Talk:The future of office work: Difference between revisions

Jump to navigation Jump to search

Talk:The future of office work (view source)

Revision as of 10:03, 31 October 2023

119 bytes added ,  31 October 2023
no edit summary
Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit
No edit summary
Line 1: Line 1:
=== Kyla Scanlon’s argument ===
=== Kyla Scanlon’s argument ===
[https://kylascanlon.com/ Kyla Scanlon] is a whip-smart twenty-something “content creator” who has built an impressive cross-platform following posting short-form videos about finance. Scanlon’s style is well-informed — plainly, she paid attention in college — but also funny, off-beat, wry and a lot wearier with the world than a twenty-five year-old influencer really has any call to be.  
[https://kylascanlon.com/ Kyla Scanlon] is a whip-smart Gen-Z “content creator” who makes short-form videos, podcasts and blogs “analysing the economy with a human-focused lens”. She has hundreds of thousands of subscribers.  


There are not many twenty-five year olds who make a living as self-employed finance commentators, so whatever you make of Scanlon’s material, she’s not greatly representative of her cohort.
Scanlon’s style is well-informed but also funny, off-beat, wry and ''millennial'': she is, says the grumpy old man, a lot wearier with the world than a twenty-five year-old influencer really has any call to be.  
====
Her video shorts are never earnest: she saturates them with state-of-the-art memery and ''velocity'': everything gallops between with frenetic jump cuts, Burroughs like cut-ups and frame shifts that speak to the easily-distracted multi-channel, hyperlinked, always-on dot-dot-dash attention spans of the digital native but don’t necessarily make sense. Well, not to me, at any rate: they are often far too quick for this old codger to make out, let alone follow, and they’re gone before you get a chance to mull over or analyse for content.
 
You come away impressed but never quite sure if you’ve watched some next-level, uber-hip, tenth-Dan free-form improvisational genius, or something that just looks like it. Have a look at [https://x.com/kylascan/status/1704626243402895435? her most recent one] — “Federal Reserve Recap with Jerome Powell” — and judge for yourself.
In any case you can’t help but admire, and maybe be sucked in by, the energy and brio of the delivery. You wonder what it would be like if you got to slow it down and treat it like an old-fashioned, boomer thought piece.


Well, Scanlon lets you do that, too. Her Substack is almost as popular as her TikTok, and definitely a lot more popular than this one! 
There are not many people Scanlon’s age with her degree of freedom and self-determination: it is hard for anyone to craft a living holding forth on the economy, so whatever you make of her material, Kyla Scanlon’s not greatly representative of her cohort.


Scanlon is unrepresentative of her generation in other ways, too. Her expectation for someThat same lazy, boomer categorisation of millennials as “attention-depleted dilettantes who conduct their self-absorbed lives through social media” isn't generally true even of the metropolitian liberal cohort we have in mind, let alone the rest of the world's twenty-two year olds, of whom the “digital native” stereotype is starkly atypical.
Being of Generation Z — just — it is not surprising Scanlon sides with her cohort , particularly seeing as her own career seems to have prescribed the idealised millennial life experience.  
====
Ambitious kids work like tyros, wherever they are. And are the progeny of the professionally qualified upper middle classes of London, New York and California necessarily as driven and (figuratively) hungry as poor kind in Nairobi, Damascus or Kyiv? The JC has no data, but he doubts it. Who is more likely to complain about burnout after a nine to five?
 
Being of Generation Zer — just — it is not surprising scanlon sides with her cohort , particularly seeing as her own career seems to have prescribed the idealised millennial life experience.  


I'm not sure it does, beyond a narrow demographic of offspring of affluent, educated, Metropolitan  professionals. She is no better placed to speak for her wider generation then are the boomers and gen Xers she implies are the problem — especially since those boomers and generation Xers are parents of this stymied generation, and not naturally disposed to wreck their life experiences. Quite the opposite, in fact, and that might be part of the problem.
I'm not sure it does, beyond a narrow demographic of offspring of affluent, educated, Metropolitan  professionals. She is no better placed to speak for her wider generation then are the boomers and gen Xers she implies are the problem — especially since those boomers and generation Xers are parents of this stymied generation, and not naturally disposed to wreck their life experiences. Quite the opposite, in fact, and that might be part of the problem.


