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#what happens at Oxford in the 1910s stays at Oxford
the-master-maid · 3 years
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Whatever else you think about Tolkien's male characters' relationships, whether you think of them as 'just good friends' or 'brothers in arms' (eyebrow raised: not sure it always means what you think it means, my modern heterosexual oblivions - pretty sure some very queer ancient Greeks, not to mention some fabulous Georgian and Victorian men could wax pretty poetical about the love between 'brothers-in-arms') love and tenderness between men was something that Tolkien was consistently interested in exploring. The depths of it, the desires behind it, how far love could take a relationship, what actions love and jealousy would lead to, and how far the boundaries of normative male love could be crossed or dismantled. And what ensues when heteronormative boundaries in relationships are crossed (i.e. when characters keep getting closer and closer). Nowhere in the text, in any of Tolkien's texts is this exploration of male same-sex love given parameters that exclude erotic desire and love and sometimes outright homosexual relationships (looking directly at you, Beleg and Turin).
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opalescentegg · 4 years
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I was today years old when I finally learned that the word “tutu” actually originates in the early 20th century, and wasn’t some kind of coevolution with the entirety of 19th-century ballet as I’d vaguely assumed. Specifically, Etymonline (by far the online source I consider most trustworthy for this kind of research) gives the first usage of the word as 1910; Merriam-Webster gives it as 1913.  Other sources, such as the Macmillan Dictionary blog and the Oxford Languages result that typically pops up if you Google something like “X etymology” give the the first appearance of the word as simply “early 20th century,” insofar as it refers specifically to the skirt worn by a ballerina.  (The Wikipedia page for “Tutu (clothing)” gives the earliest recorded usage as 1881, but that date has no citation and appears nowhere else I’ve been able to look, so I’m disinclined to give it any merit.  And, frustratingly, Apollo’s Angels by Jennifer Homans, an otherwise excellent history of ballet, for some reason skips over the origin of the word “tutu” entirely; so unfortunately I can’t appeal to non-digital resources for clarification.)   This would ordinarily be just a fun little bit of trivia, but in the context of Princess Tutu it brings up some Interesting implications.  Like, this means that in order to have a character named “Princess Tutu,” and for that name to automatically conjure in the public consciousness images of a ballerina in a frilly skirt, Drosselmeyer couldn’t have begun writing The Prince and the Raven any earlier than 1910.  Among other things, this indisputably puts the anime as technically happening in the “modern day” (sometime between the mid-1990s and the 21st century aughts, depending on how you measure) --- it kind of has to, for Drosselmeyer to have been writing that late and still be four or five generations distant from Fakir.  Especially since the age of marriage (and presumably occurrence of first legitimate offspring) rose throughout the 19th century, the time period in which Drosselmeyer would’ve been born and probably lived the majority of his years.  Looking at all states in 19th-century Germany, as in this JSTOR article, in 1867 an average of about 74% of men who married at all did so between the ages of 30 and 39, rising to nearly 77% in 1871, then to a little over 81% in 1880; the numbers for women in that same age bracket kept pace, though the percentage of them represented in later marriage seems to consistently stayed a little bit higher. So the old-timey storybook aesthetic seen throughout the show isn’t any indicator of when the anime takes place, so much as simply the “look” of the Story as dictated by Drosselmeyer.  An out-of-time fairytale town, the perfect stage for any number of tales he might spin. More interestingly, this means that Drosselmeyer would’ve been writing his final work either in the years just preceding World War I, or perhaps during the war itself.  Even before that, around the turn of the 20th century, the world of German art (theatrical and literary) had been enamored of tragedy and violence, as Barbara Tuchman expounds on in her thorough and compulsively readable book The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890 - 1914 (though it should be noted that by “world” she’s mostly referring to Britain, France, Germany, America, and the Hague): “Tragedy was the staple of the German theatre [...] Death by murder, suicide or some more esoteric form resolved nearly all German drama of the nineties and early 1900′s.”  So, if writing before the War, Drosselmeyer would have been surprisingly in line with the zeitgeist of the nation.  At the very least, I think it’s safe to say that his brand of storytelling was a solid fit for the time period.  And the specification of “theatre” isn’t a dealbreaker, since many a writer of short stories and novels also dabbled in playwriting, and vice versa --- Oscar Wilde is the immediate example that jumps to mind.  Not to mention that Drosselmeyer himself seems to have something of a preoccupation with theatre in the broad sense, what with all those puppets.  We’re never given enough information about his oeuvre to definitively conclude whether or not he ever wrote for the theatre or was acquainted with anyone who did, but in any case it’s not a far leap to posit that the prevailing aesthetic of the stage likely influenced and informed what went on the page.  If he was writing The Prince and the Raven during World War I, though, we must enter the realm of the more purely speculative (though that is half the fun of applying Real World History to something like this).  We know that Drosselmeyer was killed because the Bookmen, as well as various people who had apparently once come to him to have stories of wealth and power spun for them (“the nobles” in particular are mentioned, which I find interesting), feared that he would use his power to create a great tragedy that would sweep them all along in its destructive wake.  Now, on the one hand, it probably only takes five minutes of talking to the guy to figure out that he doesn’t exactly have humanity’s best interests at heart, so their conclusion didn’t really need much in the way of supporting evidence.  On the other hand, World War I was itself a tragedy in every sense, and a brutal one at that; which tore a great rift between the Old World and the Modern World with such unimaginable violence that the world was irrevocably and forever changed by the trauma of it.  While I doubt that any of the Bookmen or others would have necessarily thought Drosselmeyer responsible for the conflict --- even his considerable story spinning powers could alter reality significantly only in one small town, plus he seems just plain uninterested in “realistic” storytelling devices and genres --- I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all suddenly keenly aware of how he might take advantage of it to craft even more gruesome tragedies of his own.  That realization and paranoia, combined with the ever-mounting cost of the war in terms of both resources and human lives, could have been the catalyst that pushed these people to act to decisively against the possible threat that Drosselmeyer represented.  Indeed, it might also account for the cruelty of the execution, the impotent brutality of the wider war finding its local synecdoche in a mob removing the hands of a dangerous individual, but not the head.  (Although, that’s also assuming that Drosselmeyer didn’t just find out about the Bookmen’s plan and use his spinning to manipulate them into performing an “execution” that would give him time for the whole writing-in-blood thing --- but that’s going from simple speculation to wild speculation, so I’ll leave that be for now.) In any case, looking at all of this evidence across history and culture, I feel relatively safe in stating that Drosselmeyer likely wrote The Prince and the Raven, and of course died, sometime between 1910 and 1918.  (There might also be something to be said about a possible connection between his mechanical clockwork pocket dimension and the emergence of mechanized warfare during WWI as well, I think, but the idea isn’t fully formed and I’ve already gone on long enough as is.)  I might even go so far as to shorten the time frame to no later than 1917 --- that would still allow for the conclusion of 1916, the year that saw the battles of both the Somme and Verdun, two of the most infamously bloody battles of World War I (which would certainly have an effect on the psyches of the general population, and specifically certain individuals who were already fearful of tragedy befalling them).  Hell, maybe even smack-dab in the middle of 1916, it certainly would’ve been stressful enough.  Regardless, it’s strange and a little exciting to have identified a more or less precise time period for the writing of The Prince and the Raven, and all thanks to looking up the history of a single related word.
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sfarticles · 3 years
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Cookbooks are much more than just recipes
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Remember these recipe pamphlets from years past? The Washburn-Crosby’s Gold Medal cookbook was published in 1910.
A greeting card I received says, “Get Out Those Cookbooks and Cook Up a Storm.” Why? October is National Cookbook Month. You probably know by reading my columns, I am celebrating.
The Oxford Dictionary defines a cookbook as a “book containing recipes and other information about the preparation of food.” I find them to be so much more; learning about traditions of different cultures, appreciating food photography and reading about recipes prepared across different regions of the U.S. The latter can be found in myriad Junior League, church and other nonprofit organizations’ fundraising cookbooks.
The vintage recipe booklets that take me back to another place and time, and single ingredient cookbooks, are among my favorites. Those pamphlets from the 1950s are retro in design, with the front cover often showing a picture of a well-coiffed woman wearing a dress and a fancy apron while sporting some jewelry, standing by the stove. Some of those recipes just might not be the most appetizing today (think gelatin molds encasing vegetables, American Chop Suey and other creations of the era). Not all are unappealing; recently, some of those comfort foods popular in years past have made a resurgence.
I would rather read a cookbook that tells a story than a novel. For some, it might be a beautiful coffee table book, where not one recipe is used, but the cover has gorgeous visuals. Others have a few on display as a “prop” in their kitchen. Perhaps some of you would appreciate this quote by comedian Rita Rudner: “I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and say to myself, ‘well, that’s not going to happen.’”
For whatever reason one buys or collects cookbooks, they are not going away, as some might think. The internet gives access to millions of recipes, but what is missing are the stories and people behind of the recipes.
Henry Notaker, a food historian, doesn’t think cookbooks will become a thing of the past. After all, many of the food blogs, electronic food media and food television shows are now extending their presence with a cookbook. And, with self-publishing, it is affordable to publish and preserve family heritage recipes and give copies of the cookbook to family and friends.
I recently had new bookcases built to house my ever-expanding collection. It gave me an opportunity to visit titles that have been tucked behind others. I thought revisiting and sharing some of my “finds” would be a fun way to celebrate. To help you celebrate, check out the quizzes below, revisit one of your old favorites and prepare a recipe, or buy that cookbook you always wanted
1. Cookbooks have been with us for a very long time. The oldest known cookbook was written on clay tablets and dates from the 18th century BCE. Which culture left it for us?
A. Babylonian
B. Roman
C. Chinese
D. Inca
2. Who was the French “king of chefs and chef of kings” who published his “Guide Culinaire” in 1903, which is still in use today?
A. Frank Beard
B. Paul Bocuse
C. Wolfgang Puck
D. August Escoffier
3. While she was living in France, after working for the OSS in World War II, Julia Child attended which famous cooking school before collaborating with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle to create her famous cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”?
A. International Culinary Center
B. The Cordon Bleu
C. French Culinary Institute
D. The Culinary Institute of America France Campus
4. When this woman wasn’t touring as part of her and her husband’s rock ‘n’ roll band, she was a cookbook writer and food impresario in her own right. She was an ardent vegetarian, once saying, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian.” Who was she?
A. Judy Collins
B. Stevie Nicks
C. Linda McCartney
D. Joan Baez
5. Whose 1896 “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book” has stayed in print for over a century, and is often referred to only by the author’s name?
