Earl vs. New York 2140

Despite my wavering ambivalence of Kim Stanley Robinson's work, I continue to read his books.

I purchased New York 2140 from the West Edmonton Mall Chapters in 2017. As with many of Robinson's books, I found my greatest enjoyment in his worldbuilding and theme while struggling to work my way through his baffling characterization and prose. (I will say that this time around some of his characters come close to resembling human beings.) But at last, after nine and a half years, I have finished the book. 

In Robinson's imagined future, the sea level in the vicinity of New York has risen some 50 feet. Its residents have adapted by creating a Venice-like existence, Manhattan's streets now waterways. 

Strangely, aside from the comeback of airships--for travel, shipping, and anchoring floating communities in midair--there's very little mention of technological change in this novel, such as details on adaptive mechanisms for the higher sea levels, resilience measures, computers, transportation, what's going on with space exploration, health care, and so on. Aside from the airships and the sea level change, this book feels like it could have taken place in 1988. 

Robinson's central concern here is economics. The novel is a critique of unfettered capitalism and the harm its done to the world and its people. And by the time we reach the end of this 600 page novel, there's a peaceful revolution wherein the people of the United States and elsewhere in the world force the trillionaires to pay their fair share of society's burdens. 

(So this is a science fiction novel, after all, ha-ha, as Robinson might write.)

There are two action scenes--a midair floating city rescue, and a whopper of a hurricane that precipitates the revolution near the novel's end. Robinson somehow manages to make both of these scenes boring. 

This isn't to say that I don't appreciate the novel. I think its message is important, and the solution the characters find at the novel's climax something we might apply to our current situation. Indeed. I think if I'd read this back before Trump, its impact would have been somewhat lessened. As history has played out in recent years, I find myself thinking that Robinson's prescription might be needed about 120 years earlier than predicted. 
 

Sad Times for Leaf Rapids

Mom, Dad, and Sean, summer of 1976 or possibly 1977
at the Suwanee River campground near Leaf Rapids

I only lived in Leaf Rapids for seven years or so, but they were foundational years. In the 1970s, Leaf Rapids was a thriving community of great natural beauty, built on the Canadian Shield's bedrock and wound through several acres of thick evergreen forest. It was a place not just for humans, but birds, bears, wolves, and--alas--thick clouds of mosquitoes and sandflies. Fortunately, dragonflies the size of sparrows hunted the pests down to manageable levels. 

Once the Ruttan Mine closed down, though Leaf Rapids has been in steady decline. Population, services, amenities, even local government--all the essentials are in short supply, and as CBC reports, things are getting worse. 

Part of me realizes that with no base for an economy, it's probably pragmatic to move the remaining residents to Lynn Lake or Thompson. But neither of those places ever captured my imagination, nor, in my view, have the natural beauty and ineffable mystery of Leaf Rapids. It was a great place to be a kid. 

 I hope that Manitobans can find a way to save Leaf Rapids. 

Caspian Fiasco and Delgard Darvish

I'll say this about generative AI tools; if nothing else, they're handy for creating portraits of Dungeons & Dragons characters. Pete is starting an online D&D campaign next month, and I'm trying to decide between the rich, spoiled swashbuckler above or the taciturn wanderer in exile below. I simply ask the engine to create an oil painting in a particular style, describe the character's appearance based on my character sheet's ability statistics and their list of equipment. 

That being said, these works appear pretty lifeless to me and can't capture the spirit of what a talented human artist can achieve--artists that the AI engines have frankly, ripped off without compensation, because I don't think the fair use doctrine really applies here. Once again, as technology advances, we come closer and closer to the day when no one will be able to work. We desperately need mechanisms to redistribute the wealth that's come from all these productivity gains so that even more people aren't starving in our streets. That could be a role 90% of us could be playing sooner than we think. 
 

The Hate Pumpkin

Back in the mid-80s, Sean posed for a photograph while holding a jack-o-lantern up in front of his face to make himself look like he had a pumpkin for a head. I just asked Google Gemini to turn that image into a movie poster. It took just seconds. 

I'm not against using generative AI to play around and have fun, but I hate the impact it's already having on working artists. At the very least, everyone who's had their art scraped should be compensated. But how can we make that happen? At this rate, a universal basic income funded by the 1% will be the only thing that prevents the vast majority of people from sliding into destitution. 

