From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: (Fwd) Re: AUT: a new thread
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 01:47:19 -0600


I totally agree on the First in Third/Third in First question, Peter.  I
actually thought about that briefly but did not have time to correct my
post.  It is a very important question (in some ways it always has been,
since for example migrant Mexican, Chinese, etc. labor in the US has always
existed alongside and been a prop of other 'more developed' forms.)

I think that the question of what Microsoft calls APIs (Application
Programming Interfaces) which standardize the way code acts at each level of
the program is very important to this.  That is not even mentioning
programming languages like Java, Visual Basic, Python, which all have
reusable code, applets, etc whihc tend to turn programmers into developers
(technicians rather than engineers, or skilled assemblers rather than
'craftspeople'.)  I am a newtork guy myself, so I see it in things like
printer drivers, where Microsoft has 80% of the driver code pre-written and
companies like HP just have their people write the 'mini-driver' according
to the API specs for that specific printer.

On the network side, the GUI is really an attempt to make network management
more easily trainable and less skilled.  God knows there is no other reason
you would design an operating system with a GUI that cannot be treated like
a shell, which is hella unstable and a grievous waste of resources.  Its
deskilling.

At the same time, the highest skills are required for design or major
infrastructure changes, leading to a layer of people who can do really
profound technical stuff, a layer of competent ' network administrators',
and a help desk.  Overseeing it all are 'project managers', a sort of
flexibilized management which rarely knows fuck all about computers,
networks, programming, etc, but whose sole task is to make sure that budgets
and timeline, however insane, are met and discipline enforced.  These people
are rarely managers in the traditional sense though, since who and what they
manage changes with each 'project'.  Working at GE Capital Rail Services was
a real eye opener on major multinationals and the reorganization of work, in
that respect (and talk about a US owned, but world-wide company!)

Cheers,
Chris

ps  Very few whites go into Black neighborhoods.  However, Chicago is much,
much more segregated than most other cities and the relationship of city and
suburbs is more hostile in my experience.  The Southern cities I have seen
are much less segregated than Chicago.  However, suburbanites moving into
the cities into 'gentrification zones' are much more interracial than in the
past.  Mayor Daley here has built a coalition of Black, Latino, and white
yuppies moving into Chicago, unlike his father who had a 'white power'
coalition of South and Northwest side workers, small and medium businesses,
etc.

The power of the political machine in Chicago  (and I suspect its dependence
on white labor and trade union support) and the massive influx of Black
workers during and after WW2 created an environment of deep hatred between
the more middle class and white suburbs and the city.  In some ways, the
capitalist class abandoned Chicago proper, as no major industries lodged in
Chicago after the 1930's until the 1990's really.  When meatpacking and
railroads left Chicago, nothing replaced them really.  Again, I think that
had to do with the fact of Chicago as the center of US working class
radicalism (1877, 1886, Debs, home of the SP, IWW and CP, etc.)  The
capitalists on the fringes hated the city.  Only with the destruction of the
old industrial working class and the inflow of yuppies who realized that the
suburbs were really isolated, has this been changing.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter van Heusden" <pvh-AT-wfeet.za.net>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2002 11:58 PM
Subject: Re: (Fwd) Re: AUT: a new thread


> On 17 Mar 2002 at 12:29, cwright wrote:
>
> >
> > Or thinking in terms of the relationship of India to the US in the
> > computer industry.  Most commercial applications are written in the
> > US, Japan, and Europe (mostly the US and Europe), but Indian
> > programmers and developers are increasingly common.  For what?  First,
> > for doing software management and development on older systems, such
> > as AS/400.  Secondly, for doing development on newer platforms,
> > whether Oracle databases or Sun servers, etc.  The Indian programmers
> > do not write these applications and operating systems, but they are an
> > increasingly important source of labor for working with them.
>
> In the early 90's, when component based and visual programming started to
take off
> (particularly the more sophisticated systems like Delphi, C++ Builder), I
remember a
> lot of discussions about how programming would involve on the one hand the
> component builders and on the other hand component users. Component users
> would basically not need a 'full' programmers education - they might have
a kind of
> 'information systems' background, living a life closer to the managerial
layer in
> corporations. I remember Michael Swaine writing in Dr Dobbs (I think the
> 'Programming Paradigms' column) about the erosion on the vertical control
that
> programmers exerted over their toolchains. What he meant by vertical
control was
> that programmers have typically understood everything from the most
low-level
> services (actual machine code, drivers, internals of operating systems) to
the most
> high-level components (4GLs, visual programming environment, libraries of
> software components) in order to get the job done.
>
> As ever more aspects of a computer become commodities, the need for this
vertical
> understanding diminishes. For instance, the existence of commodity
operating
> systems (DOS, MacOS and Unix and later Windows) means that low level
> interaction directly with the machine is not necessary - you only need to
know how
> to interact with the operating system. In the 1990s, ever higher levels of
service
> have become standard - in Windows 95, networking first became a standard
part of
> the Windows operating system, in Windows XP, dot Net provides a level of
services
> that is pretty groundbreaking from a programmers point of view. Much less
need to
> re-invent the wheel, the keep writing the same software again and again.
Much less
> space for programmers to control the conditions of their work. (At the
moment, one
> of the advantages of being a programmer is the uncertainty involved in how
long
> something will take - estimates often turn out to be wildly wrong, so I
can often get
> away with goofing off / surfing the net / writing emails to aut-op-sy for
hours or days
> before starting to work on a problem - I just blame  the delays on
unexpected
> difficulties)
>
> Now, you mention the Indian industry - and I think the Russian industry is
in some
> ways similar. A manager's wet dream - the seperation of different kinds of
> programming tasks (i.e. breaking of vertical integration) not just between
different
> programmers, but across entire continents! The choice of systems suggests
this
> agenda - you simply don't go
>
> A comparative investigation into programming techniques in use in India,
and in the
> US, would be interesting. But, on that point, such an investigation should
also be
> open to the possibility of the 'First World in the Third'. You were not
100% correct in
> saying that I think Bologna's analysis doesn't apply to the Third World -
unless you
> consider me to live in the First World while my poorer comrades (30 kms
away) live
> in the Third. While the degree of isolation between the suburbs and the
townships in
> South Africa is incredible (many white suburbians never having been to a
township),
> there are more subtle interconnections. (BTW. as a matter of interest -
how many
> white American suburb dwellers have never ventured into a poor ghetto in
the US?)
>
> Peter
> P.S. there are also helpdesks farmed out to South Africa, and they seem to
rely - as
> do the Indian ones - on the presence of 'Western' educational styles and
norms - an
> effect of the First World in the Third, I guess. BTW. they have access to
this
> technology that allows you to track an IP address to an exact geographic
location (in
> about 45 minutes) - wonder how the hell that works?
>
>
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