A. Rose Elliott
B. Fannie Farmer
C. Susie Fishbein
D. Richard Kimball
6. Who wrote the popular cookbook, “30 Minute Meals”?
A. Martha Stewart
B. Emeril Lagasse
C. Bobby Flay
D. Rachael Ray
7. This cookbook, by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, has become so familiar that its title was modified to become the title of a bestselling book by Alex Comfort. What is this cookbook’s title?
8. Which of these cookbook titles are not real?
1. “Microwave Cooking for One”
2. “The Male Chauvinist Cookbook”
3. “Manifold Destiny: The One! The Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine”
4. “Cooking in the Nude”
5. “The Pyromaniac Cookbook”
6. “The Dracula Cookbook”
7. “Revolting Recipes”
8. “Special Effects Cookbook”
9. “Serial Killer Cookbook”
10. “Ugly Food”
11. “Season to Taste with Human Tears”
12. “The Carrot Cleanse: 50 Detoxing Carrot Recipes”
To see the answers and the recipes, please visit,
https://www.ctinsider.com/living/nhregister/article/Stephen-Fries-Cookbooks-are-much-more-than-just-15644253.php?cmpid=gsa-nhregister-result&_ga=2.181385959.1536727742.1603022429-1128023684.1499900500
or email me [email protected]
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belphegor1982 · 4 years
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All 50 for Jon/Tom :3
I LOVE YOU ♥
1. Who is the early bird/Who is the night owl?
Tommyis an early bird by necessity, but without an alarm clock he’ll beup by 8. Jonathan, OTOH, is absolutely a night owl who can and willsleep until noon if left unchecked. Also insomnia becomes a problemfor him as he gets older.
2.Who is the big spoon/ Who is the little spoon?
Theyswitch more or less randomly,but Jonathan loves when he’s the big spoon, because Tommy is sodamn soft.(they usually wake up wrapped around each other anyway.)
3.Who hogs the cover/ Who loves to cuddle?
Bothboys are big fans of cuddling – see above :o) Jonathan hogs thecovers. He’ll whine and say it’s because he’s used to the warmweather of Egypt; Tommy just grabs the covers right back.
4.Who wakes the other one up with kisses?
Tommy,but that’s because he usually wakes up before Jonathan.
5.Who usually has nightmares?
Jonathana little more often than Tommy. It gets worse as the years pass andbring experiences like WW1, Hamunaptra, and Ahm Shere.
6.Who would have really deep emotional thoughts at the middle of thenight/ Who would have them in the middle of the day?
Jonathanand Tommy, respectively. Jonathan’s way of dealing with deepemotional thoughts is to metaphorically put his fingers in his earsand go “I CAN’T HEAR YOU”; unfortunately they’re a lot lesseasy to ignore when it’s bloody o’clock in the morning and you’vebeen trying to sleep for two hours. When they hit Tommy, he’s morelikely to freeze and go really quiet until he’s dealt with them.
7.Who sweats the small stuff?
(tbhI didn’t really understand this question? I thought it wasabout little everyday chores but then maybe not?) Jonathan would liketo point out that what he tends to get anxious about isn’t small– like the consequences getting caught together would have, forexample. Not that Tommy isn’t anxious about that, but he has alittle too much on his hands with rightnow stuff – managinghis hours at the Turf Tavern andhis studies – to let himself worry about hypothetical stuff, especially since they’re being so cautious anyway.
8.Who sleeps in their underwear (or naked)/ Who sleeps in theirpyjamas?
Jonathanlikes his little comforts and likes to sleep in his pyjamas (unlesshe and Tommy engaged in specific activities that tend to leave a chaphappy and comfortable and closely pressed against his partner aftersaid activities – thenbugger pyjamas). In theirfirst year, when they sleep together it’s generally in Jonathan’sroom, because it’s on the ground floor, so Tommy usually sleepsthere naked or in his underwear; but the next year, when they’reflatmates, he starts wearingpyjamas, too. (Unless he and Jonathan just fall asleep wrapped aroundeach other. Then yeah,bugger pyjamas.)
9.Who makes the coffee (or tea)?
Idon’t know how widespread coffee was in 1910s England, but if itis, then it’s probably Tommy. Jonathan, OTOH, makes a rathersplendid tea (he learned from his mum).
10.Who likes sweet/ Who likes sour?
Jonathanhas a sweet tooth. Tommy will eat anything, but leans towards sweetwhen he can.
11.Who likes horror movies/ Who likes romance movies?
ModernAU? Neither likes either horror nor romance. They prefer thrillersand adventure.
12.Who is smol/ Who is tol?
Neither,they’re the same height, give or take an inch. Tommy is on theplump side while Jonathan is a toast rack, though. (That’s beforebasic training, which makes Jonathan’s shoulders fill out a bitand Tommy’s tummy just a little less soft. He still keeps lovehandles.)
13.Who is considered the scaredy cat?
Jonathan,although it’s less “scaredy cat” and more “utter lack ofchill”.
14.Who kills the spiders?
Both,especially once they move in together. They keep a monthlytally.
15.Who is scared of the dark?
“Scared”might be too strong a word for it, but Tommy is uncomfortable intotal darkness.
16.Who is scared of thunderstorms?
Jonathan.Since always. It got worse after WW1.
17.Who works/ Who stays at home?
They’reboth students (ancient history), butTommy works in a pub. Which means Jonathan spends a lotof his time in pubs (either to keep Tommy company or in another pub with him over a pint or two).
18.Who is a cat person/ Who is a dog person?
Jonathandespises cats, which Tommy finds hilarious because let’sface it, Jon is basicallya cat himself. Meanwhile, big dogs make Tommy nervous (he’s neverhad a dog) but he can’t really say he prefers cats.
19.Who loves to call the other one cute names?
Neither.Tommy calls Jonathan “Jon”, occasionally “mate”; Jonathancalls Tommy “Tommy” and the occasional “old chap”, and that’sit. It’s less about what they’re saying than the way they’resaying it anyway.
20.Who is dominant/ Who is submissive?
It’slike big spoon/little spoon: not really fixed. Their first time wasTommy inside Jonathan and it’s what happens 6 times out of 10.
21.Who has an obsession (over anything)?
Neither,really. Tommy is a fairly grounded person, and Jonathan a little tooeasily distracted to obsess over anything.
22.Who goes all out for Valentine’s Day?
Neither,even if they could be out without getting arrested.
23.Who asks who out on the first date?
Thatdepends on your idea of“first date”. It’s Jonathan who said “fancy a pint?” first,before they even became friends. Once they’re together they do theexact same things they did before as friends – play tourists inOxford, go see the occasional play, and of course, go to the pub.
24.Who is the talker/ Who is the listener?
Jonathantalks a lot, and Tommy – who works ina pub – is good atlistening. However, when Tommy talks, Jonathan willlisten.
25.Who wears the other one’s clothes?
Theydon’t really have the same body type (not even the same hat size),so they don’t, really, apartfrom stealingeach other’s clean cuffs occasionally.(modern AU Jonathan absolutely pilfersTommy’s sweaters.)
26.Who likes to eat healthy/ Who loves junk food?
Tommyis a little too practical to consider what’s healthy and whatisn’t; while he grew up poor, he didn’t reallygrow up hungry, but hestill has the reflex toeat what’s in front ofhim because it means someone’s been working hard (his mum orhimself)to put the food on thetable. Jonathan ispickier, but not about health, either. It’snot really an everyday concern in the early 20thcentury, anyway.
27.Who takes a long shower/ Who sings in the shower?
Jonathanloves long showers. Tommy either showers before him or with him, orgrumbles because Jon’s been using all the bloody hot water again.Neither really sings in the shower.
28.Who is the book worm?
Tommy.He loves books.
29.Who is the better cook?
Tommy,but only because Jonathan never had to cook for himself until theyshare a flat, while Tommy – a sailor’s wife’s son, and an onlychild – helped his mam in the kitchen from an early age.
30.Who likes long walks on the beach?
Beachesare hard to find in Oxford, but neither, really.
31.Who is more affectionate?
Theycan’t afford to show affection in public, and the fear of gettingcaught is so ingrained that they don’t really let themselves be asphysically affectionate asthey would like even when it’s just the two of them.But Jonathan loves to fall asleep snuggledagainst Tommy, and Tommy loves it when Jonathan sneaks an arm aroundhim while they read/study. It’s 50/50, really.
32.Who likes to have really long (deep) conversations?
Long/deepconversations are really, reallyrare and usually come after a pint or two too many. Bothboys are tooself-conscious to do otherwise.
33.Who would wear “not guilty” t-shirt/ Who would wear “sin”t-shirt?
Jonathanwould totally wear a “not guilty” t-shirt (not thatanybody would believe him). Tommy would enjoy the “sin” one,because he’s good at looking innocent (and Jon can be shady enoughto make anyone look innocuous in comparison).
34.Who would wear “if lost return to…” t-shirt/ Who would wear “Iam…” t-shirt?
Theywouldn’t.
35.Who goes overboard on the holidays?
Eh,neither.
36.Who is the social media addict?
ModernAU Jonathan has a Twitter he remembers once in a blue moon, and Tommykeeps a Tumblr mostly to reblog ancient Rome, Greece and Egyptthings. Neither can really be called an addict, though.
37.Height difference or age difference?
Neither,they’re the same height. Tommy is six months older than Jonathan.
38.Who likes to star gaze?
Tommy.You can see a lot more stars in Oxford than in the heart ofLiverpool. When they leavethe pub at closing time and he’s tipsy he’ll sometimes walk withhis head tipped back to really look at the night sky, knowing Jonwill catch him if he stumbles and falls. (Eventhough Jon’s usuallyjust as tipsy as he is and wouldn’t be of great help – walkingarm in arm with him still helps with his balance and it’s thethought that counts.)
39.Who buys cereal for the prize inside?
JONATHAN.And then if he finds theprize disappointing he’s not above buying another packet, whichannoys Tommy because it’s food and foodmust not go to waste.(modern AU, natch.)
40.Who is the fun parent/ Who is the responsible parent?
Imaginingthem as parents broke my brain? Jonathan Carnahan is not a parent inany shape or form. (but we all know who would be theIRresponsible parent.)
41.Who cries during sad movies?
(modernAU) Eh, neither does, really.
42.Who is the neat freak?
Neitheris a neat freak, but Jonathan is 1) kind of a slob (except whereclothes are concerned) and 2) completely unused to picking up afterhimself, so Tommy is neater by comparison.
43.Who wins the stuffed animals at the carnival for the other one?
Jonathanhas reallygood aim with a rifle.Tommy isn’t a fan ofstuffed animals, especially since their flat is small and wouldn’ttake much to feel cramped, but every now and then he likes to pointat a soft toy and say, “Bet you can’t get thatone.” Naturally, they end up walking away with it.
