Life_is_Simple
11-1-11, 11:59pm
I read this in the newspaper, and found it very illuminating. It explains why we are so tired. As much as I try to simplify my life, it seems there are so many little things to do... Some quotes from the article appear below:
Who's doing the grunt work? You are. (http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/132961048.html)
Article by: CRAIG LAMBERT
Updated: October 31, 2011 - 6:16 PM
...
Even so, [a law firm partner] was scanning and bagging her purchases in the self-service checkout line. ...Nonetheless, she was performing the unskilled, entry-level jobs of supermarket checker and bagger free.
This is "shadow work," a term coined 30 years ago by the Austrian philosopher and social critic Ivan Illich, in his 1981 book of that title. For Illich, shadow work was all the unpaid labor -- including, for example, housework -- done in a wage-based economy.
...
In the industrialized world, few of us live in a subsistence mode, so shadow work is ubiquitous: shopping, paying bills, housework. Digital technology -- with its spam, e-mail, texting, smart phones and so on -- is steadily ramping up the burden of shadow work for all whose lives revolve around its magnetic field.
...
Today, all those [gas station tasks] have been transferred to the customer: we pump our own gas, squeegee our own windshield, and pay our own bill by swiping a credit card. Where customers once received service from the service station, they now provide "self-service" -- a synonym for "no service."
...
Who's doing the grunt work? You are. (http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/132961048.html)
Article by: CRAIG LAMBERT
Updated: October 31, 2011 - 6:16 PM
...
Even so, [a law firm partner] was scanning and bagging her purchases in the self-service checkout line. ...Nonetheless, she was performing the unskilled, entry-level jobs of supermarket checker and bagger free.
This is "shadow work," a term coined 30 years ago by the Austrian philosopher and social critic Ivan Illich, in his 1981 book of that title. For Illich, shadow work was all the unpaid labor -- including, for example, housework -- done in a wage-based economy.
...
In the industrialized world, few of us live in a subsistence mode, so shadow work is ubiquitous: shopping, paying bills, housework. Digital technology -- with its spam, e-mail, texting, smart phones and so on -- is steadily ramping up the burden of shadow work for all whose lives revolve around its magnetic field.
...
Today, all those [gas station tasks] have been transferred to the customer: we pump our own gas, squeegee our own windshield, and pay our own bill by swiping a credit card. Where customers once received service from the service station, they now provide "self-service" -- a synonym for "no service."
...