WFMU: Techtonic with Mark Hurst: Playlist from January 4, 2021

Listener comments!
	6:00pm ultradamno: Mark! Techtaphone Operators!
	6:01pm Rand al'Thor: Hello, everyone!
	🤖 6:01pm Handy Haversack: Mark and all the Techyon Drives! Happy New Year and day and evening and show! Where have I been? It feels like it's been a long time? I dunno. Glad to be here. As an office person, I am very interested in how capital tried to retrench and use pandemic habits to further precariatize and anomize workers and take away the already ragged solidarity among them. Hey, ultradamno!
	6:01pm P-90: Happy New Year!
	6:02pm Constance De Witt: Hi Mark! Happy New Year, looking forward your show, as usual.
	6:02pm listener james from westwood: Good 2021, Mark and all!
	6:02pm ultradamno: Hiya Handy!
	🤖 6:02pm Webhamster Henry: Hi Mark! As a longtime remote worker, I'm ready to be contentious.
	6:03pm TDK60: Hello Mark. It's the Future, they say.
	🤖 6:03pm Webhamster Henry: Hey! 1976 used to be far in the future.
	🤖 6:04pm tim from champaign (now washington): Hey Mark and Gin and Techtonics!
	6:04pm space_cadet: long time listener, new time chatter - checking in! looking forward to the show.
	🤖 6:04pm Handy Haversack: Greetings, space_cadet!
	🤖 6:04pm DjLorraine: Present
	6:06pm Constance De Witt: I have to say, I was relieved that Slack was down today for a few hours...
	🤖 6:06pm tim from champaign (now washington): Luddite question....what is Slack?
	🤖 6:06pm Webhamster Henry: The Church of the Sub-Genius could have helped with that slack problem.
	6:06pm space_cadet: It's a chat service marketed towards buisness - it's supposed to eliminate emails
	6:07pm TDK60: I think it's when you spend too much time around the water cooler, Tim.
	🤖 6:07pm PaulRobeson1920: I remember my parents unplugged the computer when 1999 turned to 2000. They taped a piece of paper on the monitor that read “do not plug in!” lol
	6:07pm ultradamno: @Tim I think it's a fancy trouser app
	6:08pm P-90: “free from the shackles of Slack...”
	🤖 6:08pm tim from champaign (now washington): I could use that app, ultra!
	6:09pm P-90: The Subgenius clergy should have sued them for using that name...
	6:09pm Constance De Witt: People constantly messaging on Slack, and few people use the "thread" or "pin" functions. A pet peeve of mine... so much information gets lost, even if it is 'archived'.
	🤖 6:10pm Webhamster Henry: Python is named after Monty Python, and of course SPAM comes from them as well.
	🤖 6:10pm Handy Haversack: tim, as Mark's saying, but it's a project-management system, basically, but styled like a social media feed (though with the added Damocles sword of your job depending on it) and using, as best I can tell, the same habit-forming and -rewarding feedback systems that things like Facebook use, and for much the same purpose -- to get businesses and their employees to route as much data through it as possible for its own purposes. I don't have to use it and recently tried very hard to defeat an effort to get us to try it. In abeyance, at least for now.
	🤖 6:11pm Webhamster Henry: Before Slack, we used AOL's messaging.
	6:11pm space_cadet: @Constance De Witt - agreed, a lot of information gets lost in the weeds via the "slackening" of project coordination
	🤖 6:11pm Handy Haversack: Jeez, I miss my colleagues! And my commute! And putting wear and tear on a space other than my tiny apartment, where there's room for decent tech and where the risk to that tech is borne by my employer and not me personally.
	6:12pm wenzo llc.: "Sorry To Bother You"!! great... slightly disturbing
	🤖 6:12pm Webhamster Henry: I've also run my own server with the desiccated open sourced husk of Google Wave for nefarious robot assisted messaging.
	🤖 6:12pm tim from champaign (now washington): After Hours isn't about working in the office but I do enjoy the beginning and end of that movie which shows the bleak doldrums of the office.
	🤖 6:13pm Handy Haversack: I guess The Pale King, though it's unfinished and unrealized.
	🤖 6:13pm Webhamster Henry: I was going to mention After Hours too!
	6:13pm DocBlueDog: No, it’s not okay because if they make me, if they, if they take my stapler then I’ll have to, I’ll set the building on fire…
	🤖 6:14pm Webhamster Henry: I had offices that I never went to. Even with an Aeron Chair.
	6:14pm Constance De Witt: Sadly, I prefer Slack + working remotely than office + sitting in front of HR.
	6:14pm listener james from westwood: For me, Office Space nailed it. The UK Office made me angry and depressed when I was shown it.
	6:15pm David in London: Hello Technoid groovers! Happy new year Mark.
	6:15pm Mark Hurst: Hi all, thanks for joining!
	6:15pm Mark Hurst: @Handy welcome back! nice to see you on the chat again.
	6:15pm ultradamno: I don't know Office Space that well, but I think I've seen a movie called Office Lust. Probably not much in common.
	🤖 6:15pm PaulRobeson1920: But but but my stapler
	🤖 6:16pm Handy Haversack: Yeah, the deal was the office bore the risk and expense. It's nefarious to shift that back to the worker. I live in a glorified hallway with great towers of books blocking the light and threatening to topple and crush us -- there's no room for a nice double monitor and a standing desk! Thanks, Mark! I realized I was in Jersey City during the show last week last year -- which feels like forever ago already!
	🤖 6:16pm PaulRobeson1920: They moved my desk 4 times this year and i said i’ll quit and i told so and so that my stapler...
	6:16pm listener james from westwood: My last full-time office job ended in 2008 when I was caught by the fourth wave of layoffs in my 18 months there. The office looked like a neutron bomb test by that point. Half empty and sad. The HR Dept had only one setting: Treat employees like toddlers and facilitate the horseshit decisions of the VC firm that owned the company. Went freelance the night I got laid off. 12 years later and I've only been in an office if the client wanted me to proofread on paper there b/c secrecy or whatnot.
	6:17pm P-90: Good ol’ Bro Dom
	6:17pm Dean: Liming has also written a work of literary criticism/history, What a Library Means to a Woman: Edith Wharton and the Will to Collect Books. This is consonant with her appreciation of the Xerox monk in the new scriptorium.
	6:17pm listener james from westwood: I do miss riding the train to NYC, though, for my second FT office job. Nothing like that skyline and the pulse running thru those streets.
	6:17pm P-90: Classic ad
	6:17pm WR: About 1.5 years before the pandemic my company moved to new office and we had a year of wework post old office before new office was ready. WEWORK WIFI sucked so I started working from home. Then I was surprised that at the new office I no longer had an assigned desk. As a result I have worked from home since July 2018. The only thing I miss about the office is their printer copier scanner and those times when I could corner a superior to shortcut problem solving. And the old office had better and more network connections that I could have at home. Unfortunately that changed in the new office. Main thing I've had to learn is taking care of tedious paperwork. If office has resources I am good with it.
	6:18pm Feff Cacho: My lineage is far from noble.
	🤖 6:18pm PaulRobeson1920: Thank gooodness for those monks preserving a glimpse of the ancient worlds written material. We have less then 1% of 1% of all the written material from the ancient world! For example Epictetus and his cohorts.
	🤖 6:18pm Handy Haversack: (Mark, the office printers are also MUCH more convenient for printing out modules on 17 X 11 paper, bookleted and double-sided ...)
	6:20pm TimBk: I'll take a cubicle over an open floor plan anyday. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2019/06/30/open-plan-work-spaces-lower-productivity-employee-morale/?sh=4043acef61cd
	6:21pm ultradamno: Kafka is king of office lit en.wikipedia.org...
	🤖 6:21pm PaulRobeson1920: Kafka worked at an insurance office or somthing right?
	6:21pm Mark Hurst: It's true, a good shared copier is hard to replicate (so to speak) in a home environment
	6:21pm ultradamno: Jinx!
	🤖 6:22pm Handy Haversack: ultradamno, it's true -- and Wallace was a huge appreciator.
	6:22pm David in London: You know...for kids!
	6:22pm Mark Hurst: @ultra thanks, had never heard of Kafka's office writings
	🤖 6:23pm Handy Haversack: Glengarry Glen Ross, of course ...
	6:23pm WR: There are far far more office parks than urban tall buildings with white collar workers. Also call centers (those still in the USA) are in office park campuses in semi-rural locations.
	🤖 6:24pm Handy Haversack: And DFW's story "The Suffering Channel" is a directly 9/11-related workplace tale, and it's devastating.
	🤖 6:24pm Webhamster Henry: And How To Succeed InBusiness Without Really Trying!
	6:25pm P-90: Kafka is THE office guy.
	🤖 6:25pm Webhamster Henry: BRAZIL's fantastic office scenes are oddly accurate.
	🤖 6:25pm Bas NL: Happy 2021 Mark, all!
	6:26pm Mark Hurst: @Bas welcome! Happy new year.
	🤖 6:26pm tim from champaign (now washington): Hudsucker Proxy is a god one!
	6:26pm P-90: Don Marguis is the go-to for the lowdown on the home office (after hours.)
	🤖 6:27pm tim from champaign (now washington): @Webmaster Henry - I was just thinking about Brazil too.
	6:27pm Feff Cacho: All I needed to know about offices I learned from Bartleby, the Scrivener.
	6:27pm Dean: Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" Not entirely tangential, "Desk Set"
	6:27pm phlipsmith: Being John Malkovich for office surrealism, the weird half floor.
	🤖 6:27pm Webhamster Henry: I actually disassembled my cubicle (aka veal pen) once, but a later version of it was supporting my desk (when I had a desk).
	🤖 6:28pm Webhamster Henry: Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich!
	🤖 6:28pm Handy Haversack: The "open" office were such an obvious panopticon con (panoptiCON?). Knowing you are always observed, you do as your masters demand unconsciously.
	6:29pm P-90: Billy Wilder’s The Apartment a fascinating document of mid-century American corporate office politics and social studies.
	🤖 6:29pm tim from champaign (now washington): @Dean - I'd say Desk Set fits into the overall theme of Techtonic. Maybe not as much champagne on Techtonic though.
	6:29pm Dean: Agreed, @tim.
	6:29pm ultradamno: Somewhat off topic, I was reminded of this show while watching Netflix's 2020 special in which Kumail Nanjiani plays an Elon Musk like evil tech billionaire who watches Greta Thunberg speak and is so moved he builds a survival bunker in a mountain "don't people call you selfish" "I don't know, the walls are soundproof"
	6:29pm ignatatus666: Chiming in Swimming with Sharks Horrible Bosses Office Space And I think if I have the name right The langoleers? I worked inTaxi dispatch offices for many years and that my fellow listeners is not for the typical office workers. Not for the faint of heart Happy new Point of reference to all
	6:31pm P-90: No one mentioned Mad Men yet?
	6:31pm ultradamno: The Apartment is on the very shortlist of Wilder masterpieces, for sure. Just under Sunset Blvd. for me
	🤖 6:31pm Webhamster Henry: Open Plan and Standing Desks are things I kind of escape by working at home.
	6:31pm uptowner: Actually - as if it acutely aware of the irony and insidiousness of the "Don't Be Evil" slogan - Google actually dropped it from it's official internal mission statement, a few years ago
	6:32pm ultradamno: Fred MacMurray playing a predatory sleaze and killing it.
	🤖 6:32pm Webhamster Henry: I couldn't for the life of me figure out who'd have time for those foosball tables at the office.
	6:32pm David Shortell: I recall the 1933 film "Baby Face" where Barbara Stanwyck seduces her way to the top of a skyscraper heirarchy, meeting office worker John Wayne on the way.
	6:32pm Greg from ZONE 5: Evening, Mark & all!
	6:32pm Martinibomb: Hi Mark! And fellow listeners
	6:33pm Constance De Witt: Finance and marketing have time for foosball, Henry...
	6:33pm Dean: Related, Cornelia Visman's Files.
	6:33pm Mark Hurst: @Greg hi! Thanks for joining!
	6:33pm ignatatus666: My reference to langoleers is incorrect It was a movie where people’s heads explode for no reason.
	6:33pm Mark Hurst: @Martinibomb welcome!
	6:34pm ultradamno: Lars Von Trier's The Boss Of It All is an interesting play on the undercover boss concept.
	🤖 6:34pm Webhamster Henry: Red Headed Woman: sleeping your way to the top! Good ol' pre-code movies! en.wikipedia.org...
	6:34pm Dean: Visman, per the publisher of the English translation: "Files are not simply administrative tools; they mediate and process legal systems. The genealogy of the law described in Vismann's Files ranges from the work of the Roman magistrates to the concern over one's own file, as expressed in the context of the files kept by the East German State Security. The book concludes with a look at the computer architecture in which all the stacks, files, and registers that had already created order in medieval and early modern administrations make their reappearance."
	🤖 6:34pm Bas NL: I work best when the rest is in the coffee corner.
	6:34pm Glenn: What do you think is going to happen with residential ISP pricing now if a large portion of the market starts working from home? 1Gbs FIOS for residential is $79 1GBs for business is $1000+ /mo
	6:35pm uptowner: @WMHenry - that's precisely the point of the foosball tables - to remind you of the fact that you'll never actually have any "free" time to use them. Any more than you'll be able to take advantage of that "unlimited vacation" many of these companies like to offer (without the slightest hint of irony)
	6:35pm Feff Cacho: And can’t forget Joe Versus the Volcano. Office life gave Tom Hanks a brain cloud.
	6:36pm David in London: Does American Psycho count as an office movie? Well, Christian Bale with an axe is my kind of workplace anyway.
	6:36pm Ike: A little less dryness and a few more plants sounds like a great concept for an office space.
	6:37pm P-90: Iconic modern office image begins at about 1:30 in this clip from The Crowd (1927): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-9rcO0eFaA
	6:37pm Dean: Yeah, but Disney delivered the Tiki Room way before Rainforest Cafe.
