The Bottom of Hollow Towers
I’ve never been to Brazil.
But back in 2015, Brazil alone had more reported homicides than the United States, China, all of Europe, Northern Africa, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand combined:
Other than that, I’m sure it’s a beautiful country.
And yes, I will one day visit it.
Unrelated to the South American country is the film Brazil (1985), co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam.
Here’s The New Yorker’s review:
“It’s like a stoned, slapstick [George Orwell’s] 1984: a nightmare comedy in which the comedy is just an aspect of the nightmarishness. The title refers to pop escapism of the past — what you can only dream about in the squalor and sporadic terrorist violence of an Anglo-American police state ‘somewhere in the twentieth century.’ Visually, it’s an original, bravura piece of moviemaking, with a weirdly ingenious vertical quality: the camera always seems to be moving up and down, rarely across. You get the feeling that people live and work squashed at the bottom of hollow towers. The clothes, like the furnishings and the ancient TV sets and assorted gadgetry, suggest that nothing has been made or manufactured since the forties. It’s a thrift-shop world of the future.”
In The Atlantic this month, Derek Thompson discusses UCLA professor Edward E. Leamer’s economic term for the next generation of work, neurofacturing:
“It sounds dystopian to imagine a future of work where there is no end to labor and time itself is the office. But it’s not all bad, Leamer told me. Neurofacturing is safer, more comfortable, and often more fun than the most common jobs of the 20th century and earlier. There should be no nostalgia for industrial factory labor, or for harvesting sperm oil from the brains of rotting whale carcasses. If automation can replace yet more boring, dangerous, and unpleasant work, it may open the labor market to jobs that people are obsessed with, not only because they’re zealous [workers] but also because the work itself is gratifying, and sometimes even a blast.
As internet-charged careerism winds its way through the modern economy, what national virtues might it be replacing? When a recent Pew survey asked Americans about the keys to living a fulfilling life, less than a third named money, or marriage, or children, or even romance. The most popular response: ‘Having a job or career they enjoy.’ The web may be our garden of boundless leisure, but it is also a global workplace without limits. And in the open office of the internet, more Americans are not only engaged in overwork but also convinced that it is necessary to love their labor, above all else.”
Waking up at 7 or 6 or 5 in the morning is not out of habit for most, but rather out of obligation, with traffic jams or crowded public transportation added in.
Perhaps the banality of cubicle life has its dystopian origin story in the classroom, as Paul Graham lambasts the culture of test-taking in education:
“Hacking bad tests is becoming less important as the link between work and authority erodes. The erosion of that link is one of the most important trends happening now, and we see its effects in almost every kind of work people do. Startups are one of the most visible examples, but we see much the same thing in writing. Writers no longer have to submit to publishers and editors to reach readers; now they can go direct.
The more I think about this question, the more optimistic I get. This seems one of those situations where we don’t realize how much something was holding us back until it’s eliminated. And I can foresee the whole bogus edifice crumbling. Imagine what happens as more and more people start to ask themselves if they want to win by hacking bad tests, and decide that they don’t. The kinds of work where you win by hacking bad tests will be starved of talent, and the kinds where you win by doing good work will see an influx of the most ambitious people. And as hacking bad tests shrinks in importance, education will evolve to stop training us to do it. Imagine what the world could look like if that happened.
This is not just a lesson for individuals to unlearn, but one for society to unlearn, and we’ll be amazed at the energy that’s liberated when we do.”
At the most recent a16z Summit, D’Arcy Coolican, an investment partner at Andreessen Horowitz, introduced the term product zeitgeist fit and cites it in one example to further espouse disruption in education:
“Income share agreements are a financial instrument in which someone (usually a student), gets something (usually tuition), in exchange for a share of his or her future income. Like internet money and veggie burgers, this idea isn’t new, but it’s something that seems to have found its moment.
The explosion in student debt in our educational system is dominating conversations across the news, social media, and politics. At the same time, trust in traditional academic institutions is declining, an attitude that becomes supercharged with every new admissions scandal, replication crisis, and marketing scandal. The two ideas — of distrust of academic institutions and of overwhelming student debt — have given ISAs and the companies and schools using them the boost they needed to really get going this time.
Of course, ISAs still need to navigate a complicated web of behavior change, consumer protections, regulation, and returns to investors. But despite that talented people are still working on it, talking about it, and trying to make it work. It’s unclear whether ISAs have product-market fit just yet, but thanks to PZF they’ve got an incredible chance to get there this time.”
Watch D’Arcy’s full talk below:
