May
14
“De-Skilling”
May 14, 2018 | Leave a Comment
One of the major topics discussed today was the idea of de-skilling. When factories used machines to make shoes, the machine de-skilled the shoe maker. De-skilling can be seen in the creation of pop music today. It’s so easy to fix the vocals of singers. As long as a you’re pretty/handsome and the record label can market you, then who needs to be a skillful singer? No one. Talent has become an afterthought. The need of skill has shifted from the singer to the producer. In the past, consumers were more aware of who made a product. Nowadays everything just says made in China. Products were seen not only as an object of utility but also as a product of human labor. Industrial production has severed the connection between objects and labor. Gifts hold more value when hand-made but these I can’t say how many gift-cards I receive as presents. I personally don’t know the person that has made every piece of clothing or shoe I own. I do however have cultural outfits where I know woman who created the pieces for me. Those cultural pieces hold special value to me. Mass production has rendered labor irrelevant. The form labor that comes to mind where skill is still relevant are landscapers. But soon there may be a robot doing our gardening for us. By the ease of a voice command, “Hey Siri” or “Hey Alexa”, simple labor tasks are too being rendered irrelevant. Cheap products are nice but they are also destabilizing. Carl Marx argued that de-skilling is a crisis because objects have lost their original meaning. Now, commodity fetishism is an issue. Objects contain magical powers. Society is all about commodity fetishism as brand names are viewed as better than the store brand.
To be a politician in the acoustic era, one needed to be loud to speak effectively. The microphone changed that. Roosevelt takes advantage of the radio. During his fireside chats, he spoke as if it were a conversation. Speaking in an intimate style allowed him to create a close relationship with citizens. He adapted his voice to the space of a person’s home when previously it was in a public space. Technology altering political discourse can also be seen when debates became televised. Politicians must not only focus on what they are saying, but also how and what they are wearing while they speak. Making a mistake in body language and dress can steer the conversation away from policy to appearance.
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