21. Gone Under
“Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.” – Fred Allen
Innovation has resulted in people having better lives, whether through assembly lines or other more efficient processes. Thanks to technology, individuals have jobs and can buy goods but spend fewer dollars. Despite this, employees in Lawrence, Massachusetts felt ripped off by their employers. The laborers benefited by a shorter workweek, but also experienced a two-hour pay cut. The civil action, referred to as the Bread and Roses strike or strike for three loaves, involved 20,000 workers from 51 nations. The strike at the mills was led by the International Workers of the World (IWW). It lasted two months.
The United Textile Workers (UTW) unsuccessfully tried to stop the strike, using deceptive tactics against the strikers. Those who participated as strikebreakers soon realized that they were workers too and entered the side of the strikers, joining the good guys. The workers demanded no recriminations against them for their action; double-time pay for working overtime; a fifteen percent pay increase for a 54-hour week. Owners of the mills settled the strike, granting not only those striking but also all other mill workers in New England a 20% raise.
It couldn’t have been done without the unity of the mill employees. Similar action in other industries brought about similar improvements while a few resulted in death and injury to strikers with shops being closed down permanently in some instances. Two movies showing these struggles are the 1987 John Sayles’ movie, Matewan, the story of the 1920 West Virginia coal strike; the 1995 motion picture, Margaret’s Museum. It stars Helena Bonham Carter and deals with the coalmines of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in the 1940s. Books have been penned about these strikes as well.
Today, unions are as scarce as a four-leaf clover, struck down by the corporations in union with the government and police forces. With horrid working conditions, minimum pay and unrealistic demands of employers, they’re needed now more than ever. Workers have been peacefully demonstrating in the fast food industry, housecleaning industry and many other employment fields with no luck, as criminal CEOs just can’t accumulate enough riches to satisfy their greed. I ask the question: How much can you spend? Another is: How much do you need? They seem to forget that without workers, their company would fold.
As you have read, much of technology frustrates and bugs me. Auto responses are so unnecessary, achieving nothing. Another annoyance each of us hate is the email sent to you that you can’t respond to. With a workaround – searching the appropriate web site – you may be able to contact them. Sometimes that’s impossible or requires too much time and effort. If you do find how to contact someone, it would be nice to send him an email written in Wingdings, but I don’t think that can be done. He really should start seeing other fonts. You could send long correspondences or letters via the post office written in that font. Don’t include your return address.
Besides the idea of signing off by pressing start, a bit of lunacy, the madness continues. Does anyone like that thing called captcha? I don’t think that’s even a word. It should be called the holdup doodad. You have to enter into a box the characters given. I saw one that appeared to have smaller lower case letters surrounding the other characters, which I didn’t put in. I made the right choice. In some cases, the software distinguishes between upper and lower case. Another has characters that are so disguised that someone must have spilled hummus on it. The best option is to ask for another combination that’s understandable, hoping that you can read it. What I can’t understand is why a web site has this captcha piece when it’s already asked you for at least two passwords.
On many computers, files and emails need to be cleaned up. It’s called maintenance. Fortunately, emails might have junk, delete, spam and trash folders. Why not replace them all with one called crap? Programmers want to give you the opportunity to make sure that you want to say goodbye to a file. It hasn’t yet come down to answering three questions: Delete? Are you sure? Do you want another chance before it’s too late? I hope it doesn’t. Usually after reading an email, you could send it to the delete folder, but it hasn’t been removed. This is overkill, but it could save you on occasion. Maybe that’s why this choice was designed. However, why do so many files disappear without any prompting?
Hot spots are another pain in everyone’s side, found on ERDs, desktops and laptops. My jumping bean screen email is a bigger problem because of the hot spots. As the display moves about, many times it lands, without my approval, on an advertisement, which I convinced you in the previous chapter is more annoying to anyone who isn’t keen on shopping. Even using caution doesn’t keep you away from warm parts of the screen. I mentioned the similar problem with my ERD, but there’s another repercussion: Reaching a hot spot there – a single action – results in a situation where more than one step is necessary to undo matters. Using both a desktop and ERD means missing characters in a line you keyed on the former – you’re too light with the keys – and pressing too hard on the reader, resulting in migraine headaches.
Along with the junction action of computer technology of today are updates, which I lightly touched on earlier. An update is issued because of a bug or a change, usually both. The former may be addressed but maybe not every one, due to software complexity. The new feature may be a good one, but could bring with it even more bugs. Many times, a modification means relearning what one knows and is used to but now the technique is different. Older, wiser people aren’t thrilled with this idea. That’s exactly what I faced a few years ago. I bought a new or used PC and using the software almost involved going back to school to carry on because of the drastic changes. Instead of using it that way, a friend let me download the old version of both pieces of software. I was happy with that move.
That sounded like a great solution but because of the mix, I had a computer hybrid. Considering updates and different versions of programs, I was asking for trouble. Someone uttered a few words that applied here: from the frying pan into the fire. That may be why my computer dealings don’t always have happy endings, forcing me to use workarounds. I’ve mentioned so many other contributions to our computer messes, such as cookies, spam, viruses and worms, which are great for compost piles and fishing. They have no place in a functioning tech system.
Technology is too slow. Either when I sign on to my desktop or logoff, it takes much too long. Maybe I have to warm it up first. My nephew Dean related a story about some idiots who tried to warm coffee up on their laptop keyboard, putting a blow torch to the cup, shattering it and ruining their laptop; if they managed to get electrocuted, they’d be solid candidates for Darwin awards. Dean added that the moment took any sort of accomplishment from going to college and flushed it down the toilet after hearing that. I think we have more than enough morons in technology. Maybe the oxymoron, holy smokes, applied in this case. Dean also mentioned the time he tried to delete a project in an application called SoapUI. It gave him this prompt.
This option may have helped in the purchase order system backup disaster, buy Dean wasn’t into technology yet. If you’re reading this book online, don’t respond to this box above.
Gone under describes the lives of many people in life. When a doctor performs surgery today, the patient doesn’t feel anything because she is down under thanks to an anesthetic. Corporations that add toxic poisons to the air, water and land because of neglect of regulations as well as politicians who allow that to happen are guilty of the deaths of many people. These victims have gone down under. A product that is toxic while being produced, such as blue vinyl, gives the workers health problems and worse. Once vinyl is installed on the side of a house, a fire on it spews horrific amounts of poison into the air. The land has been compromised as well. Valuable resources have been depleted from the planet.
“Gone under” is a 2013 song by Shayna Steele as part of Snarky Puppy. It’s found on the CD, Snarky Puppy: Family Dinner, Volume 1. Michael League, musician, composer and arranger is the leader of this dynamic effort that gives young musicians a chance to display their talents. The ensemble produces music, is committed to reaching out to communities and educating, working in Roanoke and Cleveland. Winners of various awards by Jazztimes Magazine, critics like the Village Voice, BBC and Guardian have lavished high praise on Snarky Puppy, which has performed in front of audiences worldwide, fusing jazz, rock, funk and evangelism.