Right?
And King Crimson sold one of theirs to Tony Banks of Genesis. At least that's a claim here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellotron
I loved its use on The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
Maybe one reason a job becomes a bullshit job is because the objectives such a job is defined to achieve are themselves bullshit. And whoever has stated the objectives are critical to the mission of the enterprise is either bullshitting themselves or believes the bullshit premises of the objectives.
But then again, it's probably important to truly know what bullshit is. Is it, as expressed in the book "On Bullshit" intentional deception or even lying to advance the bullshitter's own interest? Or is it an unfounded or unsubstantiated belief in a value or goal that has not been subjected to enough careful scrutiny or deliberation?
Why don't more people see this capability as an accelerator and/or amplifier? To borrow from the book "Smarter Than You Think" by Clive Thompson, it can turn us into "centaurs", fusing the minds of humans with the computing power of AI.
Doesn't this show that we can now use this technology to generate and execute code for modest problems that have already been solved, while we can spend more time on even more complex problems?
The information technology industry is a disruptive force in this economy. The way it has disrupted the global economy has changed over time as newer generations of technological innovations (e.g., software, programming languages and development paradigms) have overtaken older generations of information technology. As a consequence, these changes have demanded new sets of technical skills from programmers. Those who master the skills (and a lot who learn just enough of them) can command premium pay because of the labor scarcity they now find themselves in.
In my own 30+-year career, I've had to continually re-skill and up-skill to keep pace with the changes over the years and stay competitive with new programmers entering the industry. I have also been able to command a premium wage (even through the dot com bust) because I was always watching the industry and was able to anticipate and/or pick up whatever skill I needed to know next to remain in play.
I would conclude that the OP is right only if the IT industry itself stops being such a fast-moving, almost COVID variant-like industry disruptor, demanding brand new, rare skills or programmers decide to exit the tech skills arms race. I think I can go for another ten years at least myself.
My first employer, Electronic Data Systems (EDS) had a repayment agreement which stipulated that any employee accepted into the Systems Engineering Development (SED) program would be required to fulfill three more years of employment following successful graduation from the program or be required to pay for the cost of the training. Each year of employment fulfilled after graduation reduced what the employee owed until the last year satisfied the obligation. I forget what the amount was but remember that they changed the terms of this to make "time served" retroactive to the first day of employment.
I created a password management utility using shelve and the rsa library for a company that is still using it after 15 years. Though today the company is transitioning to Hashicorp Vault, the utility will still serve as an interface to Vault.
When I worked at Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in the 90s, I was doing development on applications that both produced and ingested EDI documents based on a custom EDI standard General Motors imposed on both internal and external suppliers for Shipping Schedule (862) and Planning Schedule with Release Capability (830) documents. GM was able to persuade many EDI software companies to include the GM specs in EDI software releases.
I really loved this episode.
Especially when someone pointed out the fallacy of believing north = up and south = down, which is that way only because we live in a world where most map projections on a wall show north as up and south as down.
It doesn't look like that at all from outer space.
The Mercator projection map was the map I was most exposed to in school and was on my bedroom wall at home when I was going to Elementary school. Later on when I went to college, I saw the Peters Projection map (and had that on the wall above my desk in my apartment. This map rebooted my brain in that it showed a more truthful representation of how large an area was in relation to other areas.
I do happen to think that the prevalence and persistence of the Mercator projection's use with its grossly distorted representations of northern hemisphere land regions encouraged distorted thinking about geopolitics. That the since the northern continents and their countries appear larger than southern countries, this also encouraged the mistaken belief that the north was more important than the south.
Has it really though? Or is it more the case that most modern humans are being flooded with unprecedented loads of data about the world and have not been sufficiently educated in systems thinking to recognize the world as interlocking systems?
The opening bit in the article about the shipping container captain receiving electronic orders to slow the ship's speed doesn't necessarily show our willingness to accept orders without question from an algorithm. But it does reveal a lot about how the author may not quite understand how shipping schedules work, or grasp how things like overcrowded shipping ports, available dock personnel and functioning equipment may result in congestion that delays or even prevents unloading product from the ship.
It seems more likely that because information technology has become so ubiquitous in our lives, modern humans have become more detached from the world it, unable to recognize the real-world objects and processes it represents.