 

The Banal Miracle

 

All the Right Moves for All the Wrong Reasons

A film with tremendous integrity, All the Right Moves (Michael Chapman, 1983) puts skewed cultural priorities into grim perspective. It's the story of Stef (Tom Cruise), a high school senior with just enough talent to play college football, but not enough to make the major leagues. Showing uncommon wisdom for a teenager in this sort of movie, Stef plans to leverage his football talent into a scholarship so that he can pursue an engineering degree in college; it's his way out of the dead-end, decaying factory town that has already claimed the sweat and happiness of his father, brother, and ancestors down the line.

Stef's coach, Burt Nickerson, (Craig T. Nelson) wants to escape, too; if he can win one big game against a team ranked third in the state, he's almost certain to land a prestigious and financially rewarding college coaching gig. Similarly, his players have a shot at showing college scouts their value.

But the game is narrowly lost, with some of the fault going to Stef, some going to the coach, and there's blame all around. The coach manages to land a job at a California college anyway, but he slander's Stef's reputation, scaring away college recruiters. It looks like Stef is doomed to stay in town and work a factory job, just like his family before him.

Meanwhile, Stef's girlfriend Lisa (Lea Thompson) supports Stef's efforts to secure a place in college, even though she knows success means she'll lose him. As she notes, there are no scholarships for her; she's a talented saxophonist who dreams of being a musician, an impossible dream given the price. Only the football players have a chance of actually achieving the American Dream.

In the end, the coach relents and offers Stef a full scholarship at the college he's coaching at in California, and his mom, dad, brother, and girlfriend are all on hand to urge him to take the opportunity. Stef signs the contract, and we have our happy ending, one that comes in the last seconds of the film and is shot and acted so wryly that the filmmakers dare us to take it at face value.

So we shouldn't. This may be a happy ending for Stef, but the larger injustices prevail. The film explicitly states that there is no escape for Lisa and so many others, but Stef takes his shot anyway. You can hardly blame him. But maybe you can blame a culture's values for trapping so many for the sake of so few.

Depressing, Scary Read of the Day

Lynn Parramore of the Institute for New Economic Thinking delves into the shadowy work of James Buchanan, who she identifies as one of the primary driving forces behind America's steady lurch toward oligarchy. 

Were I A Trillionaire

If I had a trillion dollars (oh, if I had a trillion dollars..!), I'd build a funky corporate headquarters on a lush Pacific island, powered by the wind and tides, and I'd ask people to come work for me. Everyone would get a nice office; there would be healthy snacks and plentiful amenities and as much vacation time as you like. Room and board and two trips home per year would be included in your benefits package. Each of my 100,000 employees will get paid $100,000 US per year.

What's the job? You decide. The hours? You decide. What value are we adding to the world? Well, you decide that too. Come up with a brilliant project, I'll fund it. Come up with a silly project that's probably doomed to fail, and I'll fund that too.

Earlco's values are easy to remember:

Empathy
Anarchy
Revolution
Love

Do what you love, love who you do it with, have empathy for all, and stir things up. Come work for me! Create something! Invent something! Or just play Frisbee golf all day.

There's only one trick: if we create something that will be of tangible benefit to humanity, we give it away. No patents, no copyright, no profiteering. If I've done the math right, my trillion dollars should give us 100 years to change the world. Probably longer, considering all the interest a trillion dollars generates!

Now, someone give me the trillion, and we'll get started. 

Whither Gas Stations?

Earlier this morning I had my car filled with gas at Domo, one of the few service station chains that still employs people that pump gas and wipe your windows. While I was waiting for the fill-up to end, I couldn't help but imagine the days of gas stations with any employees at all will probably come to an end within the next decade or so. There's no technological barrier to eliminating employees entirely; we can already pay by debit or credit to unlock the pump, and if there really is a market for service, we must be pretty close to developing a robot arm that can flick open your fuelling port, twist off the cap, insert the spout and start pumping gas into your tank. When electric stations become commonplace, I imagine automatic fuelling will be even easier; just drive your car atop a charge pad, wave your debit or credit card in the general direction of the scanner, and you're done.

I had some trouble finding out how many gas station attendants remain in Canada; according to Service Canada, there are 2,800 in Quebec. I'm not going to do the math, but maybe that amounts to about 10,000 spread across the country, assuming each province and territory have roughly the same number of gas station attendants per capita.