44.Who is active/ Who is lazy?
Jonathanis TheLaziest :P Tommy is much more active, if only by necessity (gettinghis degree is “do ordie” for him).
45.Who is more likely to get drunk?
BOTH.Together. (after life separates them it’s Jonathan, though.)
46.Who has the longer food order?
Jonathan,because he knows what/how to order and is completely comfortable withfancy restaurants while Tommy will instinctively look for thecheapest dishes even – especially – when he’s notfooting his own bill.
47.Who has the more complex coffee order?
Neither– they go for tea. Modern AU Tommy has a mild coffee addictionbecause there are not enough hours in the day for reading all thebooks and studying all the things AND working in a pub,but he takes his coffee simple, black as night with three sugars.
48.Who loses stuff?
Jonathan.Fortunately for every item he loses he finds another he hadpreviously misplaced. If Tommy loses something he’s sure it willresurface some time later, probably in a ridiculous place.
49.Who is the driver/ Who is the passenger?
Ihaven’t figured out yet how 1910s Tommy learns how to drive, but Ilike the idea of him driving pre-WW1; then he spent over two years inthe Army Service Corps (transport system – ammunition, food,equipment) and finished the war with a talent for driving in theworst conditions (and a horror of driving at all). Modern AU? It’s60/40 in Jonathan’s favour.
50.Who is the hopeless romantic?
Neither,really. Jonathan is a little too cynical and Tommy a little toopragmatic.
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itsfinancethings · 4 years
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New story in Business from Time: Millions of Americans Have Lost Jobs in the Pandemic — And Robots and AI Are Replacing Them Faster Than Ever
For 23 years, Larry Collins worked in a booth on the Carquinez Bridge in the San Francisco Bay Area, collecting tolls. The fare changed over time, from a few bucks to $6, but the basics of the job stayed the same: Collins would make change, answer questions, give directions and greet commuters. “Sometimes, you’re the first person that people see in the morning,” says Collins, “and that human interaction can spark a lot of conversation.”
But one day in mid-March, as confirmed cases of the coronavirus were skyrocketing, Collins’ supervisor called and told him not to come into work the next day. The tollbooths were closing to protect the health of drivers and of toll collectors. Going forward, drivers would pay bridge tolls automatically via FasTrak tags mounted on their windshields or would receive bills sent to the address linked to their license plate. Collins’ job was disappearing, as were the jobs of around 185 other toll collectors at bridges in Northern California, all to be replaced by technology.
Machines have made jobs obsolete for centuries. The spinning jenny replaced weavers, buttons displaced elevator operators, and the Internet drove travel agencies out of business. One study estimates that about 400,000 jobs were lost to automation in U.S. factories from 1990 to 2007. But the drive to replace humans with machinery is accelerating as companies struggle to avoid workplace infections of COVID-19 and to keep operating costs low. The U.S. shed around 40 million jobs at the peak of the pandemic, and while some have come back, some will never return. One group of economists estimates that 42% of the jobs lost are gone forever.
This replacement of humans with machines may pick up more speed in coming months as companies move from survival mode to figuring out how to operate while the pandemic drags on. Robots could replace as many as 2 million more workers in manufacturing alone by 2025, according to a recent paper by economists at MIT and Boston University. “This pandemic has created a very strong incentive to automate the work of human beings,” says Daniel Susskind, a fellow in economics at Balliol College, University of Oxford, and the author of A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond. “Machines don’t fall ill, they don’t need to isolate to protect peers, they don’t need to take time off work.”
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Cayce Clifford for TIMELarry Collins, at home in Lathrop, Calif., on July 31, was a bridge toll collector until COVID-19 led the state to automate the job to protect employees and drivers. “I just want to go back to what I was doing,” says Collins, whose job is among the millions that economists say could be lost forever as companies accelerate moves toward automation.
As with so much of the pandemic, this new wave of automation will be harder on people of color like Collins, who is Black, and on low-wage workers. Many Black and Latino Americans are cashiers, food-service employees and customer-service representatives, which are among the 15 jobs most threatened by automation, according to McKinsey. Even before the pandemic, the global consulting company estimated that automation could displace 132,000 Black workers in the U.S. by 2030.
The deployment of robots as a response to the coronavirus was rapid. They were suddenly cleaning floors at airports and taking people’s temperatures. Hospitals and universities deployed Sally, a salad-making robot created by tech company Chowbotics, to replace dining-hall employees; malls and stadiums bought Knightscope security-guard robots to patrol empty real estate; companies that manufacture in-demand supplies like hospital beds and cotton swabs turned to industrial robot supplier Yaskawa America to help increase production.
Companies closed call centers employing human customer-service agents and turned to chatbots created by technology company LivePerson or to AI platform Watson Assistant. “I really think this is a new normal–the pandemic accelerated what was going to happen anyway,” says Rob Thomas, senior vice president of cloud and data platform at IBM, which deploys Watson. Roughly 100 new clients started using the software from March to June.
In theory, automation and artificial intelligence should free humans from dangerous or boring tasks so they can take on more intellectually stimulating assignments, making companies more productive and raising worker wages. And in the past, technology was deployed piecemeal, giving employees time to transition into new roles. Those who lost jobs could seek retraining, perhaps using severance pay or unemployment benefits to find work in another field. This time the change was abrupt as employers, worried about COVID-19 or under sudden lockdown orders, rushed to replace workers with machines or software. There was no time to retrain. Companies worried about their bottom line cut workers loose instead, and these workers were left on their own to find ways of mastering new skills. They found few options.
In the past, the U.S. responded to technological change by investing in education. When automation fundamentally changed farm jobs in the late 1800s and the 1900s, states expanded access to public schools. Access to college expanded after World War II with the GI Bill, which sent 7.8 million veterans to school from 1944 to 1956. But since then, U.S. investment in education has stalled, putting the burden on workers to pay for it themselves. And the idea of education in the U.S. still focuses on college for young workers rather than on retraining employees. The country spends 0.1% of GDP to help workers navigate job transitions, less than half what it spent 30 years ago.
“The real automation problem isn’t so much a robot apocalypse,” says Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “It is business as usual of people needing to get retraining, and they really can’t get it in an accessible, efficient, well-informed, data-driven way.”
This means that tens of thousands of Americans who lost jobs during the pandemic may be unemployed for years or, in Collins’ case, for good. Though he has access to retraining funding through his union contract, “I’m too old to think about doing some other job,” says Collins, who is 63 and planning on taking early retirement. “I just want to go back to what I was doing.”
Check into a hotel today, and a mechanical butler designed by robotics company Savioke might roll down the hall to deliver towels and toothbrushes. (“No tip required,” Savioke notes on its website.) Robots have been deployed during the pandemic to meet guests at their rooms with newly disinfected keys. A bricklaying robot can lay more than 3,000 bricks in an eight-hour shift, up to 10 times what a human can do. Robots can plant seeds and harvest crops, separate breastbones and carcasses in slaughterhouses, pack pallets of food in processing facilities.
That doesn’t mean they’re taking everyone’s jobs. For centuries, humans from weavers to mill workers have worried that advances in technology would create a world without work, and that’s never proved true. ATMs did not immediately decrease the number of bank tellers, for instance. They actually led to more teller jobs as consumers, lured by the convenience of cash machines, began visiting banks more often. Banks opened more branches and hired tellers to handle tasks that are beyond the capacity of ATMs. Without technological advancement, much of the American workforce would be toiling away on farms, which accounted for 31% of U.S. jobs in 1910 and now account for less than 1%.
But in the past, when automation eliminated jobs, companies created new ones to meet their needs. Manufacturers that were able to produce more goods using machines, for example, needed clerks to ship the goods and marketers to reach additional customers.
Now, as automation lets companies do more with fewer people, successful companies don’t need as many workers. The most valuable company in the U.S. in 1964, AT&T, had 758,611 employees; the most valuable company today, Apple, has around 137,000 employees. Though today’s big companies make billions of dollars, they share that income with fewer employees, and more of their profit goes to shareholders. “Look at the business model of Google, Facebook, Netflix. They’re not in the business of creating new tasks for humans,” says Daron Acemoglu, an MIT economist who studies automation and jobs.
The U.S. government incentivizes companies to automate, he says, by giving tax breaks for buying machinery and software. A business that pays a worker $100 pays $30 in taxes, but a business that spends $100 on equipment pays about $3 in taxes, he notes. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered taxes on purchases so much that “you can actually make money buying equipment,” Acemoglu says.
In addition, artificial intelligence is becoming more adept at jobs that once were the purview of humans, making it harder for humans to stay ahead of machines. JPMorgan says it now has AI reviewing commercial-loan agreements, completing in seconds what used to take 360,000 hours of lawyers’ time over the course of a year. In May, amid plunging advertising revenue, Microsoft laid off dozens of journalists at MSN and its Microsoft News service, replacing them with AI that can scan and process content. Radio group iHeartMedia has laid off dozens of DJs to take advantage of its investments in technology and AI. I got help transcribing interviews for this story using Otter.ai, an AI-based transcription service. A few years ago, I might have paid $1 a minute for humans to do the same thing.
These advances make AI an easy choice for companies scrambling to cope during the pandemic. Municipalities that had to close their recycling facilities, where humans worked in close quarters, are using AI-assisted robots to sort through tons of plastic, paper and glass. AMP Robotics, the company that makes these robots, says inquiries from potential customers increased at least fivefold from March to June. Last year, 35 recycling facilities used AMP Robotics, says AMP spokesman Chris Wirth; by the end of 2020, nearly 100 will.
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Cayce Clifford for TIMEThe Carquinez Bridge toll plaza in Vallejo, Calif., is empty of tollbooth collectors on July 30, the result of the state’s decision to automate the jobs at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For now, workers are being paid in exchange for taking online courses in other fields, but that’s not a benefit available to most of the millions of U.S. employees who have lost jobs during the pandemic.
RDS Virginia, a recycling company in Virginia, purchased four AMP robots in 2019 for its Roanoke facility, deploying them on assembly lines to ensure the paper and plastic streams were free of misplaced materials. The robots could work around the clock, didn’t take bathroom breaks and didn’t require safety training, says Joe Benedetto, the company’s president. When the coronavirus hit, robots took over quality control as humans were pulled off assembly lines and given tasks that kept them at a safe distance from one another. Benedetto breathes easier knowing he won’t have to raise the robots’ pay to meet the minimum wage. He’s already thinking about where else he can deploy them. “There are a few reasons I prefer machinery,” Benedetto says. “For one thing, as long as you maintain it, it’s there every day to work.”
