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The corporate drive to survive
By Tim | August 27, 2009
I first read Robert Cringely’s views on IBM’s plans to cut its US workforce two years ago, but without the focus on such things corporate that I’ve gained from reading Life Inc. this summer.
He has just published an updated post that (sadly) demonstrates both the veracity of the original post and the all consuming corporate soul’s drive to survive, at the cost of even its original home workforce.
This coincides with reading Jeff Vail’s latest series of postings on the subject of the Diagonal Economy, where he alludes to the gradual collapse of belief in the (American) way:
…our collective willingness to agree to the conditions set by this Legacy System (willing participation in the system in exchange for this once "plausible promise") will wane. Pioneers—and this is certainly already happening—will reject these conditions in favour of a form of networked civilisation entrepreneurship. While this is initially composed of professionals, independent sales people, internet-businesses, and a few market gardeners, it will gradually transition to take on a decidedly “third world” flavour of local self-sufficiency and import-replacement (leveraging developments in distributed, open-source, and peer-to-peer manufacturing) in the face of growing ecological and resource pressures. People will, to varying degrees, recognize that they cannot rely on the cradle-to-cradle promise of lifetime employment by their nation state. Instead, they will realize that they are all entrepreneurs in at least three—and possibly many more—separate enterprises: one’s personal brand in interaction with the Legacy System (e.g. your conventional job), one’s localized self-sufficiency business (ranging from a back yard tomato plant to suburban homesteads and garage workshops), and one’s community entrepreneurship and network development.
If you haven’t yet read Jeff Vail I’d recommend it – in particular for those interested in alternative energy possibilities his series of postings on the subject.
Topics: Change, Possibilities | No Comments »