#corporateconcentration

Pay attention to the stories you watch on your screens! Our lives are directed by the stories we take to heart. It is not the thousands of facts and figures we may know but how these are woven together into narratives that drive us. Think about things like religion and money – these are stories we believe in and not indisputable facts. Pay attention to who controls what we watch on our screens. Have you observed that there are more positive stories about robots and machines  in the content offered by streaming services lately? Big Tech wants you to think kindly about the machines and AI taking over our lives.

Robot Friendly Stories On Apple TV

I have seen a bunch of stories depicting friendly robots being put out by these media companies controlling what we watch on our TVs and screens. Finch on Apple TV has sentimental favourite Tom Hanks buddying up with some very nice machines in a dystopian world, where human beings have destroyed most of the planet. I wonder about the motivations for writing such fiction in the first place? The robot appears to be the voice of reason set against the violent passions of desperate human beings. I am thinking WTF? What is really being messaged here and for what ulterior motive? We live at a time when there are just 5 corporations controlling almost all the major media in the United States. With this much control things do not just happen by accident.

Media Companies Messaging Machine ‘Feel Good’ Stories

More content in this vein on Apple TV includes MurderBot and Foundation. Two very different pieces of serialised entertainment but both with robots as central characters. MurderBot is a black comedy featuring a security unit robot that has achieved sentience. Again it transposes very human characteristics upon a machine. What is going on with this push to view robots as human? Do we really think this is unrecognised by those producing and including this content for their programming? In a world of big bucks and overanalysing everything these decisions do not happen accidentally. The Isaac Asimov inspired Foundation has the last remaining robot at the centre of its 30 episodes. The actor playing this female gendered robot is on screen for longer than any other actor in this long running series. Again the lone robot contrasts the power hungry dynamics embodied by the various humanoid characters in this science fiction story. Robots are portrayed as having been unfairly wiped out by nasty humans in the not too distant past. The messaging is, essentially, machine good, humans violent and unpredictable. Pay attention to the message inside these stories because some entity is paying to have this narrative promulgated in this way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOTmehNKVNg Too Much Power In Too Few Hands

This one of the many issues we are vulnerable to when so much power and influence resides in the hands of so few oligarchs and billionaires. Do not underestimate the power of stories to influence human behaviour. All of these companies are heavily invested in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and will lose hundreds of billions if it tanks. Get ready to see lots more machine friendly stories appearing on your screens. Streaming is a great way for these companies to kill two birds with one stone. They can influence public opinion via the content they fund, produce and distribute. Pay attention to the stories you watch on your screens! Step back every now and then and ask yourself why are they telling these types of stories?

Photo by Alex Knight on Pexels.com

“A story invites story-receivers into the action it portrays and, as a result, makes them lose themselves in the story. In his 1993 book Experiencing Narrative Worlds, Richard Gerrig was the first to coin the notion of narrative transportation within the context of novels. Using travel as a metaphor for reading, he conceptualised narrative transportation as a state of detachment from the world of origin that the story-receiver — in his words, “the traveller” — experiences because of their engrossment in the story. The story-receiver’s experience is, in effect, that of being carried away by the story.”

- (https://www.abc.net.au/religion/tom-van-laer-stories-we-live-be-power-of-narratives/103786924)

I would mention that robots are not human, this is complete fiction portraying their characteristics in this manner. Artificial Intelligence AI is not really intelligence either, as we know it as human beings. It is being marketed as superior to us, when in reality these companies know this to be false. They are just in it for the money, as per usual. The thing is that most of us are excluded from power and we live on the fringes. We fill our time with watching stuff on screens. Many of us get much of our understanding of parts of the world via TV shows. This makes this medium highly influential for those wishing to control public opinion. A wave of robot friendly shows and dramas will have a positive effect on how we view AI. It is undeniable and many of us would not recognise just how much the value of stories matter.

Try Reading An Intelligent Book

“Do you find reading a bit of a pain? Looking up those big words that you don’t understand? Do you prefer to have everything done for you? Well, it will cost you in the end. Your brain, if you don’t use it, you will lose its keen functionality. Before you know it dementia will be on your doorstep and all those years of taking the easy option will come back and bite you on the bum. Exercise your brain to keep it fit and game ready. Read to expand your knowledge and mind. The importance of exercising your brain for mental health cannot be overestimated.”

