October 2013

“Where are the eager cub reporters?”

Organizing Theory

“Where are the eager cub reporters?” As an organizer, it’s sometimes hard to remember that if you dissuade new activists from doing work by constantly correcting them or telling that they’re doing it wrong–it just means they quit and there’s more work for you in the long run. Seems like the editors of Wikipedia need to have a similar realization. Collaboration requires a diversity of views, not a winnowing of them.

How does the trade union movement use digital communications tools? Read about it in this new book, Firefox OS for Activists.

And speaking of digital communication tools—change.org has recently rolled out a new feature, where elected officials can directly respond to petitions directed at them. Here’s David Karpf on the possible ups and downs.

What’s Going On in the Workforce

In thinking about how to broaden the scope of this blog, I’ve been struggling around the idea of how to raise enough money to pay writers. It’s not a problem just here, of course–content creators are having a tough time of it, lately. Micropayments may be the way that writers, photographers and musicians have an economic future. Bitwall is trying to help.

Companies are starting to use phones’ tracking systems to see what field & service workers are doing at all times. Telling people to turn their phone off every night when they go home, if they’re worried about being spied on is just one more way that the burden of privacy is being continually shifted to individuals.

Some people think the future of higher education can be found online. How is the existence of the digital divide getting in the way of access to MOOCs?

This waiterless Japanese sushi restaurant may mean struggling writers and actors need to find a different day job. Sure, a conveyer belt can bring me sushi–but will it sing “Happy Birthday” to me?

But maybe we all just need to work less. A new book, Time on our Side, looks at why we all need a shorter workweek.

The Singularity Approaches

What if the singularity happened and all the corporations turned autonomous? Wait, aren’t they already autonomous?

The energy you throw off when walking down the street may someday be used to power your city.

Worried about the safety of driverless cars? New data shows that they already drive better than you, and that’s without the factor of your texting-while-driving habit.

From Partners

A new co-operative think tank has been launched in the UK, to design future ways of living and working.

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

In the Bay Area and want to learn more about employment law & your sharing economy business? Check out this event hosted by the Sustainable Economies Law Center.

Want to build a business in a new kind of way? Cutting Edge X claims to create capital for the 100%–not the 1%, through investment crowdfunding.

Greek workers have had many different responses to the austerity crisis in their country. These workers at Bio Me took over their factory, and turned it into a co-op.

You probably already know that much European & US trash ends up in the developing world to be stripped & recycled. But have you seen this video of a car made from recycled parts, in Ghana?

Occupy Money Cooperative launches its own debit card. Quizzical looks ensue. I wonder if they used this nifty co-op building tool, in creating their business plan?

Maybe the professor who wants to live in a dumpster also wants to teach in one? The new urban space.

Reputation, reputation, reputation

It’s harder than you think, to make up a totally fake person online. But it’s not impossible. Now, if only I could write off my imaginary friend as a dependent, on my taxes…

An FTC commissioner writes about the need for data mining companies to protect consumer privacy through a new initiative called “Reclaim Your Name.”

Read a first-person account by a corporate CEO, targeted by Greenpeace (requires registering for free account).

Geeking Out

Colombian design student Adrian Zapata wants to help you clean your house with flying robots. But what happens if my @classwarkitteh eats one?

An eerily beautiful video of robot evolution at the University of Pennsylvania.

This group of Brooklyn Millennials is building a wifi mesh network to protect their community during times of emergency.

Final Thoughts

“Providing an escape valve for a system’s strongest users lessens the pressure for change.”

Nathan Heller, “Bay Watched,” New Yorker, 10/14/13

“Kitchens are just factories we haven’t automated yet.”

What’s Going On in the Workforce?

“Kitchens are just factories we haven’t automated yet.” Hey baristas…this company thinks they can replace you with with robots.

The American Prospect recently wrote about the move toward a more automated economy, with a detailed look in a Skechers warehouse in Moreno, CA. Perhaps the most telling thing about this article is the comments section–which intersperses real people being passionate about the future with automated bots telling everyone how to work from home for big bucks.

Is the future of higher ed going to mean there are only 10 universities left on earth? Audrey Watters tells us why that won’t happen.

