RE: [Marxism] Down-Sourcing

["Jose G. Perez" <jgperez@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'll give you my own opinion on this IBM outsourcing thing, though I'll
admit I have nothing but my own instincts behind this.

I think if they go through with it in a few years it is going to be
viewed as one of the most massive corporate f*ck ups of all time. 

The corporate managerial mind sees nothing but specs, input-outputs,
timelines. 

CNN went through an exercise like this three years ago. They gave
themselves a massive lobotomy and wound up with a staff incapable of
putting on air a report that correctly differentiates between uploading
and downloading; between DSL and cable; between civil liability and
criminal punishment; and between a p2p network and a web site.

Leaving aside all questions of bias, which multiplies the problem
1000-fold, the signal in CNN's reporting has been drowned out by noise. 

The problem, I think, is the same underlying one that has prevented the
creation of any translation program worthy of the name. This is a very
mature field, actually, people have been working on translation programs
since the 1950's. Fully automated high quality machine translation is
simply not in the cards.

The fundamental reason for this is that meaning is not so much in the
text but in the context. Meaning is something a viewer or reader
creates, in a very complex social interaction. The problem with
translation programs has been quite simply that they stop at the level
of words, groups of words, structures made with words. Meaning begins
just beyond that level.

That's why my gut instinct tells me this IBM "white collar" outsourcing
isn't going to work. Writing code isn't a nuts-and-bolt proposition, it
is an art. Computer programs are extremely social and my gut feeling is
that it isn't going to work to have someone write them in a vacuum. 

José


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