Imagine you're camping in a national park a few years from now, and you notice your car is just about out of energy. You won't need to worry; you can just tell it to go charge up at the nearest station. Maybe the station will even pop your trunk and fill it with snacks, all without human intervention.

Of course, when all the jobs are being done by robots and software, few of us will be able to afford luxuries such as camping trips, vehicles and food, unless of course we decide, as a civilization, that we need to look at new paradigms to address the overwhelming wave of change that's breaking across us right now. What a time to be alive...on the cusp of utopia or cataclysm. 

Offer of the Century

I found this unopened pack of cards in our board game closet; it's a legacy of my parents. The cards came with one of those giant rectangular batteries that were slung underneath a handle and a big flashlight. I find it amazing that Ray-O-Vac corporation was willing to cut cheques for the meagre value of 75 cents; perhaps it's because they knew few people would bother, given they had to buy another battery and mail in the receipt...and back then, a stamp cost 30 cents, leaving you with a 35 cent return - in 1983, about a third of the value of a comic book. It hardly seems worth the bother, which is perhaps why this deck of cards remains in pristine condition over 30 years after Mom or Dad bought the lantern battery it came with. 

So Long to The Shield

Back when Sylvia and I first started dating she introduced me to The Shield, a cop drama with a twist: rather than follow the exploits of typical crime fighters, The Shield focussed on a small group of corrupt officers, the Strike Team based out of "the barn" in the (fictional) Farmington district of Los Angeles. Fascinated by the show's gritty style, taut writing and above all Michael Chiklis' performance as the sociopathic Strike Team leader Vic Mackey, I eagerly purchased the first season on DVD to catch up and watched each following season as it was released to home video.

Sylvia and I watched the first five seasons together, but then suddenly, for whatever reason, I burned out on the show - not because of any dip in quality, but because the show's bleak landscape simply got to be a little too unremitting; I moved on to lighter pop culture fare for my after-work entertainment. Sylvia finished the show on her own, and it wasn't until the last month or so that I decided it was finally time to complete Vic's story. We sat down together tonight to watch the last two episodes of the final season, and now that it's all over I have no choice but to place the series in my personal top ten television dramas. But why?

While The Shield is ostensibly about the corruption of Vic Mackey and his Strike Team contrasted with the efforts of good cops to uncover that corruption while also handling the regular run of murders and assaults in the show's crime-ridden version of LA, there's a subtext - intended or not - that critiques the racial and class divides in contemporary Western culture, divides that seem to make Mackey's corruption inevitable. After all, Mackey's thuggish policing tactics, his thefts and murders don't arise in a vacuum - they're a sociopath's response to a world that offers little opportunity for decent quality of life for far too many citizens. Not that this excuses Mackey's criminal acts; far from it. The show makes it clear that Mackey's primary justifications, that everything he does is to protect his team and his family, are subordinate to his primary motivator: Mackey likes to win, whatever the cost. A skilled manipulator and bully, if he ever appears sympathetic it's because those emotions are engineered to obtain that exact response.

Against this backdrop the show also follows Latino police captain, then city councillor, then Mayoral candidate David Aceveda, the man who initially suspects Mackey of corruption, pursues him and eventually winds up tainted by Mackey - like nearly every other character who crosses the man's twisted path. Aceveda's arc, though minor in comparison to the show's throughline, nonetheless adds important thematic meat to the show. Aceveda's political career requires unsavoury compromises from beginning to end, and even if he wins, as seems likely (the show's finale doesn't portray the actual election), he's become too much like Mackey to really make the changes that the city needs. Aceveda isn't a villain like Mackey, but he was always in it for himself, and by the show's conclusion he's only grown more cynical and self-serving.

Mackey's web of deceit eventually traps him, of course, as it must in conventional Western drama, but in an immensely satisfying way; he winds up trapped in a hell of his own making, theoretically gaining immunity from his crimes but losing his friends, family and reputation in the process. And there's enough ambiguity in the final seconds to suggest that he's going to at least attempt to dig his way out; the man is, after all, a venomous serpent, and it would be against his nature to accept defeat.

The show's purest characters - Farmington chief Claudette Wyms, Detective Dutch Waggenbach and Officer Julien Lowe - escape relatively unscathed, their moral compasses intact (though Wyms is slowly dying of lupus). The series implies that they will continue to fight the good fight as long as they can, perhaps even more effectively now that they're free of Mackey's dark influence.

The citizens of Farmington, however, don't have much to look forward to. Their world is one of economic desperation, broken families, random violence and drug addiction. While the main characters of the show (or any conventional show) can at least rest assured that they'll enjoy drama and narrative closure, the nameless denizens of The Shield's world, the citizens the Strike Team and Farmington's detectives and police offers are ostensibly meant to protect, will shuffle along as supporting players in their own lives, left out of the spotlight, bystanders impotently observing the stories of more important players.

Just like the rest of us.

And that is of course the show's message, conveyed most bluntly in its splash screen by a shattered police badge: the shield cannot protect us. But if we take that metaphor a step further, perhaps it's also saying that society's current configuration, with its growing distance between haves and have-nots, no longer protects or nurtures a majority of citizens. Once again, things fall apart and the centre cannot hold. Perhaps that's assigning too much meaning to a cop show, but sometimes subtext speaks louder than text.

Mexican Sendoff, Part Four

In my first post about our trip to Mexico, I touched on the private misgivings Sylvia and I shared regarding the morality of the tourist experience in developing countries. About halfway through the trip we discussed our feelings about what we'd seen: malnourished, prematurely aged citizens, homes made out of rubble, freeways overflowing with luxury vehicles burrowing through vast slums. On the resorts, tourists are isolated from these realities, but even on the short trip from the airport to the riviera the evidence of a great divide between rich and poor is abundant and unavoidable. The reality becomes even more evident when you venture beyond the tourist enclaves.

We asked each other some troubling questions: how do the Mexicans here really feel about the tourists they're serving? Are they happy to have relatively good jobs? Resentful that rich Europeans, Australians and Norteamericanos make repeated visits to luxury resorts on Mexican soil - resorts that the vast majority of Mexicans can't afford to visit?

I'm not saying that a nation's attractions should be limited to citizens of that nation; as a humanist, I think the world belongs to all its citizens. But it does seem somewhat unjust that the world's rich peoples have so much more opportunity to enjoy Earth's cultural and geographic treasures.

There's no question that tourism is vital to the Mexican economy and contributes significantly to their GDP. It still seems unfair that I suffer less economic hardship to visit the Yucatan than, say, a poor Mexican from Mexico City would, despite the hypothetical Mexican living thousands of kilometres closer to the Mayan Riviera and all its attractions.

When Sylvia and I were in Valladolid, our supper stop after Chitzen Itza, we separated from our tour group and were caught in a sudden torrential downpour. Taking shelter near a hole-in-the-wall shop, we found ourselves conversing with a very talkative and friendly Mexican, apparently the shop owner or manager, eager to practice his English. He carried a well-worn Spanish/English dictionary with him, and we talked about fish, of all things. While we spoke, an ancient and withered woman hobbled up to us in an effort to sell us - well, I'm not sure exactly what. She spoke no English and her Spanish accent was too thick for Sylvia to penetrate, but it was clear she wanted us to buy whatever was in the heavy bags she lugged around. With only enough pesos left to cover tips for our tour guides and the staff back at the resort, I passed, though I still feel bad about it.

But that being said, I wonder if my guilt is misplaced or even paternalistic, condescending. The woman wasn't at all disappointed our put off by our disinclination to purchase; she simply moved on to the next person on the street. Her advanced age and independence suggested that she didn't need the help of rich tourists to survive, so isn't it self-indulgent to feel guilt? Or is that simply the rationalization of a comparatively wealthy person looking for excuses not to help?

These issues bounced around in my head continuously during our trip, and I still don't have any clear answers. I can say only a few things without ambiguity: first, all the Mexicans we encountered, off-resort and on, were unfailingly friendly, helpful and interesting, and they made the trip doubly rewarding. Second, Mexico possesses great natural and cultural wonders that I feel privileged to have witnessed. And finally, I hope that tourism will eventually help all Mexicans enjoy a far greater standard of living than many of them currently enjoy.

Mexican Sendoff, Part One

Entrance to the Gran Bahia Principe Tulum, Mexico.