Are you a Militant Optimist or a Lifestyle Hacker? European Alternatives have come up with four different ways that young people are coping with making a living, in today’s economy.

Reputation, reputation, reputation

Are you ready for everyone with a smartphone or Google Glasses to be able to recognize you on the street? What if they could see your credit score, or know your sexual orientation? These researchers at Carnegie Mellon are working to make that a reality. And these folks from Brunswick Insight want you to think about what it’ll be like when everyone and everything has a rating.

The Singularity Approaches

What do we laugh about, daily? New additions to this open google doc, “Alternatives to the Singularity.”

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

One way that we might form a new economy involves micro-payments for original content–think about the potential of making money from Facebook photos or tweets. This publishing company wants to fund writers with a model like the way we fund farmers through Community-Supported Agriculture. On another, more perverse note–why not buy a share in a star athlete?

We wrote about Shareable’s efforts to map the sharing economy–here’s what one view of New York City’s “solidarity economy” looks like, mapped.

Talk about a Basic Income led Demos’ Matt Bruenig to develop a basic income calculator for the US. Cost of halving the poverty level in the US? A little less than a trillion dollars.

Geeking Out

Think it’s going to be Google that cracks the market on driverless cars? Anki Drive might beat them to the punch–by building a better robot car for your kids, first.

Can you copyright a ringtone? Some thoughts on why intellectual property rights and 3D printing might not get along.

From Partners

The Ethical Consumer held an essay contest last year on “Co-Operative Alternatives to Capitalism. Here’s one of the winning essays, “Open Source Capitalism” on why open source capitalism can’t look exactly like open source coding.

UNI has a new report out showing how multi-national retailers are squeezing the global supply chain, making their labor force live much more precariously, over the past five years.

Organizing Theory

Want to hack a new app to help advocate for comprehensive immigration reform? FWD.us, the tech industry’s immigration reform campaign is holding a hackathon in late November–if you want in, apply here.

A group of Spaniards who’ve been forced to emigrate, due to the terrible joblessness caused by austerity programs have formed a new transnational movement–say hello to the Garnet Tide.

Final Thoughts

“Resilient organizations, instead, are masters of ‘survival of the fittest.’ They have the capacity to evolve better stuff faster than rivals by letting the bad stuff fail. Instead of protecting yesterday’s uncompetitive business models, products and services, they expose products, services, and entire businesses to the freest and fairest exchange so they can evolve what is more competitive. They are driven by competitive selection. By evolving more and faster than rivals, like Google, they are able to survive and thrive in the fiercest of conditions.”

Umair Haque, The New Capitalist Manifesto

Some Thoughts on “The Unbundled Union”

Harvard Law professor Benjamin Sachs has written an article for the latest Yale Law Review, titled “The Unbundled Union: Politics Without Collective Bargaining,” in which he suggests a reform of U.S. labor law that would allow for the creation of a new kind of “political union,” that does not have the responsibility for collective bargaining.

Sachs argues that the playing field in Congress has turned more and more in the direction of advancing the political interests of the wealthy (and who could argue with that?), and cites a study that shows that “the views of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution received no weight at all in the voting decisions of their senators.”

I am in support of efforts that would increase workers’ power in the political establishment, and I am always happy to see academics joining practitioners in promoting innovative ideas in organizing. Expanding the right of the working & middle classes to do more effective political organizing is a social good, and should be celebrated.

The two examples Sachs cites in his paper of unions that have organized workers with explicitly political motives in mind—namely, nursing home workers in California, and home care workers in Illinois—were campaigns carried out by the nation’s largest union, the Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU*). They required massive expenditures of traditional dues dollars—it is hard to imagine how a start-up political union would have the resources to launch either. If this kind of organizing is funded by traditional unions, it is likely to be eventually pointed in the direction of organizing workers into a more traditional collective bargaining relationship.

Winning political victories in historically Blue states is by no means easy. But winning back enough ground for working people in Congress will require that we win in swing states, and swing districts, and even some deep Red districts. It is to imagine the sustained effort required to do that being funded by political unions which are supported through voluntary dues, that employers will (at least initially) not even be required to collect. If you’re thinking, “well everything will be better after redistricting,” I’d strongly encourage you to read this piece about the electoral bias created by where we all choose to live. Gerrymandering is not our only problem.