Companies deploying automation and AI say the technology allows them to create new jobs. But the number of new jobs is often minuscule compared with the number of jobs lost. LivePerson, which designs conversational software, could enable a company to take a 1,000-person call center and run it with 100 people plus chatbots, says CEO Rob LoCascio. A bot can respond to 10,000 queries in an hour, LoCascio says; an efficient call-center rep can answer six.
LivePerson saw a fourfold increase in demand in March as companies closed call centers, LoCascio says. “What happened was the contact-center representatives went home, and a lot of them can’t work from home,” he says.
Some surprising businesses are embracing automation. David’s Bridal, which sells wedding gowns and other formal wear in about 300 stores across North America and the U.K., set up a chatbot called Zoey through LivePerson last year. When the pandemic forced David’s Bridal to close its stores, Zoey helped manage customer inquiries flooding the company’s call centers, says Holly Carroll, vice president of the customer-service and contact center. Without a bot, “we would have been dead in the water,” Carroll says.
David’s Bridal now spends 35% less on call centers and can handle three times more messages through its chatbot than it can through voice or email. (Zoey may be cheaper than a human, but it is not infallible. Via text, Zoey promised to connect me to a virtual stylist, but I never heard back from it or the company.)
Many organizations will likely look to technology as they face budget cuts and need to reduce staff. “I don’t see us going back to the staffing levels we were at prior to COVID,” says Brian Pokorny, the director of information technologies for Otsego County in New York State, who has cut 10% of his staff because of pandemic-related budget issues. “So we need to look at things like AI to streamline government services and make us more efficient.”
Pokorny used a free trial from IBM’s Watson Assistant early in the pandemic and set up an AI-powered web chat to answer questions from the public, like whether the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the county seat, had reopened. (It had, as of June 26, with limited capacity.) Now, Watson can answer 75% of the questions people ask, and Otsego County has started paying for the service, which Pokorny says costs “pennies” per conversation. Though the county now uses AI just for online chats, it plans to deploy a Watson virtual assistant that can answer phone calls. Around 36 states have deployed chatbots to respond to questions about the pandemic and available government services, according to the National Association of State Chief Information Officers.
IBM and LivePerson say that by creating AI, they’re freeing up humans to do more sophisticated tasks. Companies that contract with LivePerson still need “bot builders” to help teach the AI how to answer questions, and call-center agents see their pay increase by about 15% when they become bot builders, LoCascio says. “We can look at it like there’s going to be this massive job loss, or we can look at it that people get moved into different places and positions in the world to better their lives,” LoCascio says.
But companies will need far fewer bot builders than call-center agents, and mobility is not always an option, especially for workers without college degrees or whose employers do not offer retraining. Non-union workers are especially vulnerable. Larry Collins and his colleagues, represented by SEIU Local 1000, were fortunate: they’re being paid their full salaries for the foreseeable future in exchange for taking 32 hours a week of online classes in computer skills, accounting, entrepreneurship and other fields. (Some might even get their jobs back, albeit temporarily, as the state upgrades its systems.) But just 11.6 % of American workers were represented by a union in 2019.
Yvonne R. Walker, the union president, says most non-union workers don’t get this kind of assistance. “Companies out there don’t provide employee training and upskilling–they don’t see it as a good investment,” Walker says. “Unless workers have a union thinking about these things, the workers get left behind.”
In Sweden, employers pay into private funds that help workers get retrained; Singapore’s SkillsFuture program reimburses citizens up to 500 Singapore dollars (about $362 in U.S. currency) for approved retraining courses. But in the U.S., the most robust retraining programs are for workers whose jobs are sent overseas or otherwise lost because of trade issues. A few states have started promising to pay community-college tuition for adult learners who seek retraining; the Tennessee Reconnect program pays for adults over 25 without college degrees to get certificates, associate’s degrees and technical diplomas. But a similar program in Michigan is in jeopardy as states struggle with budget issues, says Michelle Miller-Adams, a researcher at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
House and Senate Democrats introduced a $15 billion workforce-retraining bill in early May, but it hasn’t gained much traction with Republicans, who prefer to encourage retraining by giving tax credits. The federal funds that exist come with restrictions. Pell Grants, which help low-income students pay for education, can’t be used for nontraditional programs like boot camps or a 170-hour EMT certification. Local jobless centers, which receive federal funds, spend an average of $3,500 per person on retraining, but they usually run out of money early in a calendar year because of limited funding, says Ayobami Olugbemiga, press secretary at the National Skills Coalition.
Even if federal funding were widely available, the surge of people who need retraining would be more than universities can handle, says Gabe Dalporto, the CEO of Udacity, which offers online courses in programming, data science, AI and more. “A billion people will lose their jobs over the next 10 years due to AI, and if anything, COVID has accelerated that by about nine years,” says Dalporto. “If you tried to reskill a billion people in the university system, you would break the university system.”
Dalporto says the coronavirus should be a wake-up call for the federal government to rethink how it funds education. “We have this model where we want to dump huge amounts of capital into very slow, noncareer-specific education,” Dalporto says. “If you just repurposed 10% of that, you could retrain 3 million people in about six months.”
Online education providers say they can provide retraining and upskilling on workers’ own timelines, and for less money than traditional schools. Coursera offers six-month courses for $39 to $79 a month that provide students with certifications needed for a variety of jobs, says CEO Jeff Maggioncalda. Once they’ve landed a job, they can then pursue a college degree online, he says. “This idea that you get job skills first, get the job, then get your college degree online while you’re working, I think for a lot of people will be more economically effective,” he says. In April, Coursera launched a Workforce Recovery Initiative that allows the unemployed in some states and other countries, including Colombia and Singapore, to learn for free until the end of the year.
Online learning providers can offer relatively inexpensive upskilling options because they don’t have guidance counselors, classrooms and other features of brick-and-mortar schools. But there could be more of a role for employers to provide those support systems going forward. Dalporto, who calls the wave of automation during COVID-19 “our economic Pearl Harbor,” argues that the government should provide a tax credit of $2,500 per upskilled worker to companies that provide retraining. He also suggests that company severance packages include $1,500 in retraining credits.
Some employers are turning to Guild Education, which works with employers to subsidize upskilling. A program it launched in May lets companies pay a fee to have Guild assist laid-off workers in finding new jobs. Employers see this as a way to create loyalty among these former employees, says Rachel Carlson, the CEO of Guild. “The most thoughtful consumer companies say, Employee for now, customer for life,” she says.
With the economy 30 million jobs short of what it had before the pandemic, though, workers and employers may not see much use in training for jobs that may not be available for months or even years. And not every worker is interested in studying data science, cloud computing or artificial intelligence.
But those who have found a way to move from dying fields to in-demand jobs are likely to do better. A few years ago, Tristen Alexander was a call-center rep at a Georgia power company when he took a six-month online course to earn a Google IT Support Professional Certificate. A Google scholarship covered the cost for Alexander, who has no college degree and was supporting his wife and two kids on about $38,000 a year. Alexander credits his certificate with helping him win a promotion and says he now earns more than $70,000 annually. What’s more, the promotion has given him a sense of job security. “I just think there’s a great need for everyone to learn something technical,” he tells me.
Of course, Alexander knows that technology may significantly change his job in the next decade, so he’s already planning his next step. By 2021, he wants to master the skill of testing computer systems to spot vulnerabilities to hackers and gain a certificate in that practice, known as penetration testing. It will all but guarantee him a job, he says, working alongside the technology that’s changing the world.
–With reporting by Alejandro de la Garza and Julia Zorthian/New York
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October in Seoul
The D&O Diary’s Asian assignment continued last week with a stop in Seoul, South Korea’s capital city. This was my first visit to Seoul. Turns out, Seoul is a big, amazing city. It is larger than either New York or London and full of interesting and unexpected things.
  First of all, right in the center of the city is a series of royal palaces for the Joseon dynasty, which ruled Korea for five centuries from July 1392 to October 1897. The dynasty survived invasions by the Japanese in the late 16th century and by the Manchu in 17th century. The palaces were heavily damaged in each of these invasions, and then nearly destroyed during the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. It is kind of amazing that anything at all survived. The palaces have now largely been renovated, although work continues. The largest of the palaces is Gyeongbokgung (the “Palace of Shining Happiness”), first built in 1396. On the sunlit autumnal day I visited, the buildings and the vast grounds were full of school kids and young women in traditional Korean garb. Looming over the palace is Bukhansan, the 2,744 foot rocky peak that is the highest mountain within Seoul. As the pictures show, the weather was about perfect. As rotten as the weather had been for my visit to Tokyo, that’s how great the weather was in Seoul.
The main hall at Gyongbokgung, with Bukhansan looming in the background
  Hard to see in the small image, but there is a flock of birds in this picture flying over the palace rooftops
  The changing of the guard at the South Gate of Gyongbokgung
  I also visited the nearby palace of Changdeokgung, another of the Five Grand Palaces of the Joseon Dynasty, part of the Eastern Palace complex.  My only regret is that my schedule did not allow me time to visit the other three Great Palaces.
  The main hall at Changdeokgung
  In addition to its great historical buildings, Seoul also has some great neighborhoods. Of the ones I visited, my favorite was Insadong, a tree-lined district of shops and restaurants. On a warm fall evening, crowds of people strolled through the neighborhood. Branching off the main road are a number of narrow alleys, some barely wide enough to walk through without touching your shoulders on the wall. Along the alleyways are small restaurants serving traditional Korean food.
  A tree-lined shopping street in Insadong
  A narrow alleyway in Insadong.
  A restaurant courtyard in Insadong
  Bukchon Hanok Village is another remarkable neighborhood, also not far from the main royal palaces. The area is full of traditional wooden Korean houses, known as hanoks. Originally this area was home to the high ranking officials in the Josean dynasty. The interesting thing about the area is not only that the houses have survived across the centuries, but they are still in active use. The hilly area also affords great views back toward Gyeongbokgung.
          The hotel I stayed in was in another of the interesting neighborhoods, Myeongdong, which is located just a block off the main streets of the central financial district. The area’s narrow pedestrianized streets are lined with stores, including both the International chains (Forever 21, H&M) as well as local Korean brands. In the evening a young crowd thronged the streets, sampling the various kinds of street food on offer – dumplings, cabbage omelets, lobster balls, all kinds of stuff.  The amazing street food was among the best I have ever had.
  Myeongdong in the early evening
  Now this is serious street food.
  A bibimbap. I didn’t get this from a street vendor but at a small family restaurant on a side street.
  This lady had the cleanest stand among all of the vendors, so I had to buy some of her dumplings, three for about four bucks.
  The dumplings were good but a large part of the pleasure was eating them while walking through the crowd
  This lady had the longest line, but because I couldn’t figure out what she was selling I took a pass.