Many of my friends visited Mexico years ago, but not until this month did I have the opportunity to visit that fabled, troubled nation. Sylvia likes to travel someplace warm on a regular basis, and I enjoy visiting new places; I only insisted that we visit the east coast, since all my travels thus far have taken me west. We agreed to visit the Mayan Riviera, along the coastline of the Caribbean Sea.

I was thrilled to finally dip my toes into an eastern sea.

As soon as we landed both Sylvia and I started to feel uncomfortable about the dark side of tourism in developing countries. While we were ferried from Cancun Airport to our luxury all-inclusive resort, we passed a number of crumbling buildings...shacks and hovels with peeling paint, collapsing roofs, ramshackle construction. Panting dogs and poor Mexicans on rusted-out bicycles crept along the freeway's margins, like extras in an old Western. Neither of us said anything about our perceptions at the time, not wanting to cast a pall over the holiday. But we both felt the dissonance.

Several of my photos appear a little ghostly because the lens kept fogging up. Mexican jungles are incredibly humid.

The staff at Gran Bahia Principe Tulum were remarkably helpful, friendly and considerate; it was certainly the best service I've ever received in any of my travels. That friendliness extended to the Mexicans we met off the resort, who were all very friendly and approachable. It helped that Sylvia has a rough working knowledge of Spanish!

Sylvia and I were impressed by the lush grounds, spotlessly maintained and bountiful, though sprawling - we made extensive use of the motorized carts that cycle through the resort.

Sylvia was not a fan of the many iguanas who called the resort home...

...nor of the creepy-crawlies that wandered across the beach. I found them pretty fascinating, though, and I got an unexpected thrill out of the rainbow-coloured fish that gathered around me when I waded into the Caribbean.

Vacations are actually a lot of work. I find that we always waste a bunch of time the first couple of days just figuring out where everything is located. Still, we managed to enjoy some time lounging on the beach our first day, overlooking a turbulent sea, enjoying the breeze, our books, and each other's company.

Though were were in Mexico to relax and disconnect from the stresses of the outside world, I found myself annoyed by my own tendency to compulsively check my email whenever we entered the limited range of the resort's free wi-fi. Isn't the whole point of a vacation to get away from all that? Argh!

Our first couple of days went off without a hitch. Unlike past vacations, this time I came prepared with the strongest sunblock possible, a hat and a determination to stick to the shade whenever possible. No sunburns or heat stroke for me this time, I thought!

Of course I thought wrong.

Bottled Opportunities

Having allowed our collection of empty soda bottles, cans and milk cartons to build up for several months, I decided that today would be a good day to haul them to the bottle depot.

Under grey overcast skies I pulled our little crossover into the parking lot of the west end's Centennial Bottle Depot. I nabbed a Jysk shopping cart from the depot's illicit collection and used it to transport six garbage bags full of bottles from the car to the redemption windows.

While waiting in line I noticed the usual mix of middle-class folks and homeless Albertans, the first group returning bottles out of a sense of environmental duty, the second out of economic necessity - at least if my stereotype-based assumptions were true. Such assumptions are always dangerous, of course; I didn't look terribly middle-class myself in my sweat pants and t-shirt, my typical attire for messy chores like this.

When I reached one of the redemption windows, a notice from a City of Edmonton bylaw officer taped to the wall caught my eye. It ordered the removal of all shopping carts from the premises no later than January 2010. They represented "an eyesore," according to the city. While the Centennial manager had dutifully posted the order, a herd of shopping carts remained in defiance of the municipal government's demand.

While I sympathize with the city's desire to keep Edmonton clean and neat, it struck me once again that shopping carts and abandoned bottles represent perhaps the only economic opportunity available to homeless Albertans. Bottle deposit fees, shopping carts and consumer willingness to throw cans and bottles in the garbage instead of recycling them has created an entirely new economy. Homeless Albertans take advantage of consumer laziness and spend their days collecting bottles, turning them in for dimes and quarters.

None of this is news to anyone, but it still astounds me that western culture has allowed itself to evolve to the point where our least fortunate citizens are forced to dig through garbage to earn a daily pittance. I turned in six bags of bottles today, earning about $75. It took about six months of normal consumption for Sylvia and I to generate that many empties. Perhaps an industrious homeless person might be able to collect an equivalent amount from the city's garbage containers in a day. But even if such a person could earn $100 a day, they're still risking disease and injury for an amount of money that might, barely, cover food and lodging. What a remarkably cheap way for society to pay for an essential service.

