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Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

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Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#31

Post by eyko »

rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

Who pays for the interesting structures, ponds, waterfalls, and arenas? It ultimately always boils down to where does the money come from -- think of "data organising" as the circulatory system of an extremely complex, multi layered, and global economy. It's not the most efficient and a lot of people learn to live in the cracks getting paid for doing virtually nothing, but it's necessary if we want to continue to create.

Also: if people were interested in endless artificial ponds, waterfalls, and interesting structures, and there was any money to be made in it (vs the cost of building them), there would probably be a market for it. I suspect not many people are interested, and they'd rather protect what nature already has.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#32

Post by eyko »

dmos62 wrote: post #16
rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

I often wondered why doesn't everyone want to be a construction worker. We've all seen what they can do. Make huge structures appear out of thin air. Change the way space is. It's magic. And all the gadgets. Gigantic hydraulic arms, cranes, tractors of all sizes. Instead we're paid heaps for programming. Which kind of makes sense. In my mind, programming is about making sense of a mess. Untangling all the seemingly c…

Construction doesn't pay that well in most parts of the world.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#33

Post by johnchristopher »

rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

> Pirius said, "What do you mean, fakes?"

> "He's a parasite. He mimics the workers here. He runs around with data desks, he sleeps in their dormitory rooms, he eats their food. It's a common pattern in communities like this. The genuine clerks are busy with their own tasks -- and here, you aren't supposed to ask questions anyhow. So Tek gets away with it. He's just like a genuine clerk. Except that you don't do anything useful, do you, Tek?"

This is from an SF book from Baxter, characters went to a community of humans to gather information about something. The excerpt stayed on my mind because it relates to other questions (alienation, at what point is work still work if it's so far removed from the first objective (yak shaving), is someone creating its own useless workload a parasite, etc.).

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#34

Post by rcxdude »

dmos62 wrote: post #16
rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

I often wondered why doesn't everyone want to be a construction worker. We've all seen what they can do. Make huge structures appear out of thin air. Change the way space is. It's magic. And all the gadgets. Gigantic hydraulic arms, cranes, tractors of all sizes. Instead we're paid heaps for programming. Which kind of makes sense. In my mind, programming is about making sense of a mess. Untangling all the seemingly c…

Crane operators are actually one of the highest ranked professions in terms of job satisfaction.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#35

Post by rcxdude »

rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

How do you think the other people can a) build houses, grow, and prepare food effectively, and b) know what houses and food to prepare to provide the most benefit? Communication and organisation are extremely valuable, even if the structures we set up are not the most efficient at doing so and may have a tendancy to create their own busywork (but computers have made that efficiency skyrocket. You're paid so much because you replace a small army of people shuffling paper around, and there's not enough people who can do that well).

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#36

Post by axiosgunnar »

rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

> I'm just at a huge loss why we don't all focus on growing food and building interesting structures, ponds, waterfalls, arenas.

We are. One app at a time, building/growing becomes easier to do at scale, with less people, quicker, and more environmentally friendly.

You are directly contributing to the success of these activities, even if you are "just organising data".

(what a nihilistic way to say it. I wonder if nihilistic builders also say "i'm just stacking bricks 24/7 fml")

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#37

Post by Zababa »

haliskerbas wrote: post #4
KMnO4 wrote: post #3

What the article didn’t mention is that trying to work with a camera constantly on is highly stressful for some people. If it works for you, great. But don’t assume it’s better than regularly scheduled meetings.

Thanks for mentioning this. I would get incredibly tense in a situation like this. Did I pick my nose? Did I spill water all over my shirt again because my bottom lip decided to give out? Does my bed look wrinkled? Did I smell myself? etc. etc. etc.

> Did I spill water all over my shirt again because my bottom lip decided to give out?

This happened to me around a week ago, just before a job interview. Fortunately it was just water and I was wearing a dark shirt, but it didn't help with stress. I'm glad I'm not the only one that does that.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#38

Post by Paul_S »

"One thing that I usually do when focusing is difficult despite these check-ins (which happens occasionally to me when doing something really hard or unpleasant), is I can tell my partner about the difficulty focusing, set the timer for 5 minutes, and write whether I was focused in gather.town chat every 5 minutes until the next check in. I find that these 5-minute text check-ins are sufficient for full focus on pretty much any task, however unpleasant."

This reads like satire to me. How can people work like that? Wouldn't it be easier to focus without the interrruptions?

Did you do that at the office too, stand up every 5 minutes and tell everyone you are focusing?

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#39

Post by madeofpalk »

dmos62 wrote: post #16
rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

I often wondered why doesn't everyone want to be a construction worker. We've all seen what they can do. Make huge structures appear out of thin air. Change the way space is. It's magic. And all the gadgets. Gigantic hydraulic arms, cranes, tractors of all sizes. Instead we're paid heaps for programming. Which kind of makes sense. In my mind, programming is about making sense of a mess. Untangling all the seemingly c…

> I often wondered why doesn't everyone want to be a construction worker.

I don't like hard physical work. I don't like sweating. Much prefer to sit on my ass in front of a computer and pretend to work while i scroll endlessly through twitter.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#40

Post by dominotw »

dmos62 wrote: post #16
rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

I often wondered why doesn't everyone want to be a construction worker. We've all seen what they can do. Make huge structures appear out of thin air. Change the way space is. It's magic. And all the gadgets. Gigantic hydraulic arms, cranes, tractors of all sizes. Instead we're paid heaps for programming. Which kind of makes sense. In my mind, programming is about making sense of a mess. Untangling all the seemingly c…

> I often wondered why doesn't everyone want to be a construction worker.

I thought this was going to be a witty officespace reference.

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