
The Ladies Vanish - orochi
http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-ladies-vanish/
======
exo762
This article took a huge dive in second half.

> Silicon Valley really is a man’s world. Men have great ideas. Men code. Men
> attract money. Men fund start-ups. Men generate jobs. Men hire other men.
> Men are the next Steve Jobses, the innovators, the inventors, the
> disruptors. But women complete the tasks that men have not yet programmed
> computers to do, the tasks that make their “genius” and their “innovation”
> possible. And they do it for pennies.

Persecution complex meets "quality journalism". Jezebel worthy article.

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reitzensteinm
> Silicon Valley really is a man’s world. Men have great ideas. Men code. Men
> attract money. Men fund start-ups. Men generate jobs. Men hire other men.
> Men are the next Steve Jobses, the innovators, the inventors, the
> disruptors. But women complete the tasks that men have not yet programmed
> computers to do, the tasks that make their “genius” and their “innovation”
> possible. And they do it for pennies.

So imagine transposing this, saying that all of the work done by women at
fashion houses was only made possible by the male construction workers that
built their offices. You'd be laughed out of the room, and deservedly so.

The issues surrounding women in tech are very important, but that doesn't come
with a license to make shit up. Mechanical Turk could disappear tomorrow and
SV would be just fine.

~~~
smacktoward
It's disingenuous to compare people scanning books, for instance, with
construction workers. The work book scanners are doing is directly related to
the Google Books product itself; without those people, there would be no books
in Google Books. It's not tangentially connected at all.

~~~
maxk42
Google Books isn't making a dime. If you got rid of it Google would be just
fine and all those women would be looking for jobs.

------
mietek
> _Which means that mechanical turkers (mostly women) teach computers to do
> what engineers (mostly men) cannot on their own program computers to do._

This is an infuriating article, but the above sentence really stands out.
Phrasing the issue in terms of men vs women is entirely missing the point.

For a much better take on the subject, see "In praise of idleness", by
Bertrand Russell.

[http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

------
samirmenon
The article never actually specifies whether the "mostly black and Latino"
women who digitize the books are treated as independent contractors. It
implies it, by launching into a section on Mechanical Turk, Uber, TaskRabbit,
etc, but never actually discusses the book digitizers.

~~~
hypatiadotca
"yellow badges" are contractors at Google.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
They are contractors, but are they _independent_ contractors? I think it's
more likely that they are employees of a staffing firm that Google contracts
out to for workers rather than independent contractors that Google contracts
directly.

~~~
hypatiadotca
Because of the "permatemps" lawsuit against Microsoft back in the day
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp)),
tech companies almost always hire contractors via staffing firms. I'm sure
Google is no exception.

I also don't think it's particularly important to this story, but ymmv.

------
revelation
It's an odd world where tech departments are suddenly considered _prestigious_
instead of cost centers you need to cut. I'm wholly unconvinced this article
captures anything but a wildly distorted version of actual reality.

And, more to the point, you certainly wouldn't look to Mechanical Turk as the
central evidence on your overreaching theory on women and computing, the
_driving force_ that somehow transforms menial work into _algorithmic
perfection_. That just smacks of ignorance.

------
john_b
The same arguments presented by the article could be applied equally to the
fate of farmers after the mechanization of farming. A mechanically inclined
boy in a rural area is now more likely to grow up and become a tractor
mechanic than a farmer.

There is an interesting story underneath this article about how technology
displaces people and changes how society sees them (and how they see
themselves). But that story isn't told. Instead a bunch of navel gazing about
Silicon Valley gender inequities steals the focus.

~~~
humanrebar
> There is an interesting story underneath this article about how technology
> displaces people and changes how society sees them

It seems to me that these sorts of services just increase liquidity in the
market for menial office work (data entry, etc.). In this case, the supply (of
people willing to scan books) far outstrips the demand, so the work is boring
and commands low wages. But maybe it beats telemarketing.

The real story here is that this change is happening so quickly. If the
journalists out there want to help low-skilled but otherwise intelligent
people out, they will educate the public on the larger trend (careers based on
routine and repetitive work are going away) instead of jumping into polemics.

------
cousin_it
I agree that it's harmful to society to create "marketplaces" where workers
are more free to undercut each other on price. Everywhere in nature and
history, arms races are "fair" but they waste resources, so society should
focus on creating and enforcing rules against arms races.

~~~
humanrebar
How do you distinguish between healthy price competition on one hand and
"undercut[ing]" and "arms races" on the other?

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xacaxulu
This has the feel of a well-intentioned, but badly executed college paper. The
kind that you'd get red ink on it saying 'interesting start, but you have to
connect the dots etc...'

------
cromag
Reading the comments, I can see the Google Brigade is back in force.

Reminds me of worker bees dutifully trying to protect the hive.

------
Animats
This is a content-farm piece based on the actual article by Wilson, which is
here:

[http://www.aperture.org/magazine-2013/andrew-norman-
wilson-w...](http://www.aperture.org/magazine-2013/andrew-norman-wilson-with-
laurel-ptak-scanops/)

~~~
foolrush
The New Inquiry is not a content farm by any stretch of the imagination, and
labelling it as such is derogatory.

Perform due diligence[1] please before making such a claim.

[1] [http://thenewinquiry.com/about-tni-
magazine/](http://thenewinquiry.com/about-tni-magazine/)

~~~
pervycreeper
>The New Inquiry is not a content farm by any stretch of the imagination

I have yet to encounter any significant or substantial original idea on that
site. For the most part they give a superficial and pedestrian (if sometimes
peculiar) ideological gloss to random cultural ephemera. I think this
describes a higher-register version of Buzzfeed, at least.

~~~
benbreen
I don't think this particular article is any good, but you should give the New
Inquiry another chance. Their stuff varies widely, but the presence of people
like Teju Cole means that they publish good stuff sometimes:

[http://thenewinquiry.com/author/teju-
cole/](http://thenewinquiry.com/author/teju-cole/)

~~~
pervycreeper
Thanks, I'll give him a glance (Rob Horning as well).