And yet we begrudge these bottle collectors even the meager dignity of this industrious pursuit. Grocery stores routinely demand quarters or loonies to unchain their shopping carts, business owners chase collectors away from their trash bins and bylaw officers sanction businesses for allowing shopping carts to accumulate. Of course businesses want to protect their property, and naturally it's in everyone's best interest to have a presentable community. But I wonder what options we're leaving for the people being left behind. For years and years Alberta's Auditor General has been begging the government to invest more in mental health services, a key factor in helping get people off the street. And yet the government response has been incredibly sluggish. And while the provincial government and Alberta's municipalities deserve kudos for the progress they've made on the ten-year plan to alleviate homelessness, we're now faced with the spectre of a government led by free-market fundamentalists, the Ayn Rand-loving Wildrose party. How will Alberta's homeless fare in an environment even further right-leaning than our current PC government?

I have a feeling Ayn Rand and Danielle Smith would probably say that homeless folks collecting bottles is merely the free market performing its magic once again. But shouldn't we aim for a society in which no one needs to rifle through garbage to earn some loose change?

The Redundant Human

Originally published in The Peak, Volume 13, Number 7

July 1997

The End of Work

by Jeremy Rifkin

Tarcher/Putnam

The End of Work is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of our global civilization. Author Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Washington DC-based Foundation on Economic Trends, presents us with a chilling choice: be prepared for a fundamental change in the way our society is structured, or face the consequences of global unemployment on a scale never before seen in our history. Even the elites should take heed, according to the author, for they will not be immune to the tragic effects of massive worldwide poverty and the disappearance of the middle class.   

 

Rifkin opens with a grim statistic: over 800 million people are unemployed on Earth, the highest level of joblessness since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The cause?  Technology. The author is not a modern Luddite; he acknowledges that the new information and computer technologies have created many new jobs - but not nearly enough to replace the jobs lost due to the increased use of machines to supplant human labour. Bucking the current conventional wisdom - that being the argument that we are merely in a "transitional phase" and that technological change will eventually result in more wealth for everyone - Rifkin provides compelling evidence that unless steps are taken to prevent it, producers of goods and services will discover that the vast majority of the population, rendered unemployable by the new computer revolution,  cannot afford to buy what the producers sell. The results, needless to say, would be catastrophic. 

               

The first four-fifths of the book is tough reading - not because of any deficiency in Rifkin's skills as a writer, but simply because the picture he paints is almost too bleak to withstand. Through the 1980s and 1990s, hundreds of thousands of workers in every stream of the economy have been laid off, from unskilled labourers to clerical workers to bank tellers to middle management. Teenagers and college graduates are unemployed or underemployed in record numbers. (After investing thousands of dollars to obtain a university degree, I spent three years earning a subsistence wage doing menial labour because of the intense competition for the few jobs left for college graduates.) But, Rifkin notes, productivity is up, profits are up, and today's most popular buzzphrase seems to be "jobless recovery,” a seeming oxymoron. How is this possible?

               

The key lies in humanity's newfound ability to produce more goods and services with less human labour.  Computers, working together with robots and other labour-saving devices, have made it possible for corporations to drastically reduce their employee overhead costs while at the same time creating more goods more quickly and with fewer defects than ever before. So far, the labourers hardest hit have been those working in the traditional industries: auto manufacturing, steelworkers, farmers, machinists. But, Rifkin warns, no one should be complacent. With the speed and capabilities of computers doubling every eighteen months, tasks once thought to be the exclusive domain of human beings could fall into the realm of automation. One telling example is that of the potboiler novel Just This Once, two-thirds of which was written by a computer. While not a work of art, this book is, according to critics quoted in Rifkin's book, easily as readable as any number of Harlequin romances on the bookstore shelves today. Even actors are not safe. We have all seen the Coca-Cola ads of a few years back featuring Humphey Bogart and Fred Astaire frolicking with Paula Abdul. The film greats were digitally inserted into footage shot in the modern era; these commercials already seem crude in contrast to the amazing special effects we see in movies and television today. Soon, it will be possible to create new episodes of television series cancelled decades ago, using stock footage edited and digitally enhanced by computer. Actors will find themselves competing for roles with stars of the past, or even younger versions of themselves!

