threaten a certain consequence if it is defied.

Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times –a review

Modern Times features Chaplin as a factory worker. His job is nothing more than just standing in an assembly line to wrench bolts on pieces of product. As I watch the first two clips of the film, I can see its connections with Braverman (and his discussion on Taylor's principle). The division of labor in detail, described by Braverman, is clearly shown in this movie. Neither Chaplin nor the other workers have the skills to make the whole product, what they know is just the tiny bits that they do on every working day. The man in suit is the one who gets to make the important decision such as to decide the speed of the conveyor belt, but he is not the one who actually pulls the lever to adjust the speed. This is the Taylor's second principle, the separation of conception from execution. By practicing Taylor's principle, the management gain control over the workers. I wonder how much the workers in Modern Times are being paid; but I bet it's not that much. How much do you expect to earn by doing such simple tasks. The workers cannot demand for higher wages or extra lunch hours since they have no or very little skills. And if they dare to do that, they'll lose their job to someone else.

Since it is a mute film, I find it hard to tell whether Chaplin's character really has gone mad or people just misinterpreted his extreme action when he's letting himself being pulled through the gears of the enormous machine just to tighten a bolt he missed as something abnormal. In whichever ways, it portrayed how desperate he is to do his job. Even if we thought of it as just wrenching bolts, it is more than that to him. I wouldn't blame him, as the conveyor belt keeps moving at ever increasing speed, he's responsible to keep up or he'll lose the job. The scenes where Chaplin's character couldn't stop moving in repetitive motion, even during breaks, however funny to watch, is actually a way to demonstrate how damaging the science of mass production under capitalism could be. Repetitive strain injuries, boredom, and de-skilling of workers are just to name a few. Is there any way we can change these scenario?