  All of these attractions were interesting but the best part of all for me was that right in the city itself is a national park. Just seven subways stops and a ten-minute bus ride from my hotel was the entrance of the Bukhansan National Park, an area of forested mountains covering over thirty square miles. I was fortunate that the day I visited the weather was just about perfect, and the fall colors were at their peak. A rugged, stony path led basically straight uphill to a gate in the city’s defensive wall, sections of which still run along the ridgetop. The hike was about as demanding as I have attempted in a while. There were several stretches where I was scrambling on all fours. I really didn’t have the right clothes at all for a rigorous hike like this. I suspect I am the first person ever to reach the peak wearing a button-down Oxford cloth dress shirt. I have included a bunch of pictures below as it really was an extraordinary experience visiting the park and hiking through the sunlit, autumnal woods.
            Through the morning haze, you can just make out Seoul below (showing how close the park is to the central city). You can also make out through the haze several successive mountain ranges.
  The restored city defensive wall runs along the ridgetop
  A closer view of the defensive wall, with the city itself just visible in the distance
  It took me about five hours to make it to the top and back. After I went back to my hotel to change out of my sweat-drenched clothes, I took the subway back to Insadong for one last traditional meal before I headed home. I found a table of a second floor restaurant overlooking the street where I could watch the crowds ramble by. I enjoyed a meal of tofu and kimchee, which may have been the best meal I had in Korea. The cool tofu helped counterbalanced the fiery hot kimchee. As I watched the streams of people while darkness gathered, I reflected to myself that Seoul had proved to be a really interesting and entertaining place to visit – unexpectedly so, for me at least. What a great place.
  A view of Insadong from a second-story restaurant window
  Tofu and kimchee. It was awesome.
  There was a constant thought in the back of my head while I was in Seoul, though. In the lead-up to my visit, and especially while I was there, I was particularly worried about what could happen at any moment in response to North Korea’s efforts to develop a nuclear missile program. Most of the time while I was in Seoul, I was able to keep these thoughts well to the back of my mind. However, on Saturday night, as I was going back to the subway after my pleasant final meal in Insadong, I came across a loud political demonstration (pictured below). I wasn’t sure what it was all about, but it was very loud and very emotional. The people in the crowd sang patriotic songs and shouted slogans. They waved South Korean and American flags. As I watch the parade, several different passersby shook my hand (I guess I look American. I have experienced this before). I don’t know for sure what it was all about, but the evident sentiment brought home to me that emotions are running high, because of how serious these issues are.
    A crowd of demonstrators waving flags and singing patriotic songs. Emotions were running high.
  The South Koreans have accomplished so much since the end of the Korean War. They have a built a modern, thriving economy. As I saw for myself, their capital is a world city, with a dazzling skyline, a huge subway system and other impressive infrastructure, and even a great night life. The very idea that a hostile militaristic enemy’s border sits just 35 miles away from Seoul is a chilling thought.  The missiles stayed in their silos while I was in South Korea, but the South Koreans have to live with the possibility – no matter how remote — that the missiles could launch at any time. My most important take away from my visit to Seoul is that so much is at stake in the current precarious situation.  As our world leaders confront the current tense situation, we can only hope that the Koreans themselves are appropriately considered. They have the most at stake.
    This picture shows the legend on one of the windows on the observation floor at Seoul Tower, showing the exact distance to Seoul from Pyongyang (153.4 miles). The window legend doesn’t say so, but this is the direction the missiles would come from. The view below underscores what would happen if the missiles were to be launched.
  More Pictures of Seoul
  This is Dongdaemun (“Great Eastern Gate”), the sole remaining gate from the city’s defensive wall. Rebuilt many times.
  Near the gate is the city’s fashion district. This street consists entirely of shoe stores.
  This stream, called Cheonggyechon, runs for 5 km below street level. It was a surprisingly quiet retreat from the busy city just above.
  Seoul is a modern city but you don’t have to look hard to find remnants of its recent past.
  One last picture of Seoul. I took this picture on Sunday morning, just before I caught the bus to the airport. Picture taken on Mount Namsan, just south of my hotel. I truly was sorry to be leaving Seoul. What a great place.
The post October in Seoul appeared first on The D&O Diary.
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lawfultruth · 6 years
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October in Seoul
The D&O Diary’s Asian assignment continued last week with a stop in Seoul, South Korea’s capital city. This was my first visit to Seoul. Turns out, Seoul is a big, amazing city. It is larger than either New York or London and full of interesting and unexpected things.  
  First of all, right in the center of the city is a series of royal palaces for the Joseon dynasty, which ruled Korea for five centuries from July 1392 to October 1897. The dynasty survived invasions by the Japanese in the late 16th century and by the Manchu in 17th century. The palaces were heavily damaged in each of these invasions, and then nearly destroyed during the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. It is kind of amazing that anything at all survived. The palaces have now largely been renovated, although work continues. The largest of the palaces is Gyeongbokgung (the “Palace of Shining Happiness”), first built in 1396. On the sunlit autumnal day I visited, the buildings and the vast grounds were full of school kids and young women in traditional Korean garb. Looming over the palace is Bukhansan, the 2,744 foot rocky peak that is the highest mountain within Seoul. As the pictures show, the weather was about perfect. As rotten as the weather had been for my visit to Tokyo, that’s how great the weather was in Seoul.
  The main hall at Gyongbokgung, with Bukhansan looming in the background
  Hard to see in the small image, but there is a flock of birds in this picture flying over the palace rooftops
  The changing of the guard at the South Gate of Gyongbokgung
  I also visited the nearby palace of Changdeokgung, another of the Five Grand Palaces of the Joseon Dynasty, part of the Eastern Palace complex.  My only regret is that my schedule did not allow me time to visit the other three Great Palaces.
  The main hall at Changdeokgung
  In addition to its great historical buildings, Seoul also has some great neighborhoods. Of the ones I visited, my favorite was Insadong, a tree-lined district of shops and restaurants. On a warm fall evening, crowds of people strolled through the neighborhood. Branching off the main road are a number of narrow alleys, some barely wide enough to walk through without touching your shoulders on the wall. Along the alleyways are small restaurants serving traditional Korean food.
  A tree-lined shopping street in Insadong
  A narrow alleyway in Insadong.
  A restaurant courtyard in Insadong
  Bukchon Hanok Village is another remarkable neighborhood, also not far from the main royal palaces. The area is full of traditional wooden Korean houses, known as hanoks. Originally this area was home to the high ranking officials in the Josean dynasty. The interesting thing about the area is not only that the houses have survived across the centuries, but they are still in active use. The hilly area also affords great views back toward Gyeongbokgung.
              The hotel I stayed in was in another of the interesting neighborhoods, Myeongdong, which is located just a block off the main streets of the central financial district. The area’s narrow pedestrianized streets are lined with stores, including both the International chains (Forever 21, H&M) as well as local Korean brands. In the evening a young crowd thronged the streets, sampling the various kinds of street food on offer – dumplings, cabbage omelets, lobster balls, all kinds of stuff.  The amazing street food was among the best I have ever had.
    Myeongdong in the early evening
  Now this is serious street food.
  A bibimbap. I didn’t get this from a street vendor but at a small family restaurant on a side street.
  This lady had the cleanest stand among all of the vendors, so I had to buy some of her dumplings, three for about four bucks.
  The dumplings were good but a large part of the pleasure was eating them while walking through the crowd
  This lady had the longest line, but because I couldn’t figure out what she was selling I took a pass.
  All of these attractions were interesting but the best part of all for me was that right in the city itself is a national park. Just seven subways stops and a ten-minute bus ride from my hotel was the entrance of the Bukhansan National Park, an area of forested mountains covering over thirty square miles. I was fortunate that the day I visited the weather was just about perfect, and the fall colors were at their peak. A rugged, stony path led basically straight uphill to a gate in the city’s defensive wall, sections of which still run along the ridgetop. The hike was about as demanding as I have attempted in a while. There were several stretches where I was scrambling on all fours. I really didn’t have the right clothes at all for a rigorous hike like this. I suspect I am the first person ever to reach the peak wearing a button-down Oxford cloth dress shirt. I have included a bunch of pictures below as it really was an extraordinary experience visiting the park and hiking through the sunlit, autumnal woods.
                  Through the morning haze, you can just make out Seoul below (showing how close the park is to the central city). You can also make out through the haze several successive mountain ranges.
  The restored city defensive wall runs along the ridgetop
  A closer view of the defensive wall, with the city itself just visible in the distance
  It took me about five hours to make it to the top and back. After I went back to my hotel to change out of my sweat-drenched clothes, I took the subway back to Insadong for one last traditional meal before I headed home. I found a table on the second floor restaurant overlooking the street where I could watch the crowds ramble by. I enjoyed a meal of tofu and kimchee, which may have been the best meal I had in Korea. The cool tofu helped counterbalanced the fiery hot kimchee. As I watched the streams of people while darkness gathered, I reflected to myself that Seoul had proved to be a really interesting and entertaining place to visit – unexpectedly so, for me at least. What a great place.
  A view of Insadong from a second-story restaurant window
  Tofu and kimchee. It was awesome.
  There was a constant thought in the back of my head while I was in Seoul, though. In the lead-up to my visit, and especially while I was there, I was particularly worried about what could happen at any moment in response to North Korea’s efforts to develop a nuclear missile program. Most of the time while I was in Seoul, I was able to keep these thoughts well to the back of my mind. However, on Saturday night, as I was going back to the subway after my pleasant final meal in Insadong, I came across a loud political demonstration (pictured below). I wasn’t sure what it was all about, but it was very loud and very emotional. The people in the crowd sang patriotic songs and shouted slogans. They waved South Korean and American flags. As I watch the parade, several different passersby shook my hand (I guess I look American. I have experienced this before). I don’t know for sure what it was all about, but the evident sentiment brought home to me that emotions are running high, because of how serious these issues are.
  A crowd of demonstrators waving flags and singing patriotic songs. Emotions were running high.
  The South Koreans have accomplished so much since the end of the Korean War. They have a built a modern, thriving economy. As I saw for myself, their capital is a world city, with a dazzling skyline, a huge subway system and other impressive infrastructure, and even a great night life. The very idea that a hostile militaristic enemy’s border sits just 35 miles away from Seoul is a chilling thought.  The missiles stayed in their silos while I was in South Korea, but the South Koreans have to live with the possibility – no matter how remote — that the missiles could launch at any time. My most important take away from my visit to Seoul is that so much is at stake in the current precarious situation.  As our world leaders confront the current tense situation, we can only hope that the Koreans themselves are appropriately considered. They have the most at stake.
