Slim Virgin wrote:
On 5/30/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com>
wrote:
Yeah, people who feel it is implausible that a
person could hit a button
5-10 times a minute for hours on end with reasonable quality control
have apparently not ever had a modern manufacturing job.
I doubt that anyone with a modern manufacturing job would do it
without pay, William.
I think Mark Twain said it best:
"If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this
book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a
body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not
obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing
artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling
ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy
gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger- coaches twenty or
thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs
them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service,
that would turn it into work and then they would resign."
The only difference I see 150 years later is that constructing
artificial flowers and using treadmills are now also play.
Also consider World of Warcraft. Most people play it for fun; gold
farmers play it for money. As far as I can tell it's no more boring than
the kind of cleanup that Gracenotes was doing, and he was actually
accomplishing something.
William