It is rare, in political organizing, for a single conversation with a total stranger to be transformative. Most of us change our deeply-held political beliefs only through repeated interactions, over long periods of time, with people that we trust. Sachs’ plan relies on the need to build long-term relationships—traditional unions have used worksite access to have those conversations, both by sending organizers to hold them in break rooms, and by training rank-and-file leaders to better communicate with members about the union’s political agenda.

If we want to make political unions a reality, I propose the following, as practical questions that should be considered—and I encourage others to add on, as well:

Will it be legally possible for traditional unions to host or sponsor political unions? What about worker-owned co-ops, or other forms of worker-led organizations? Professional associations?
Typically, the voluntary contributions made by union members to support political organizing are dwarfed by the amount that members contribute in dues. How will political unions scale up, without the staff support that has traditionally been paid for by dues?
Does it make sense to seed the organizing of political unions in places where winning political victories is more likely (ie—cities or “Blue” states)? If so, what are the likely long-term ramifications of building political power in ways that will be perceived to be urban, or left-leaning, when it comes time to organize in worksites that are located in more conservative jurisdictions?
(Quoting Sachs) “…some political unions might choose not to advance economic goals at all.” If a political union doesn’t choose to advance economic goals, what makes it a union? Simply the fact that it is organized in a worksite?

It is clear that working-class & poor people in this country have experienced a tremendous decline in political influence, over the past forty years, and that decline has led (in part) to an increase in income inequality. We need out-of-the-box thinking to turn it around. I applaud Sachs for taking a step in that direction, and challenge all of us to move this discussion on.

*disclosure—both Sachs & I have worked for different branches of the SEIU.

“…you have to find a job at IBM to live from Linux code.”

“…you have to find a job at IBM to live from Linux code” Why building a new kind of economy requires cooperative accumulation.

Most content creators (don’t believe me? here’s David Byrne from the Talking Heads, on Spotify) are fighting a losing battle in an effort to make a decent living from their work. But somehow, books carry on. Why is the publishing industry still thriving?

Worker-owned co-ops have a different approach to employee engagement than corporations. Here are some looks at how they do it. Co-op developers use a kind of franchising that looks much more friendly than the model used in the fast food industry.

Headed Down Under? Want to rent a caravan? The sharing economy’s got you covered. In the UK? Got a broken iPhone screen? The Restart Project wants to teach you how to fix your phone, instead of replacing it.

French filmmaker Maxime Leroy spent years interviewing people building sharing networks in cities around the world for his documentary, Collaborative Cities. Here’s an interview where he talks about the process of making the film, and how he got involved.

Margination just put out this youth-produced video about the building of a community farm in Chester, PA. Hey folks, I also love pesto–can I get a hook up?

Britain’s FabLab is a new kind of makerspace–one that aims to connect regular people to engineering experimentation.

Organizing Theory

Organizing within the global supply chain has the potential to truly link workers at every point of the transaction to build real solidarity. This new tech (developed by an NGO who wanted to give fashion companies a way to talk to “their” workers) might give us a breakthrough in how to organize inside chains.

From Partners

Harvard Law professor Benjamin Sachs has a new paper out, advancing a theory that US labor law be amended to allow unions to separate out their collective bargaining from their political organizing. His blog post on the subject is here, full paper is online here. I’ve had some thoughts about it–interested to hear from others as well.

Sarah Jaffe has a new piece out, detailing efforts by workers at Dylan’s Candy Bar in New York to organize a union. H/T to them for enlisting digital organizing in the efforts–but why not use coworker.org for their petition?

Are you in the Bay Area, and interested in the collaborative economy? You might want to attend this event.

Organizing against austerity, in the EU or beyond? Head to this conference in Frankfurt in late November. I bet these Greeks who are fighting water privatization will be there.

The Singularity Approaches

Self-printing prosthetics churned out by 3D printer. Sarah Connors of the world, you might want to read this one.

What’s Going On in the Workforce?

The move to computer software that is based on recognition natural language is coming–Siri’s made all of us more comfortable with talking to our machines. This raises the question for educators–will teachers of writing need to start incorporating dictation?