In any case scanlon starts with some potted anthropology — in agrarian societies people worked during daylight hours and only gave up their circadian rhythms when forced to, by the industrial revolution when the prerogatives of  mechanisation pushed  them into 16-hour days on a production line, which were only whittled  back down to the modern eight through various labour reforms, and it took Henry Ford — not ''usually'' a Gen Z pin-up, but still — to recognise you got more out of your workers if you paid them more and asked of them less.
In any case Scanlon starts with some potted anthropology — in agrarian societies people worked during daylight hours and only gave up their circadian rhythms when forced to, by the industrial revolution when the prerogatives of  mechanisation pushed  them into 16-hour days on a production line, which were only whittled  back down to the modern eight through various labour reforms, and it took Henry Ford — not ''usually'' a Gen Z pin-up, but still — to recognise you got more out of your workers if you paid them more and asked of them less.


We have, arbitrarily, stuck with the eight hour day ever since, and it is past time yo revisit that. The new world — post COVID, networked, digital — means [[this time it's different]].
We have, arbitrarily, stuck with the eight hour day ever since, and it is past time yo revisit that. The new world — post COVID, networked, digital — means [[this time it's different]].
Line 66: Line 57:
We need to work out how to get the balance right between the Zoomer-style coddling and the Boomer-style stiff upper lip — that’s tricky.}}
We need to work out how to get the balance right between the Zoomer-style coddling and the Boomer-style stiff upper lip — that’s tricky.}}
Or not: the JC is fond of the quotable Nietzsche, but it is no more than seeking out antifragility.  Along that axis, if the choice is between coddling and stiff upper lip, it ''is'' easy: stiff upper lip.
Or not: the JC is fond of the quotable Nietzsche, but it is no more than seeking out antifragility.  Along that axis, if the choice is between coddling and stiff upper lip, it ''is'' easy: stiff upper lip.
----
Her video shorts are never earnest: she saturates them with state-of-the-art memery and ''velocity'': everything gallops between with frenetic jump cuts, Burroughs like cut-ups and frame shifts that speak to the easily-distracted multi-channel, hyperlinked, always-on dot-dot-dash attention spans of the digital native but don’t necessarily make sense. Well, not to me, at any rate: they are often far too quick for this old codger to make out, let alone follow, and they’re gone before you get a chance to mull over or analyse for content.
You come away impressed but never quite sure if you’ve watched some next-level, uber-hip, tenth-Dan free-form improvisational genius, or something that just looks like it. Have a look at [https://x.com/kylascan/status/1704626243402895435? her most recent one] — “Federal Reserve Recap with Jerome Powell” — and judge for yourself.
In any case you can’t help but admire, and maybe be sucked in by, the energy and brio of the delivery. You wonder what it would be like if you got to slow it down and treat it like an old-fashioned, boomer thought piece.
Well, Scanlon lets you do that, too. Her Substack is almost as popular as her TikTok, and definitely a lot more popular than this one! 
Scanlon is unrepresentative of her generation in other ways, too. Her expectation for some
That same lazy, boomer categorisation of millennials as “attention-depleted dilettantes who conduct their self-absorbed lives through social media” isn't generally true even of the metropolitan liberal cohort we have in mind, let alone the rest of the world's twenty-two year olds, of whom the “digital native” stereotype is starkly atypical.
----
Ambitious kids work like tyros, wherever they are. And are the progeny of the professionally qualified upper middle classes of London, New York and California necessarily as driven and (figuratively) hungry as poor kind in Nairobi, Damascus or Kyiv? The JC has no data, but he doubts it. Who is more likely to complain about burnout after a nine to five?
Retrieved from "https://jollycontrarian.com/index.php?title=Special:MobileDiff/80003"

Navigation menu