  This picture shows the legend on one of the windows on the observation floor at Seoul Tower, showing the exact distance to Seoul from Pyongyang (153.4 miles). The window legend doesn’t say so, but this is the direction the missiles would come from. The view below underscores what would happen if the missiles were to be launched.
  More Pictures of Seoul
  This is Dongdaemun (“Great Eastern Gate”), the sole remaining gate from the city’s defensive wall. Rebuilt many times.
  Near the gate is the city’s fashion district. This street consists entirely of shoe stores.
  This stream, called Cheonggyechon, runs for 5 km below street level. It was a surprisingly quiet retreat from the busy city just above.
  Seoul is a modern city but you don’t have to look hard to find remnants of its recent past.
    One last picture of Seoul. I took this picture on Sunday morning, just before I caught the bus to the airport. Picture taken on Mount Namsan, just south of my hotel. I truly was sorry to be leaving Seoul. What a great place.
The post October in Seoul appeared first on The D&O Diary.
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golicit · 6 years
Text
October in Seoul
The D&O Diary’s Asian assignment continued last week with a stop in Seoul, South Korea’s capital city. This was my first visit to Seoul. Turns out, Seoul is a big, amazing city. It is larger than either New York or London and full of interesting and unexpected things.  
  First of all, right in the center of the city is a series of royal palaces for the Joseon dynasty, which ruled Korea for five centuries from July 1392 to October 1897. The dynasty survived invasions by the Japanese in the late 16th century and by the Manchu in 17th century. The palaces were heavily damaged in each of these invasions, and then nearly destroyed during the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. It is kind of amazing that anything at all survived. The palaces have now largely been renovated, although work continues. The largest of the palaces is Gyeongbokgung (the “Palace of Shining Happiness”), first built in 1396. On the sunlit autumnal day I visited, the buildings and the vast grounds were full of school kids and young women in traditional Korean garb. Looming over the palace is Bukhansan, the 2,744 foot rocky peak that is the highest mountain within Seoul. As the pictures show, the weather was about perfect. As rotten as the weather had been for my visit to Tokyo, that’s how great the weather was in Seoul.
  The main hall at Gyongbokgung, with Bukhansan looming in the background
  Hard to see in the small image, but there is a flock of birds in this picture flying over the palace rooftops
  The changing of the guard at the South Gate of Gyongbokgung
  I also visited the nearby palace of Changdeokgung, another of the Five Grand Palaces of the Joseon Dynasty, part of the Eastern Palace complex.  My only regret is that my schedule did not allow me time to visit the other three Great Palaces.
  The main hall at Changdeokgung
  In addition to its great historical buildings, Seoul also has some great neighborhoods. Of the ones I visited, my favorite was Insadong, a tree-lined district of shops and restaurants. On a warm fall evening, crowds of people strolled through the neighborhood. Branching off the main road are a number of narrow alleys, some barely wide enough to walk through without touching your shoulders on the wall. Along the alleyways are small restaurants serving traditional Korean food.
  A tree-lined shopping street in Insadong
  A narrow alleyway in Insadong.
  A restaurant courtyard in Insadong
  Bukchon Hanok Village is another remarkable neighborhood, also not far from the main royal palaces. The area is full of traditional wooden Korean houses, known as hanoks. Originally this area was home to the high ranking officials in the Josean dynasty. The interesting thing about the area is not only that the houses have survived across the centuries, but they are still in active use. The hilly area also affords great views back toward Gyeongbokgung.
              The hotel I stayed in was in another of the interesting neighborhoods, Myeongdong, which is located just a block off the main streets of the central financial district. The area’s narrow pedestrianized streets are lined with stores, including both the International chains (Forever 21, H&M) as well as local Korean brands. In the evening a young crowd thronged the streets, sampling the various kinds of street food on offer – dumplings, cabbage omelets, lobster balls, all kinds of stuff.  The amazing street food was among the best I have ever had.
    Myeongdong in the early evening
  Now this is serious street food.
  A bibimbap. I didn’t get this from a street vendor but at a small family restaurant on a side street.
  This lady had the cleanest stand among all of the vendors, so I had to buy some of her dumplings, three for about four bucks.
  The dumplings were good but a large part of the pleasure was eating them while walking through the crowd
  This lady had the longest line, but because I couldn’t figure out what she was selling I took a pass.
  All of these attractions were interesting but the best part of all for me was that right in the city itself is a national park. Just seven subways stops and a ten-minute bus ride from my hotel was the entrance of the Bukhansan National Park, an area of forested mountains covering over thirty square miles. I was fortunate that the day I visited the weather was just about perfect, and the fall colors were at their peak. A rugged, stony path led basically straight uphill to a gate in the city’s defensive wall, sections of which still run along the ridgetop. The hike was about as demanding as I have attempted in a while. There were several stretches where I was scrambling on all fours. I really didn’t have the right clothes at all for a rigorous hike like this. I suspect I am the first person ever to reach the peak wearing a button-down Oxford cloth dress shirt. I have included a bunch of pictures below as it really was an extraordinary experience visiting the park and hiking through the sunlit, autumnal woods.
                  Through the morning haze, you can just make out Seoul below (showing how close the park is to the central city). You can also make out through the haze several successive mountain ranges.
  The restored city defensive wall runs along the ridgetop
  A closer view of the defensive wall, with the city itself just visible in the distance
  It took me about five hours to make it to the top and back. After I went back to my hotel to change out of my sweat-drenched clothes, I took the subway back to Insadong for one last traditional meal before I headed home. I found a table on the second floor restaurant overlooking the street where I could watch the crowds ramble by. I enjoyed a meal of tofu and kimchee, which may have been the best meal I had in Korea. The cool tofu helped counterbalanced the fiery hot kimchee. As I watched the streams of people while darkness gathered, I reflected to myself that Seoul had proved to be a really interesting and entertaining place to visit – unexpectedly so, for me at least. What a great place.
  A view of Insadong from a second-story restaurant window
  Tofu and kimchee. It was awesome.
  There was a constant thought in the back of my head while I was in Seoul, though. In the lead-up to my visit, and especially while I was there, I was particularly worried about what could happen at any moment in response to North Korea’s efforts to develop a nuclear missile program. Most of the time while I was in Seoul, I was able to keep these thoughts well to the back of my mind. However, on Saturday night, as I was going back to the subway after my pleasant final meal in Insadong, I came across a loud political demonstration (pictured below). I wasn’t sure what it was all about, but it was very loud and very emotional. The people in the crowd sang patriotic songs and shouted slogans. They waved South Korean and American flags. As I watch the parade, several different passersby shook my hand (I guess I look American. I have experienced this before). I don’t know for sure what it was all about, but the evident sentiment brought home to me that emotions are running high, because of how serious these issues are.
  A crowd of demonstrators waving flags and singing patriotic songs. Emotions were running high.
  The South Koreans have accomplished so much since the end of the Korean War. They have a built a modern, thriving economy. As I saw for myself, their capital is a world city, with a dazzling skyline, a huge subway system and other impressive infrastructure, and even a great night life. The very idea that a hostile militaristic enemy’s border sits just 35 miles away from Seoul is a chilling thought.  The missiles stayed in their silos while I was in South Korea, but the South Koreans have to live with the possibility – no matter how remote — that the missiles could launch at any time. My most important take away from my visit to Seoul is that so much is at stake in the current precarious situation.  As our world leaders confront the current tense situation, we can only hope that the Koreans themselves are appropriately considered. They have the most at stake.
  This picture shows the legend on one of the windows on the observation floor at Seoul Tower, showing the exact distance to Seoul from Pyongyang (153.4 miles). The window legend doesn’t say so, but this is the direction the missiles would come from. The view below underscores what would happen if the missiles were to be launched.
  More Pictures of Seoul
  This is Dongdaemun (“Great Eastern Gate”), the sole remaining gate from the city’s defensive wall. Rebuilt many times.
  Near the gate is the city’s fashion district. This street consists entirely of shoe stores.
  This stream, called Cheonggyechon, runs for 5 km below street level. It was a surprisingly quiet retreat from the busy city just above.
  Seoul is a modern city but you don’t have to look hard to find remnants of its recent past.
    One last picture of Seoul. I took this picture on Sunday morning, just before I caught the bus to the airport. Picture taken on Mount Namsan, just south of my hotel. I truly was sorry to be leaving Seoul. What a great place.
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For 23 years, Larry Collins worked in a booth on the Carquinez Bridge in the San Francisco Bay Area, collecting tolls. The fare changed over time, from a few bucks to $6, but the basics of the job stayed the same: Collins would make change, answer questions, give directions and greet commuters. “Sometimes, you’re the first person that people see in the morning,” says Collins, “and that human interaction can spark a lot of conversation.”
But one day in mid-March, as confirmed cases of the coronavirus were skyrocketing, Collins’ supervisor called and told him not to come into work the next day. The tollbooths were closing to protect the health of drivers and of toll collectors. Going forward, drivers would pay bridge tolls automatically via FasTrak tags mounted on their windshields or would receive bills sent to the address linked to their license plate. Collins’ job was disappearing, as were the jobs of around 185 other toll collectors at bridges in Northern California, all to be replaced by technology.
Machines have made jobs obsolete for centuries. The spinning jenny replaced weavers, buttons displaced elevator operators, and the Internet drove travel agencies out of business. One study estimates that about 400,000 jobs were lost to automation in U.S. factories from 1990 to 2007. But the drive to replace humans with machinery is accelerating as companies struggle to avoid workplace infections of COVID-19 and to keep operating costs low. The U.S. shed around 40 million jobs at the peak of the pandemic, and while some have come back, some will never return. One group of economists estimates that 42% of the jobs lost are gone forever.
This replacement of humans with machines may pick up more speed in coming months as companies move from survival mode to figuring out how to operate while the pandemic drags on. Robots could replace as many as 2 million more workers in manufacturing alone by 2025, according to a recent paper by economists at MIT and Boston University. “This pandemic has created a very strong incentive to automate the work of human beings,” says Daniel Susskind, a fellow in economics at Balliol College, University of Oxford, and the author of A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond. “Machines don’t fall ill, they don’t need to isolate to protect peers, they don’t need to take time off work.”
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Cayce Clifford for TIMELarry Collins, at home in Lathrop, Calif., on July 31, was a bridge toll collector until COVID-19 led the state to automate the job to protect employees and drivers. “I just want to go back to what I was doing,” says Collins, whose job is among the millions that economists say could be lost forever as companies accelerate moves toward automation.
As with so much of the pandemic, this new wave of automation will be harder on people of color like Collins, who is Black, and on low-wage workers. Many Black and Latino Americans are cashiers, food-service employees and customer-service representatives, which are among the 15 jobs most threatened by automation, according to McKinsey. Even before the pandemic, the global consulting company estimated that automation could displace 132,000 Black workers in the U.S. by 2030.
