[OT] Re: [oclug] Mon June 30 - Anyone closed for business?

[Francis J. A. Pinteric]

On Wed, 11 Jun 2003 17:25:11 -0400 (EDT)
Jon Earle <je_oclug at kronos.honk.org> wrote:

> 
> On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Rod Giffin wrote:
> 
> > Jon Earle said:
> > >
> > > Just a quick survey.
> > >
> >
> > Monday June 30 is a normal business day for both myself and my
> > clients.
> >
> > I'll reluctantly conceed July 1.  Civic holidays cost me a lot of
> > money, and I'm therefore against them until further notice.
> 
> Civic holidays are some of the best times of summer!  I think we need
> more, not less.  It's time society reaped some of the benefits
> (increased leisure time, reduced workloads, etc) that computers and
> technology have promised us for decades!
> 

Not a chance!  Remember when computers first splashed onto the public
scene back in the 1960's?  Everybody was saying that computers never
made mistakes. Nobody ever thought that what in fact they were doing was
perpetuating somebody else's mistakes at the speed of light. Computers
meant MORE mistakes not less.

Then the so-called "paperless office" of the 1980's reared it's ugly
head.  Instead, we got an avalanche of so much paper that forests were
being cleared faster than at any other time in history.  Computers meant
MORE paper, not less.

Then in the 1990's, the greedy corporations got their various government
lackies to pass legislation that would make IT workers exempt from most
emplpyment protection legislation so that they could force their
employees to work longer hours for less pay and few benefits.  Computers
meant MORE work, not less.  (Of course the bursting of the IT bubble
took care of the problem of work with unemployment.)

If you care to look through history, technology has always meant more
work not less.  The leisure society never was and never will be.  But we
do it to ourselves.

>>>--fja->
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