The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)
>Technology robbed workers’ of what had been highly valued physical knowledge about a job: the precise way to jimmy a stuck gear, the sound a machine makes when something’s about to break.<p>There's an experience that lives rent free in my mind as well. As a teen, I worked at a bait shop that was on the Gulf coast. They sold mostly live shrimp but had other live stuff for bait as well. Salt water was pumped from the nearby innercoastal canal by two heavy duty swimming pool type pumps. From there, the water was split through several different pipes and manifolds and dumped into the live bait tanks. The overflow ran back out to the canal.<p>There was this one customer I was getting bait for and he meandered around the bait room randomly (customers weren't supposed to be in there but I didn't feel like saying anything). He ended up way in the back of the room where the pumps were and I could see him touching them. Figuring I needed to get him out of there politely I walked back there pretending to check on stuff. Before I could say anything, he says "You will need a new pump soon". Um "What?" I say. "Put your hand on this one". So I did, I felt nothing. "Now put your hand on this one". And that one had a really high frequency vibration coming through it. "The bearings are shot, it will lock up soon".<p>I was impressed. Granted for two more years I'd regularly "feel" the pump again, the vibrations were slowly getting worse. But then a hurricane came and flooded everything anyway so we got new stuff.<p>But still, anytime I see a high RPM electric motor running, I got to "give it a feel".