The deployment of robots as a response to the coronavirus was rapid. They were suddenly cleaning floors at airports and taking people’s temperatures. Hospitals and universities deployed Sally, a salad-making robot created by tech company Chowbotics, to replace dining-hall employees; malls and stadiums bought Knightscope security-guard robots to patrol empty real estate; companies that manufacture in-demand supplies like hospital beds and cotton swabs turned to industrial robot supplier Yaskawa America to help increase production.
Companies closed call centers employing human customer-service agents and turned to chatbots created by technology company LivePerson or to AI platform Watson Assistant. “I really think this is a new normal–the pandemic accelerated what was going to happen anyway,” says Rob Thomas, senior vice president of cloud and data platform at IBM, which deploys Watson. Roughly 100 new clients started using the software from March to June.
In theory, automation and artificial intelligence should free humans from dangerous or boring tasks so they can take on more intellectually stimulating assignments, making companies more productive and raising worker wages. And in the past, technology was deployed piecemeal, giving employees time to transition into new roles. Those who lost jobs could seek retraining, perhaps using severance pay or unemployment benefits to find work in another field. This time the change was abrupt as employers, worried about COVID-19 or under sudden lockdown orders, rushed to replace workers with machines or software. There was no time to retrain. Companies worried about their bottom line cut workers loose instead, and these workers were left on their own to find ways of mastering new skills. They found few options.
In the past, the U.S. responded to technological change by investing in education. When automation fundamentally changed farm jobs in the late 1800s and the 1900s, states expanded access to public schools. Access to college expanded after World War II with the GI Bill, which sent 7.8 million veterans to school from 1944 to 1956. But since then, U.S. investment in education has stalled, putting the burden on workers to pay for it themselves. And the idea of education in the U.S. still focuses on college for young workers rather than on retraining employees. The country spends 0.1% of GDP to help workers navigate job transitions, less than half what it spent 30 years ago.
“The real automation problem isn’t so much a robot apocalypse,” says Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “It is business as usual of people needing to get retraining, and they really can’t get it in an accessible, efficient, well-informed, data-driven way.”
This means that tens of thousands of Americans who lost jobs during the pandemic may be unemployed for years or, in Collins’ case, for good. Though he has access to retraining funding through his union contract, “I’m too old to think about doing some other job,” says Collins, who is 63 and planning on taking early retirement. “I just want to go back to what I was doing.”
Check into a hotel today, and a mechanical butler designed by robotics company Savioke might roll down the hall to deliver towels and toothbrushes. (“No tip required,” Savioke notes on its website.) Robots have been deployed during the pandemic to meet guests at their rooms with newly disinfected keys. A bricklaying robot can lay more than 3,000 bricks in an eight-hour shift, up to 10 times what a human can do. Robots can plant seeds and harvest crops, separate breastbones and carcasses in slaughterhouses, pack pallets of food in processing facilities.
That doesn’t mean they’re taking everyone’s jobs. For centuries, humans from weavers to mill workers have worried that advances in technology would create a world without work, and that’s never proved true. ATMs did not immediately decrease the number of bank tellers, for instance. They actually led to more teller jobs as consumers, lured by the convenience of cash machines, began visiting banks more often. Banks opened more branches and hired tellers to handle tasks that are beyond the capacity of ATMs. Without technological advancement, much of the American workforce would be toiling away on farms, which accounted for 31% of U.S. jobs in 1910 and now account for less than 1%.
But in the past, when automation eliminated jobs, companies created new ones to meet their needs. Manufacturers that were able to produce more goods using machines, for example, needed clerks to ship the goods and marketers to reach additional customers.
Now, as automation lets companies do more with fewer people, successful companies don’t need as many workers. The most valuable company in the U.S. in 1964, AT&T, had 758,611 employees; the most valuable company today, Apple, has around 137,000 employees. Though today’s big companies make billions of dollars, they share that income with fewer employees, and more of their profit goes to shareholders. “Look at the business model of Google, Facebook, Netflix. They’re not in the business of creating new tasks for humans,” says Daron Acemoglu, an MIT economist who studies automation and jobs.
The U.S. government incentivizes companies to automate, he says, by giving tax breaks for buying machinery and software. A business that pays a worker $100 pays $30 in taxes, but a business that spends $100 on equipment pays about $3 in taxes, he notes. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered taxes on purchases so much that “you can actually make money buying equipment,” Acemoglu says.
In addition, artificial intelligence is becoming more adept at jobs that once were the purview of humans, making it harder for humans to stay ahead of machines. JPMorgan says it now has AI reviewing commercial-loan agreements, completing in seconds what used to take 360,000 hours of lawyers’ time over the course of a year. In May, amid plunging advertising revenue, Microsoft laid off dozens of journalists at MSN and its Microsoft News service, replacing them with AI that can scan and process content. Radio group iHeartMedia has laid off dozens of DJs to take advantage of its investments in technology and AI. I got help transcribing interviews for this story using Otter.ai, an AI-based transcription service. A few years ago, I might have paid $1 a minute for humans to do the same thing.
These advances make AI an easy choice for companies scrambling to cope during the pandemic. Municipalities that had to close their recycling facilities, where humans worked in close quarters, are using AI-assisted robots to sort through tons of plastic, paper and glass. AMP Robotics, the company that makes these robots, says inquiries from potential customers increased at least fivefold from March to June. Last year, 35 recycling facilities used AMP Robotics, says AMP spokesman Chris Wirth; by the end of 2020, nearly 100 will.
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Cayce Clifford for TIMEThe Carquinez Bridge toll plaza in Vallejo, Calif., is empty of tollbooth collectors on July 30, the result of the state’s decision to automate the jobs at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For now, workers are being paid in exchange for taking online courses in other fields, but that’s not a benefit available to most of the millions of U.S. employees who have lost jobs during the pandemic.
RDS Virginia, a recycling company in Virginia, purchased four AMP robots in 2019 for its Roanoke facility, deploying them on assembly lines to ensure the paper and plastic streams were free of misplaced materials. The robots could work around the clock, didn’t take bathroom breaks and didn’t require safety training, says Joe Benedetto, the company’s president. When the coronavirus hit, robots took over quality control as humans were pulled off assembly lines and given tasks that kept them at a safe distance from one another. Benedetto breathes easier knowing he won’t have to raise the robots’ pay to meet the minimum wage. He’s already thinking about where else he can deploy them. “There are a few reasons I prefer machinery,” Benedetto says. “For one thing, as long as you maintain it, it’s there every day to work.”
Companies deploying automation and AI say the technology allows them to create new jobs. But the number of new jobs is often minuscule compared with the number of jobs lost. LivePerson, which designs conversational software, could enable a company to take a 1,000-person call center and run it with 100 people plus chatbots, says CEO Rob LoCascio. A bot can respond to 10,000 queries in an hour, LoCascio says; an efficient call-center rep can answer six.
LivePerson saw a fourfold increase in demand in March as companies closed call centers, LoCascio says. “What happened was the contact-center representatives went home, and a lot of them can’t work from home,” he says.
Some surprising businesses are embracing automation. David’s Bridal, which sells wedding gowns and other formal wear in about 300 stores across North America and the U.K., set up a chatbot called Zoey through LivePerson last year. When the pandemic forced David’s Bridal to close its stores, Zoey helped manage customer inquiries flooding the company’s call centers, says Holly Carroll, vice president of the customer-service and contact center. Without a bot, “we would have been dead in the water,” Carroll says.
David’s Bridal now spends 35% less on call centers and can handle three times more messages through its chatbot than it can through voice or email. (Zoey may be cheaper than a human, but it is not infallible. Via text, Zoey promised to connect me to a virtual stylist, but I never heard back from it or the company.)
Many organizations will likely look to technology as they face budget cuts and need to reduce staff. “I don’t see us going back to the staffing levels we were at prior to COVID,” says Brian Pokorny, the director of information technologies for Otsego County in New York State, who has cut 10% of his staff because of pandemic-related budget issues. “So we need to look at things like AI to streamline government services and make us more efficient.”
Pokorny used a free trial from IBM’s Watson Assistant early in the pandemic and set up an AI-powered web chat to answer questions from the public, like whether the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the county seat, had reopened. (It had, as of June 26, with limited capacity.) Now, Watson can answer 75% of the questions people ask, and Otsego County has started paying for the service, which Pokorny says costs “pennies” per conversation. Though the county now uses AI just for online chats, it plans to deploy a Watson virtual assistant that can answer phone calls. Around 36 states have deployed chatbots to respond to questions about the pandemic and available government services, according to the National Association of State Chief Information Officers.
IBM and LivePerson say that by creating AI, they’re freeing up humans to do more sophisticated tasks. Companies that contract with LivePerson still need “bot builders” to help teach the AI how to answer questions, and call-center agents see their pay increase by about 15% when they become bot builders, LoCascio says. “We can look at it like there’s going to be this massive job loss, or we can look at it that people get moved into different places and positions in the world to better their lives,” LoCascio says.
But companies will need far fewer bot builders than call-center agents, and mobility is not always an option, especially for workers without college degrees or whose employers do not offer retraining. Non-union workers are especially vulnerable. Larry Collins and his colleagues, represented by SEIU Local 1000, were fortunate: they’re being paid their full salaries for the foreseeable future in exchange for taking 32 hours a week of online classes in computer skills, accounting, entrepreneurship and other fields. (Some might even get their jobs back, albeit temporarily, as the state upgrades its systems.) But just 11.6 % of American workers were represented by a union in 2019.
Yvonne R. Walker, the union president, says most non-union workers don’t get this kind of assistance. “Companies out there don’t provide employee training and upskilling–they don’t see it as a good investment,” Walker says. “Unless workers have a union thinking about these things, the workers get left behind.”
In Sweden, employers pay into private funds that help workers get retrained; Singapore’s SkillsFuture program reimburses citizens up to 500 Singapore dollars (about $362 in U.S. currency) for approved retraining courses. But in the U.S., the most robust retraining programs are for workers whose jobs are sent overseas or otherwise lost because of trade issues. A few states have started promising to pay community-college tuition for adult learners who seek retraining; the Tennessee Reconnect program pays for adults over 25 without college degrees to get certificates, associate’s degrees and technical diplomas. But a similar program in Michigan is in jeopardy as states struggle with budget issues, says Michelle Miller-Adams, a researcher at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
House and Senate Democrats introduced a $15 billion workforce-retraining bill in early May, but it hasn’t gained much traction with Republicans, who prefer to encourage retraining by giving tax credits. The federal funds that exist come with restrictions. Pell Grants, which help low-income students pay for education, can’t be used for nontraditional programs like boot camps or a 170-hour EMT certification. Local jobless centers, which receive federal funds, spend an average of $3,500 per person on retraining, but they usually run out of money early in a calendar year because of limited funding, says Ayobami Olugbemiga, press secretary at the National Skills Coalition.
