From: "Nate Holdren" <nateholdren-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: (Fwd) Re: AUT: a new thread
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 13:49:25 -0500


Peter-
you asked "BTW. as a matter of interest - how many white American suburb 
dwellers have never ventured into a poor ghetto in the US?" I don't have 
numbers but I'd guess it's slim. Actually a lot of people here in Chicago 
who live in more affluent parts of the city (generally central or north) 
have never been to poorer areas of the city, some have never been on the 
south side of the city at all.

Interestingly, though, I heard a report on the radio a while back about 
heroin use by suburban white teenagers. The groups of teens interviewed 
commented that they would drive into very poor urban neighborhoods to buy 
drugs, then go home to use (or sell). It was part of the ritual of using.
I have a friend here in Chicago who works in a recycling collection program 
serving the public housing high rises, many of his co-workers live in the 
high-rises. My friend said that the drug dealers basically control the 
residents lives (stopping and searching, enforcing order, etc) and that many 
of the clientel are not high-rise dwellers but people who drive down to the 
high-rises to buy and then go home to nicer north side or suburban homes. In 
fact, my friend has been stopped by police (and more frequently by drug 
dealers since a lot of the cops are paid off) at different times for being 
in the vicinity of the high-rises, as he's considered suspicious for being a 
white guy in the neighborhood (the cops think he's a drug buyer, the dealers 
think he's a cop or a buyer).

cheers
Nate

>From: Peter van Heusden <pvh-AT-wfeet.za.net>
>Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: Re: (Fwd) Re: AUT: a new thread
>Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 07:58:23 +0200
>
>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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