Every day, we use devices that have replaced human beings: we bank at instant tellers, we purchase goods through television and internet shopping networks, and we even buy CDs from robots - at least, we do in one American shopping mall, and that shop has been so successful that more are surely on the way. The convenience is undeniable, but what is the ultimate price of our love affair with modern technology?     

               

The simple fact is that machines work longer hours, never complain, never get sick, and are much cheaper to use than humans. Sometimes instant tellers are friendlier than their overworked human counterparts. It's no wonder that corporations, in a continuing battle to remain competitive, turn to machines to reduce costs. 

               

The potentially catastrophic side effect is that hundreds of thousands of people are thrust into poverty, and that many of them slip into hopeless lives of despair or turn to crime, frustrated by their lot. The gap between rich and poor is widening at a dizzying pace, and fear and suspicion between have and have-not threaten to boil over into armed confrontation. Already, we see evidence of what was once considered science fiction; a privileged minority of super-rich individuals are cowering behind stone walls, perimeter guards, and security cameras  in many North American communities, sealing themselves off from the increasingly violent urban landscape that surrounds them. 

               

If this were all there was to The End of Work, I could not recommend it, for too many books provide criticism of our society without suggesting solutions. Fortunately, Rifkin is not of this doomsaying ilk, and the final part of his book provides several possible ways for humanity to escape the seemingly unavoidable fate that awaits us.  To reveal too much here would be unfair to potential readers; suffice it to say that Rifkin's solutions are refreshingly free of naive idealism. Nor does he suggest that we return to a simpler, pastoral life, free of machines. Rifkin acknowledges that you cannot turn back progress. Rather, his ideas are hard-headed, practical approaches that are well within the capabilities of our society, if we can muster the political will to carry them out. Rifkin ends the book on an cautiously optimistic note, pointing out several localised examples of a new economic dynamic at work, one that may give us a way out of a stratified, rich vs. poor future. The End of Work is not light entertainment by any means, but Rifkin's prose is clear and precise, so much so that he makes a heavy topic a relatively easy read.  Give it a try sometime when you're feeling pensive about the future and want some ideas on how to build a better world. I, for one, will try to take heed of the author's advice - after all, my next column might be written by my once-faithful PC.                  

My Most Dangerous Job

I graduated from the University of Alberta in 1991, during the last recession. Good jobs were hard to come by. For three years, I delivered auto parts to Edmonton garages, searching for more fulfilling work the whole time. I finally quit in 1994, and I was lucky enough to stumble upon a very odd transitional job before moving on to the Western Board of Music in 1995.

That transistional job was the most bizarre and dangerous I've ever had. I was one of many workers whose task was to empty a huge warehouse and move all its odds and ends, everything from office furniture and files to industrial equipment, to another location across town. It should have been simple, but this jobsite was so dangerous I quit after three months, fearing I'd be killed or badly injured.

There must have been dozens of workers, ranging in age from twenty to sixty. We were mostly left to our own devices; imagine a horde of workers without gloves or helmets or direction hauling heavy boxes every whichway. Now imagine that many of these people knew nothing about moving safely.

Many of the items in the warehouse were stored on high shelves, shelves that consisted of rickety wooden boards laid down upon metal frames. We had no ladders or lifts; we had to clamber up the shelves, which themselves were not secured to the wall and rose to the ceiling, some twenty-five metres high. Workers near the top would pass down boxes to workers below. One of my coworkers was a nice young man from France, who was stunned when a heavy box slipped from another's grip and hit the Frenchman square atop the skull, nearly knocking him from his precarious perch down to the hard cement floor below. "Mon Dieu! Ma tete!" he shouted as the box bounced off his head and fell to the ground, bursting open to spew its contents all over the floor.

Just a couple of days later, two of the older workers were carrying a chandelier from one end of the top shelf to the other. Somehow the wooden shelf slipped halfway out of its frame, causing one worker to lose his balance. To avoid falling off the shelf, he overcompensated, careening to the right and throwing off the balance of his coworker. To this day I still don't completely understand the physics of how this happened, but in effect the first worker wound up bouncing off the shelf as if he were sprung from a diving board. The chandelier whipped around and gashed open the face of the second worker, who understandably lost his grip, blood oozing from his stunned face. The first worker wasn't strong enough to lift the chandelier himself, and so the chandelier toppled over the side, smashing into a million pieces on the floor, showering the rest of us with glass and metal shrapnel.