What if you had to play a video game well, to secure your next job? Can you say ‘gaming the system?’

Your next international flight may feature an automated passport control system. And your next package (if you’re an Australian college student) may be delivered by drone.

Checking passports is one thing or delivering text books is one thing. Killer drones, with no humans at the wheel? This seems wrong.

Reputation, reputation, reputation

Are you paying for Facebook likes & Twitter followers? Did you know that there are people, not bots, behind some of those services? Here’s a shocker–the pay for that work sucks.

Thought DRM went away with Napster? A Microsoft leader is resurrecting it, in trying to protect your data.

Geeking Out

Want to find out if people think capitalism is working for them? Watch this video by an artist who installed a scoreboard in Times Square (“the heart of capitalism,” according to one participant) and asked people to vote.

You may remember that Elon Musk announced a theory of Hyperloop back in August–but didn’t have a plan to start building it. This new team does.

Final Thoughts

“…a robust critique of technology should, first of all, be a critique of neoliberalism itself.” Evgeny Morozov

“If the goal is scale, promote theft.”

“If the goal is scale, promote theft.” If organizations that are trying to effect wide scale social change don’t open-source their successes & failures–we’ll never get to victory. All leaders of movement organizations should read this piece.

Reputation, Reputation, Reputation

The issue of how to maintain one’s online reputation is going to be a pressing one, in coming years. One country considers criminalizing slander on social networks.

Xbox One might be TV that watches you. No, like really watches. Down to your heart rate response to advertising. I wonder what a marketer would pay for that kind of data?

If Twitter’s going to turn into another company that turns our comments into data for the company to sell to advertisers–what are we getting out of the deal?

What’s Going on in the Workforce?

In the “that was quick” department, here’s a site offering freelance work to furloughed federal workers.

Ever wonder how China is so successful at censoring internet use? Chalk it up to 2 million “internet opinion analysts.” I guess they didn’t want to use Mechanical Turk?

What’s it like to take a MOOC? Somewhat unfulfilling, evidently. I bet it’ll be even better when the video editing of same becomes completely automated.

I tend to fall on the side of those who are convinced that technological change is disrupting employment faster than it’s making new jobs. Here’s an opposing view. On the other hand, rail automation replaces Australian train engineers who get paid $240K a year. And anesthesiologists fight being replaced by CRNAs, but now they’ve also got to fight machines. Not in a cool, Hugh Jackman kind of way either. Lest my Sheetmetal friends be thinking that they’re exempt, here’s a robot that can learn to weld without being programmed for a specific intersection.

In related news, the fast food industry’s fighting a hike in the minimum wage by threatening that US workers will be replaced by robots.

From Partners

The Democracy Collaborative recently put out a new paper describing some of the best practices for using anchor institutions–like hospitals or universities–to meet the needs of the low-income communities they sit near or serve.

The new Cry Wolf Project aims to debunk claims by conservative think tanks & business groups that progressive reforms hurt the economy.

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

If you missed the launch of the final chapter of The Story of Stuff last week, you really ought to watch it.

Want to help map the shareability of cities in the US? Join up with this mapping venture in mid-October. And while we’re on the topic of sharing and October–check out New Economy Week.

You may think that you’re committed to sustainability–but are you “moving into a dumpster” committed? Or perhaps you want to move to an island made of recycled ocean plastic? It seems like a fitting penance for my dirty Coke Zero habit…

Maybe you should just start a community currency, instead. (Though as someone who lives in a town where the local ‘Cash’ looks like Monopoly money, take my advice–invest in graphic design.)

What if you know how to fish, but you can’t get access to a fishing hole? Ed Whitfield, a member of the US Federation of Worker Co-Ops, breaks it down in this video. In order to allow more co-ops to buy those fishing holes (could this metaphor get any more tortured?) the bank belonging to the world’s largest worker-owned coop (Mondragon) recently agreed to partner with the US’s National Cooperative Bank.

The price of car sharing may be too high to make it sustainable for short-term rentals, at least for now.

The Singularity Approaches

Any day now, we’ll be stalked in the wild by galloping robots.

“Robotics without wires or motors.” If you’ve been wondering how self-assembling machines will happen, watch these program-embedded materials turn themselves into things. Imagine if water pipes could expand or contract to meet supply or shifting weather conditions? MIT’s all up on the self-assembling–here are some cubes that build themselves, too.

