This is a Work-In-Progress Conclusion entry of our process of this project. I’m analysing and documenting it from my angle and linking it to my Box of Uncertainties.
I’ll begin by requoting the story of Omelas, where wealth of an entire city depends on the sufferings of one child. I link this story to Rahul’s seminar containing the hidden labours of the coffee and tea we get so easily in shopping malls today. https://www.ceremade.dauphine.fr/~ekeland/lectures/Mathematical%20Models%20in%20Social%20Sciences/ursula-k-le-guin-the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas.pdf
The tale of Omelas is an accurate metaphor for our current society, because similar events like this occur in a lot of places, including our topic, in which the child represents the labourers in hospitality, and the people who view Omelas as a utopia represents the tech workers and the daily comfort provided for them by hospitality.
We were invited to use speculation as a muscle, and to learn and apply the theory of sci-fi to actual events in real life. I like to imagine it as something humans carry around and pass down throughout generations, the carrier bag of fiction slowly growing and becoming more complex and concrete in time. https://otherfutures.nl/uploads/documents/le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction.pdf
Although I wasn’t consciously aware of it, we were constantly using that muscle and applying the theory of sci-fi to our project at hand and forming speculations with it. What David said about Lee’s quote was really inspiring to me:
"Speculation based on current knowledge is only fantasy, and only speculation based on concrete and up-to-date research has the possibility to create change."
"Be careful not to be tempted to recreate science fiction based fantasy – you can avoid this by using research to inform and corroborate your data, so that you can evolve from assumption to data-driven insights and understanding that may lead to new knowledge."
(Recreating sci-fi based fantasy…I tend to do that a lot.)
This leads me to think about our future trip to the hospitality areas in Google or Samsung. How we conduct our primary research is of vital importance to this project, because it is the foundation of our speculation, and the information we gather at Google or Samsung, backed up with secondary research, will be the base of future worldbuilding.
Focusing on our current topic on technology replacing hospitality workers in tech companies. We already witness robot waiters in restaurants and self-service cash registers in supermarkets. Research shows that the need for a robotic canteen set—-a system that utilizes robots to automate various tasks in a canteen or cafeteria setting—-is steadily rising, pushing human labourers out of their previous occupations even more. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/robotic-canteen-set-market-challenges-opportunities-growth-hb0nf/
Research also shows that traditional office canteens are no longer practical due to hybrid and remote work post-covid, which reduces the number of people in offices on a daily basis. Survey data shows office occupancy is only 2-3 days per week on average. People seem to lean towards efficiency rather than maintaining inter-personal relationships in work areas, which isn’t really surprising for me. (This part needs more research because it aligned almost perfectly to my assumptions and therefore I’m a bit suspicious of it). https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/office-canteen-business-model-dead-what-fill/
Reality seemed a lot more like science fiction after witnessing phenomena like the above. As David suggested, we watched an episode of the Office, IT Crowd, and Severance together during the weekend. All three were linking fiction to reality, and more importantly, basing fiction on the concrete evidence that came from the real world. Severance was typical speculation fiction and it had a hint of horror in it(which I loved) because it was too realistic. The Office and IT Crowd, while being comedies, each had hints of reality leaking in the background: The Office (Email Surveillance) with the boss(in which the show stated as “Big Brother”) invaded the privacy of his workers by gaining access to their personal emails, IT Crowd(the Red Door) by rendering a former co-worker as an outsider when he decided to dress in a different way. Both comedies showed examples of inter-personal relationships and how it changes according to the introduction of technology into the working areas.
(Now linking the group project to my Box of Uncertainties.)
My individual thoughts on this project when it started 2 weeks ago was that work labour(especially in Asian areas) links to result-based education(why most Asian students are trained in school to have a mostly linear mindset) and therefore links to what I initially called the Patronizer.
The Patronizers are people who educate you in a scenario where they are not qualified or required to do so. They treat you in a way that is apparently kind and helpful, but it’s also their goal to make you feel inferior, whether consciously or unconsciously. A good example of this would be stakeholders in result-based education that is common in most middle schools and high schools in Asian countries. Students strive to reach perfection to get an A to ensure a good future, and we rank our success based on other people’s failures. Certain stakeholders that benefits(whether physically or psychologically or otherwise) would be the Patronizer in this scenario. The Box of Uncertainties
I realize I hadn’t seen the bigger picture while creating the Box and would need further research because there is a larger background to the phenomenon I just described. Education morphs and changes according to the requirement of the working environment and that’s why we have multiple different education systems in different parts of the world.
My Box mostly focused on the links between fiction and reality, but I had trouble bringing that link to a practical and down-to-earth basis. I think I am starting to learn how to do that because we are applying the theory of sci-fi to a real phenomenon in order to understand it and eventually create change. I’m confident to say that I will solidify this link in the next 3 weeks and use it to open my mind to newer understandings of what we as a group have been working on.