Even if federal funding were widely available, the surge of people who need retraining would be more than universities can handle, says Gabe Dalporto, the CEO of Udacity, which offers online courses in programming, data science, AI and more. “A billion people will lose their jobs over the next 10 years due to AI, and if anything, COVID has accelerated that by about nine years,” says Dalporto. “If you tried to reskill a billion people in the university system, you would break the university system.”
Dalporto says the coronavirus should be a wake-up call for the federal government to rethink how it funds education. “We have this model where we want to dump huge amounts of capital into very slow, noncareer-specific education,” Dalporto says. “If you just repurposed 10% of that, you could retrain 3 million people in about six months.”
Online education providers say they can provide retraining and upskilling on workers’ own timelines, and for less money than traditional schools. Coursera offers six-month courses for $39 to $79 a month that provide students with certifications needed for a variety of jobs, says CEO Jeff Maggioncalda. Once they’ve landed a job, they can then pursue a college degree online, he says. “This idea that you get job skills first, get the job, then get your college degree online while you’re working, I think for a lot of people will be more economically effective,” he says. In April, Coursera launched a Workforce Recovery Initiative that allows the unemployed in some states and other countries, including Colombia and Singapore, to learn for free until the end of the year.
Online learning providers can offer relatively inexpensive upskilling options because they don’t have guidance counselors, classrooms and other features of brick-and-mortar schools. But there could be more of a role for employers to provide those support systems going forward. Dalporto, who calls the wave of automation during COVID-19 “our economic Pearl Harbor,” argues that the government should provide a tax credit of $2,500 per upskilled worker to companies that provide retraining. He also suggests that company severance packages include $1,500 in retraining credits.
Some employers are turning to Guild Education, which works with employers to subsidize upskilling. A program it launched in May lets companies pay a fee to have Guild assist laid-off workers in finding new jobs. Employers see this as a way to create loyalty among these former employees, says Rachel Carlson, the CEO of Guild. “The most thoughtful consumer companies say, Employee for now, customer for life,” she says.
With the economy 30 million jobs short of what it had before the pandemic, though, workers and employers may not see much use in training for jobs that may not be available for months or even years. And not every worker is interested in studying data science, cloud computing or artificial intelligence.
But those who have found a way to move from dying fields to in-demand jobs are likely to do better. A few years ago, Tristen Alexander was a call-center rep at a Georgia power company when he took a six-month online course to earn a Google IT Support Professional Certificate. A Google scholarship covered the cost for Alexander, who has no college degree and was supporting his wife and two kids on about $38,000 a year. Alexander credits his certificate with helping him win a promotion and says he now earns more than $70,000 annually. What’s more, the promotion has given him a sense of job security. “I just think there’s a great need for everyone to learn something technical,” he tells me.
Of course, Alexander knows that technology may significantly change his job in the next decade, so he’s already planning his next step. By 2021, he wants to master the skill of testing computer systems to spot vulnerabilities to hackers and gain a certificate in that practice, known as penetration testing. It will all but guarantee him a job, he says, working alongside the technology that’s changing the world.
–With reporting by Alejandro de la Garza and Julia Zorthian/New York
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October in Seoul
The D&O Diary’s Asian assignment continued last week with a stop in Seoul, South Korea’s capital city. This was my first visit to Seoul. Turns out, Seoul is a big, amazing city. It is larger than either New York or London and full of interesting and unexpected things.  
  First of all, right in the center of the city is a series of royal palaces for the Joseon dynasty, which ruled Korea for five centuries from July 1392 to October 1897. The dynasty survived invasions by the Japanese in the late 16th century and by the Manchu in 17th century. The palaces were heavily damaged in each of these invasions, and then nearly destroyed during the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. It is kind of amazing that anything at all survived. The palaces have now largely been renovated, although work continues. The largest of the palaces is Gyeongbokgung (the “Palace of Shining Happiness”), first built in 1396. On the sunlit autumnal day I visited, the buildings and the vast grounds were full of school kids and young women in traditional Korean garb. Looming over the palace is Bukhansan, the 2,744 foot rocky peak that is the highest mountain within Seoul. As the pictures show, the weather was about perfect. As rotten as the weather had been for my visit to Tokyo, that’s how great the weather was in Seoul.
  The main hall at Gyongbokgung, with Bukhansan looming in the background
  Hard to see in the small image, but there is a flock of birds in this picture flying over the palace rooftops
  The changing of the guard at the South Gate of Gyongbokgung
  I also visited the nearby palace of Changdeokgung, another of the Five Grand Palaces of the Joseon Dynasty, part of the Eastern Palace complex.  My only regret is that my schedule did not allow me time to visit the other three Great Palaces.
  The main hall at Changdeokgung
  In addition to its great historical buildings, Seoul also has some great neighborhoods. Of the ones I visited, my favorite was Insadong, a tree-lined district of shops and restaurants. On a warm fall evening, crowds of people strolled through the neighborhood. Branching off the main road are a number of narrow alleys, some barely wide enough to walk through without touching your shoulders on the wall. Along the alleyways are small restaurants serving traditional Korean food.
  A tree-lined shopping street in Insadong
  A narrow alleyway in Insadong.
  A restaurant courtyard in Insadong
  Bukchon Hanok Village is another remarkable neighborhood, also not far from the main royal palaces. The area is full of traditional wooden Korean houses, known as hanoks. Originally this area was home to the high ranking officials in the Josean dynasty. The interesting thing about the area is not only that the houses have survived across the centuries, but they are still in active use. The hilly area also affords great views back toward Gyeongbokgung.
              The hotel I stayed in was in another of the interesting neighborhoods, Myeongdong, which is located just a block off the main streets of the central financial district. The area’s narrow pedestrianized streets are lined with stores, including both the International chains (Forever 21, H&M) as well as local Korean brands. In the evening a young crowd thronged the streets, sampling the various kinds of street food on offer – dumplings, cabbage omelets, lobster balls, all kinds of stuff.  The amazing street food was among the best I have ever had.
    Myeongdong in the early evening
  Now this is serious street food.
  A bibimbap. I didn’t get this from a street vendor but at a small family restaurant on a side street.
  This lady had the cleanest stand among all of the vendors, so I had to buy some of her dumplings, three for about four bucks.
  The dumplings were good but a large part of the pleasure was eating them while walking through the crowd
  This lady had the longest line, but because I couldn’t figure out what she was selling I took a pass.
  All of these attractions were interesting but the best part of all for me was that right in the city itself is a national park. Just seven subways stops and a ten-minute bus ride from my hotel was the entrance of the Bukhansan National Park, an area of forested mountains covering over thirty square miles. I was fortunate that the day I visited the weather was just about perfect, and the fall colors were at their peak. A rugged, stony path led basically straight uphill to a gate in the city’s defensive wall, sections of which still run along the ridgetop. The hike was about as demanding as I have attempted in a while. There were several stretches where I was scrambling on all fours. I really didn’t have the right clothes at all for a rigorous hike like this. I suspect I am the first person ever to reach the peak wearing a button-down Oxford cloth dress shirt. I have included a bunch of pictures below as it really was an extraordinary experience visiting the park and hiking through the sunlit, autumnal woods.
                  Through the morning haze, you can just make out Seoul below (showing how close the park is to the central city). You can also make out through the haze several successive mountain ranges.
  The restored city defensive wall runs along the ridgetop
  A closer view of the defensive wall, with the city itself just visible in the distance
  It took me about five hours to make it to the top and back. After I went back to my hotel to change out of my sweat-drenched clothes, I took the subway back to Insadong for one last traditional meal before I headed home. I found a table on the second floor restaurant overlooking the street where I could watch the crowds ramble by. I enjoyed a meal of tofu and kimchee, which may have been the best meal I had in Korea. The cool tofu helped counterbalanced the fiery hot kimchee. As I watched the streams of people while darkness gathered, I reflected to myself that Seoul had proved to be a really interesting and entertaining place to visit – unexpectedly so, for me at least. What a great place.
  A view of Insadong from a second-story restaurant window
  Tofu and kimchee. It was awesome.
  There was a constant thought in the back of my head while I was in Seoul, though. In the lead-up to my visit, and especially while I was there, I was particularly worried about what could happen at any moment in response to North Korea’s efforts to develop a nuclear missile program. Most of the time while I was in Seoul, I was able to keep these thoughts well to the back of my mind. However, on Saturday night, as I was going back to the subway after my pleasant final meal in Insadong, I came across a loud political demonstration (pictured below). I wasn’t sure what it was all about, but it was very loud and very emotional. The people in the crowd sang patriotic songs and shouted slogans. They waved South Korean and American flags. As I watch the parade, several different passersby shook my hand (I guess I look American. I have experienced this before). I don’t know for sure what it was all about, but the evident sentiment brought home to me that emotions are running high, because of how serious these issues are.
  A crowd of demonstrators waving flags and singing patriotic songs. Emotions were running high.
  The South Koreans have accomplished so much since the end of the Korean War. They have a built a modern, thriving economy. As I saw for myself, their capital is a world city, with a dazzling skyline, a huge subway system and other impressive infrastructure, and even a great night life. The very idea that a hostile militaristic enemy’s border sits just 35 miles away from Seoul is a chilling thought.  The missiles stayed in their silos while I was in South Korea, but the South Koreans have to live with the possibility – no matter how remote — that the missiles could launch at any time. My most important take away from my visit to Seoul is that so much is at stake in the current precarious situation.  As our world leaders confront the current tense situation, we can only hope that the Koreans themselves are appropriately considered. They have the most at stake.
  This picture shows the legend on one of the windows on the observation floor at Seoul Tower, showing the exact distance to Seoul from Pyongyang (153.4 miles). The window legend doesn’t say so, but this is the direction the missiles would come from. The view below underscores what would happen if the missiles were to be launched.
  More Pictures of Seoul
  This is Dongdaemun (“Great Eastern Gate”), the sole remaining gate from the city’s defensive wall. Rebuilt many times.
  Near the gate is the city’s fashion district. This street consists entirely of shoe stores.
  This stream, called Cheonggyechon, runs for 5 km below street level. It was a surprisingly quiet retreat from the busy city just above.
  Seoul is a modern city but you don’t have to look hard to find remnants of its recent past.
    One last picture of Seoul. I took this picture on Sunday morning, just before I caught the bus to the airport. Picture taken on Mount Namsan, just south of my hotel. I truly was sorry to be leaving Seoul. What a great place.
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