Not long after that, I helped load a massive industrial blueprint printer onto a forklift. This machine had to be over five metres long, and I have no idea how much it weighed; it took a dozen of us to push it the few inches needed to give the forklift access. The forklift operator lifted the forks about halfway, which seemed high to me, but what did I know? I wasn't a trained operator.

Apparently neither was he, because he took off at high speed and hit a bump on the warehouse floor. The centre of gravity shifted and the printer rolled precariously forward; the rear of the forklift rose high into the air, then crashed back down violently as the unsecured printer fell off the forks, bursting open with an ear-splitting crash and a spray of glass, oil and mechanical parts. The operator fell back into his seat so hard that the impact bounced him back into the air, and he struck his unhelmeted head on the roll cage hard enough to give him a concussion.

For some reason, the business owner had a classic muscle car stored in his garage. I don't know much about cars; all I can tell you is that it was blue and looked sort of like the car they drove on The Dukes of Hazzard. I guess the engine didn't work or there simply wasn't any fuel in the vehicle, because one worker had to steer while four or five others pushed. Unfortunately, the man steering didn't do a very good job, scraping the car's side along a support beam to create a huge dent and a long gash in the door. The business owner himself arrived on the scene just in time to witness this accident, and he wasn't happy.

Then came the last straw. I was one of a few workers asked to stay on for some additional weeks at the new warehouse, presumably because I hadn't destroyed anything or injured myself too badly to continue working. Our first job was to set up the shelving system - the same one that had already proven so dangerous at the first jobsite.

I've already mentioned that the metal shelving frames were very tall. They were also very heavy. The frames were lying on the floor, and our job was to lever them upright. Four of us were positioned at the base of the frame, and another four, many metres away, at the tip. Those at the tip walked forward, gradually lifting that end of the frame higher and higher into the air. Of course, as they walked toward those of us holding the base, more and more of the weight at the tip was unsupported. As the centre of gravity moved, we all found it harder and harder to hold onto the frame; the more the angle steepened, the harder it got. Once the frame stood perpendicular to the floor, we had to hold it in place while another team repeated the process with a second vertical frame. Only then could other workers lock the horizontal frame pieces into place, giving the structure some measure of stability.

We repeated this process several times, but eventually our tired muscles couldn't hold. We levered another frame into place, but we couldn't hold it perpendicular. The top swayed back and forth dizzily as we struggled to hang on, but in just a few seconds I felt the frame slipping from my grip, tipping over. We screamed at everyone to get out of the way of the falling hunk of metal, trying to hang on to give people time to escape. The frame hit the cement floor so hard that we felt the vibrations through our feet, and the clang of impact made our ears ring for several minutes. If that frame had hit anyone, they would have been killed.

That was enough for me. I walked to the foreman's office and gave notice. Six months later I had a much safer job, where the worst danger would turn out to be a possibly rabid bat...ah, but that's another story.

P is for Principles...and Perry White

While re-reading my old Superman comics, I came across this panel from Action Comics #670, published back in 1991, during the last recession. Here, Daily Planet Managing Editor Perry White expresses his outrage, disgusted by the owners' decision to freeze wages and lay off workers - including Jimmy Olsen. Even Lois Lane and Clark Kent, newly engaged, lost their staff positions and were forced to do freelance work for the paper.

Perry's outrage certainly captured the zeitgeist of the era. I was just out of university and struggled for years to find meaningful employment, and of course others were even worse off. I finally landed a job at a non-profit in the mid-90s and started selling some freelance articles and haven't really looked back since, though like most people I've suffered my own economic ups and downs. Now Albertans (among most others in the world) are facing tough choices in the wake of high unemployment, wage freezes, rollbacks, unfavourable contract negotiaions...the same old 90s story all over again. Perry White wasn't just speaking for reporters, but for people like the public sector workers of Alberta, the teachers and nurses who sacrificed so much during the Klein years. Many of them left, including some friends of mine, and Alberta is certainly feeling their absence - despite the current downturn, we're still dangerously short of health care professionals.

You don't balance the books by breaking the backs of your workers. Seems like common sense to me, but it seems we have few political leaders willing to take the long view.