Are we at peak Google Glass yet? Probably not, if we’re just now figuring out how to make computers visually recognize objects.

If you’re in the US, and you’re nostalgic for Lee Majors http://imdb.to/18JXt0T, check out this upcoming show on the Smithsonian Channel “The Incredible Bionic Man.”

Geeking Out

I don’t know if I want to brush my teeth with something that came out of a 3D printer & looks like a caterpillar–but you might.

You’ve probably already used an app to hack your body in some way–calorie counting, tracking exercise, logging sleep–but have you tracked & hacked your driving habits yet?

Final Thoughts

“Anything that you measure in public, people will strive & self-organize to improve.”

Rick Falkvinge, Swarmwise

Reputation, reputation, reputation

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

If you work in the sharing economy, you might want to check out this new tool launched by the Collaborative Fund. And of course, you probably wanna check out today’s launch of the insurance exchanges, created by the Affordable Care Act.

Bike sharing programs are doing well in all kinds of cities–except the ones that require riders to wear a helmet. If you have a personal bike you’d like to share (or many other kinds of personal possessions), you might want to check out this new app, peerby.

Zacary Adam Green says Silicon Valley’s version of the sharing economy is “a temp agency crossed with a Zynga game.” PBS’s Idea Lab has a cure for that–“let’s make all apps more civic.” And Shareable is launching a new column by Denise Chang of MIT, to explore the future of work.

Want to make your local economy more democratic? Here are ten ways to make sure capital is invested in your neighbors and you. European readers who are interested in promoting some of these ideas might want to go to this meeting in Rome, in early November (because, well, Rome!). And while we’re pimping international efforts, Canadians should join The Media Co-op–they have openings on their board.

If you’ve got to have money, why not Occupy your money?

What’s Going On in the Workforce?

Reporters–think your industry has been disrupted enough already? Think again. Get ready for 3D immersive virtual reality journalism.

“There’s the whole ethical question of whether a country of freelancers is really the sort of place anyone wants to work in, but whatever.” Oof, PandoDaily. Here’s the future of cloud computing–HR management of freelancers. Take 10 minutes and watch this video about smart work changes that organizations need to make in the age of offices that can be anywhere. I guarantee you will not regret it. You might even be happier.

Is the teaching of writing, in the digital era, different from days gone by? This new book from CMU Press says yes.

If you haven’t yet watched The Take, you really should. Here, Nora Leccese goes back for a decade-later look, and finds out how Argentine workers are seeding workplace democracy overseas, as well.
Like Cassio, we understand it can hard to fix a damaged brand–whether it’s personal or corporate. Launching a new section this week:

Reputation, reputation, reputation

And it’s just in time–as Acxiom launches a new line of data products that will allow their clients to combine offline and online targeting data.

From Partners

Civis Analytics has a cool new tool for mapping the uninsured by census tract. If you’re looking to target uninsured workers for ACA advocacy or enrollment, check it out.

The Singularity Approaches

But on the way there, we’ve gotta make sure it’s safe. The downside of this surgical robot, promoted by UC Irvine Med School docs? It’s been linked to 71 patient deaths.

That next “highway to the danger zone” may be flown by an empty fighter jet.

What makes robots move more like humans (or animals, I guess)? Tendons.

The cost of this 3D printer may make you rethink how quickly you’re prepared to put one in your kitchen. After all, if they’re good enough for NASA’s use in saving astronauts, they’re good enough for you.

Geeking Out

Yahoo Japan helped a special needs school move into the 21st century, with a 3D printer that can be used by the visually impaired. You can donate model files to the school’s database, to expand the range of things that students can print.

I had a conversation with a disability rights activist lately about the issues in work & tech–he gave me a different way to look at it, pointing out that technology was the only thing allowing him, a person with a physical disability–the ability to live and work in the community. This piece reminded me of our conversation.

And finally–if you ever felt lied to by science fiction writers, because they’ve promised you a jet pack for years–I have good news. If you have $200,000 you’re not doing anything with. Sure, the price will come down eventually–but you’ll miss out on the joy of being an early adopter!