what passes for a success these days (the first and second great leaps forward)

phew. what passes for a success these days. 

horsemouth took the time to get set up. applied low brute cunning to the problem and eventually ended up in the meeting courtesy of his old laptop (gwann mi beauty!) because his brand swanky new work laptop was declined entry at the very gates. er...um. 

this software (you know the one he's talking about) is not designed to facilitate communication (as it is advertised) but to control access. for in truth education (like any other business)  is as much about controlling access to knowledge as it is about educating people to produce knowledge (or indeed anything else these days).

 and therein lies the first part of the problem. 

the next part of the problem is that we are living in the days of the second 'great leap forward'. 

in the first great leap forward chinese peasants were encouraged to give up trying to grow food and instead set to work out how to smelt iron. this they tried heroically. sadly all that they produced was deeply contaminated slag (because they lacked the necessary skills, equipment and training) and the nation fell into famine (some estimates put the number of the dead as high as 30 million). 

things are not so drastic in the second great leap forward. the pandemic has forced 'everyone' (except for the everyone it hasn't) to work from home. it thus relies on people's own infrastructure (and IT support capabilities) and people's own ability to learn the new softwares without being trained in them. with skills honed in the world of leisure the workers face their new distributed workplace.

no one said it would be pretty. no said it would be efficient. and yet it... stays the same. 

the real benefits of the second great leap forward lie in the destruction of value in the old office rental/ commercial property sector of the market, the destruction of value in city houses and flats (what is their worth when the commute is over). the shops, the cafes, the boutiques, the lunchtime sandwich, that whole rewards-in-the-working-day economy is gone online. the high street finally dead  in a massive centralisation. 

the night-clubs, the pubs, the whole night time economy parlous with debt, their workforce cast to the for winds.

'when this bloody 'demic's over (oh how happy we shall be)'

it will of course roll back (a little) but not all the way back. 

of course these empty offices and shops are not as valueless as we will soon be told (they will be sold at a relative premium to provide the new slum housing for the poor in jenrickvilles).  that public transport crippled with debt and charging more, the day of the bicycle has come.

a massive and pliant reserve army of labour will be created (fed out of foodbanks, struggling to dig themselves out of gig economy jobs into warehouse work, housed (temporarily) in jenrickvilles). 

horsemouth is nearly done. he's nearly out the door. he may survive the pandemic only to fall to the economic scythings of post-pandemic austerity/ the moments of the consolidation of the great leap forward. he's been holding out for a while.

horsemouth struggles. sometimes he is victorious. but nobody ever suggests crowning him king any more (which is a pity). not that he's up to it any more really.