“Pizzaonia Emerging” Courtesy of the Pizzaonian Art Institute, Abe Straction, curator
A Pizzaonian perspective .......
I am curious how most of us relate to a world that is awash in information glut. How does this affect our daily lives, our perception of events, and the decisions we make each day?
Information glut is different than knowledge – information is raw material that has to be filtered for value. It is a fair observation to say we now spend much of our time filtering rather than learning. More times than most we discover that after filtering this raw material for knowledge, we find very little there.
I do wonder how many of us can still recognize value and knowledge when we see it. This is not because we are obtuse or ignorant, but simply an effect of having to spend so much time being distracted by the constant bombardment of worthless data that we don’t know is valueless until we spend the time to figure it out.
It does not make it any easier when we realize this amorphous glut of information is packaged by very creative, smart public relations and advertising experts, all extremely good at making the most useless news, miscellaneous material or product appealing on the surface. And guess who has to spend the time figuring it out.
Obviously selling products that none of us need is an essential part of an economy that has to continue to grow in order to survive. The process by which you make me want something that I don’t need, and might not even want, has been elevated to the status of an art form.
I had the opportunity to spend some time with a person who was very talented at creating demand for these types of products. My question to her was, “I am sure you must think of the fact that you are spending so much of your life creatively selling useless stuff.”
She told me that in the beginning it bothered her, but she got over it very quickly when she found herself making a very good living doing it. I asked her how she justified selling to people who might not be as knowledgeable being sucked into this type of deception.
“Jobs,” she said, “it’s about jobs, everyone needs to work and every time I help somebody actually buy something, someone, somewhere had to make and sell that something. For doing that they got paid.”
This makes sense. Unfortunately, what has changed is that job is probably no longer here and is being made by someone else in some far away land. And, if, the product is now being made here, there is a good chance that a machine made it.
This is the dilemma of a modern industrial economy. It needs to sell more and more products, but requires fewer people working to do so. This ultimately translates into the question that Henry Ford had to ask, “Who and where is the customer?”
We have always believed that our advanced technology will save us with good reason, it always has. But is that still part of the equation? Will technology advance to the point where it eliminates working people from the process? Many believe that not only will it happen, but the process has begun.
We are told we will create more jobs as our advanced technology invents new industries. However, that has a hollow ring to it. How many high tech people do we need when compared to the amount of people in the world that need work to survive?
Enter the low paying service industry that is beginning to dominate the available employment opportunities.
Till next time, Brother Franco
opd 11/13
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