- (https://www.golfdom.com.au/the-importance-of-exercising-your-brain-for-mental-health/)

Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of What Price Life?; America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump; and other titles. NOW AVAILABLE AT APPLE BOOKS & GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS. Google Play Books AUDIOBOOK

©GolfDom

How the ‘Gig economy’ feeds on its workers to profit its corporate masters and their shareholders? Technology has facilitated more services and cheaper rates for consumers. Delivery drivers and riders provide their own assets, like vehicle and smart phone, to make those deliveries possible. These, often, expensive assets depreciate through use and the gig worker must bear the cost and not the parent platform. The risks are all with the worker and not the platforms. Indeed, Uber has a pathway where drivers, often, end up paying for the shopping with their own money, which is to be reimbursed days later. If the worker was being paid extra for these financially onerous uses of their assets it might be OK, but they are not.

Gig Workers Underpaid For Their Work

Delivery drivers are, often, paid below the minimum wage, when you subtract fuel, phone charges, insurance, vehicle maintenance and other sundries from their earnings. Uber runs regular promotional bonus offers to stimulate their drivers to work more. The reality is that these bonuses, when achieved, barely bring up earnings to be commensurate with the minimum wage. It is an old trick to make animals perform tricks to get treats. This is how the Gig economy feeds on its workers. Consumers benefit but at the expense of workers being underpaid. It is the platforms and their shareholders who really make the money.

Disempowerment & The Gig Economy

We live in a neoliberal economic world, where Big Tech runs monopolies to profit from both underpaid workers and consumers with little choice. The concentration of corporate ownership in most sectors has meant price setting and price gouging in many instances. ‘User pays’ is the neoliberal motto. The individual is emphasised by those on the Right, politically, as this disempowers things like communities. It is easier to control lots of small units out for themselves than a united body like a union. Those on the Right have outmanoeuvred Unions over recent decades to render them largely impotent. Greed is good has infiltrated the consciousnesses of the many. Short term gains have come at the cost of longer term protection in numbers through being united as workers. The Gig economy has been bereft of representation for years. There has been a recent stand by the TWU in regard to Gig workers in the delivery game.

Establishing Some Standards For Gig Workers

“The Transport Workers Union and Australia’s two largest on-demand delivery platforms DoorDash and Uber Eats together made a joint submission to the Fair Work Commission for the establishment of a set of minimum standards for workers in the on-demand economy.

The proposed Minimum Standards Order (MSO) includes legally enforceable new protections for workers and baseline standards that the TWU has campaigned for over many years, marking a meaningful step forward that strengthens protections and provides certainty for thousands of platform workers.

The agreement demonstrates how minimum standards for platform workers can be achieved while preserving the flexibility that is inherent in platform work.  The proposal strikes a balance to introduce a fair minimum rate of pay for on demand delivery workers for the first time, while supporting the sustainability of the sector.

DoorDash, Uber Eats and the TWU have agreed to key standards including:

- Minimum safety net pay rates for all classes of transport types; - Dispute resolution processes; - A voice for platform workers, via engagement and feedback mechanisms; - Representation rights; and - Accident insurance for injured workers

This landmark achievement is the latest milestone in an ongoing collaboration between the TWU and the digital labour platforms, to improve the quality, safety and security of platform work.”

- (https://www.twu.com.au/press/transport-workers-union-platforms-propose-minimum-standards/)

It will be interesting to observe if and how these new standards will be applied and their effectiveness. Announcements like these are not the end of the matter but the bare beginning!

The Price Of Energy

“In Australia, on the political front, we have very little in the way of progressive or Leftist policy options. It is rather the choice of how far Right. Traditionally centrist positions have been favoured by most voters, usually Centre Right. The LNP Coalition has, over recent years, moved further Right in thrall to populist demagogues like Donald Trump. Neoliberalism via privatization has seen many previously publicly owned assets move into private hands. The energy utilities are an illustrative example of this, where numerous private companies operate within this sector, either generating, wholesaling or retailing energy. Despite promises to the contrary prices for energy have not come down. Those greater efficiencies have not materialised.”

- (https://wordsforweb.com.au/the-energy-utilities/)

Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of What Price Life?; America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump; and other titles. NOW AVAILABLE AT APPLE BOOKS & GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS. Google Play Books AUDIOBOOK

©WordsForWeb