	🤖 6:37pm Webhamster Henry: My sister worked at Bloomberg, they had open salad bar all day and people walking around distributing candy.
	6:37pm listener james from westwood: Rainforest Café was forced to close after an irate chef braised a toucan.
	6:37pm Kpx: @Webhamsterhenry: did you take your cue from the movie office space when Peter gibbons dismantled his cubicle.
	6:38pm TDK60: I worked in a music club "office" once. Almost off-topic to mention.
	🤖 6:38pm Webhamster Henry: @Kpx Office Space: 1999. Me: 1985 or so.
	6:41pm Dean: Not ironic: "Whether displaying a corporate art collection in the workplace, providing free museum access to employees and their families, or sponsoring a gallery event in the community, investments in the arts can work to assuage some of the concerns keeping CEOs up at night."--https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Art-Is-Good-for-Business
	6:41pm ultradamno: Well, those mists sound like a Terry Gilliam concept, maybe for the upper floors in Brazil
	6:42pm anon Amazon subsidiary employee: that sounds very Amazon, at least at our subsidiary in terms of wacky ideas that somebody brainstormed and then abandoned, they’re always coming up w/these new concepts and then bailing on em
	🤖 6:42pm Webhamster Henry: @Dean Bloomberg HQ has art sprinkled around it as well. Because: Bloomberg.
	🤖 6:42pm Handy Haversack: Really great interview! Thanks, Mark and Sheila.
	6:42pm P-90: I was wondering how far we’d get into the first Techtonic of the new year before getting bummed out...
	6:42pm Dean: I guess Bloomberg's C-Suite has trouble sleeping?
	6:42pm wenzo llc.: they should make a sequel to office space... set in space
	6:42pm David in London: Tati’s Playtime gives a wry overview of some classic 60s office life too.
	🤖 6:43pm Webhamster Henry: There so much more to be said about offices, so I guess I'll have to take a look at her book.
	6:44pm Dean: I always admired the pun of Back Orifice.
	6:45pm JJ NY-SC: Working Girl
	6:45pm wenzo llc.: Brazil... that's about an office... sort of...
	6:45pm David in London: After Hours had to settle with Joe Frank for ‘similarities’, didn’t it?
	6:45pm P-90: Anyone mention Mike Nichols’ Working Girl?
	6:45pm kora: Working Girl
	6:45pm JJ NY-SC: Working Girl-The movie that is
	6:45pm Jeff Moore: I hate hate hate the open plan office. It's basically impossible to concentrate on anything.
	🤖 6:46pm Webhamster Henry: 9 to 5!
	6:46pm Carmichael: Clock Watchers.
	6:46pm Aitch: As per W Henry, Malcovich.
	6:46pm kpx: @Webhamsterhenry: so when you saw that did you ever suspect that someone seen you do that and passed it on down the line until eventually it got to the writer of office space.
	🤖 6:46pm Handy Haversack: "Would you go to LUNCH, George?!"
	6:46pm Carmichael: Coffee is for closers!!
	🤖 6:46pm PaulRobeson1920: @Handy @6:01 Solidarity would imply being aware of participating in something larger than yourself. The working poor and un-educated can never never constitute “a class”, let alone a revolutionary class.
	6:47pm The Butterman: Joe vs. the Volcano! I know he can get the job, but can he DO the job?
	6:47pm ultradamno: If The Office makes you angry and depressed, don't watch Extras, Gervais pushes the nyah-nyahs at the pathetic to the point of being insufferable.
	6:47pm P-90: Yes @ David in London, the After Hours script was largely stolen from Joe Frank (the director and producers didn’t know until later).
	6:47pm Carmichael: Office Space.
	6:47pm listener james from westwood: @Mark: The guy who intro'd me to the UK Office had never worked a real job, just gofer BS for his .001%'er parents. He had literally no idea how mordant and accurate the show was about toxic jerks in middle management. By contrast, I proofread Jenna Fischer's "how to get into acting"/autobio and she made the Office US set sound much kinder than the UK show. Also she was an utter dear to read and possibly learn from.
	6:47pm Alison Porchnik: The Apartment!
	6:48pm grtyvr: Way Downtown is a Gary Burns film about living indoors.
	6:48pm Dean: Do we know that Stevens didn't enjoy his insurance work? Ives was in the same line.
	6:48pm listener james from westwood: @ultradamno: I fucking hate Gervais, so it saves me a lot of decisions on his projects.
	🤖 6:48pm Webhamster Henry: @kpx I think dismantling veal pens is one's first instinct about them. There are people who fear the consequences of that; I was not one of them. And I had an Allen wrench and knew how to use it.
	6:49pm ultradamno: Yeah, he's awful
	6:49pm wenzo llc.: what about Terry Gilliam's "The Crimson Permanent Assurance" from the meaning of life... that's about an office... technically...
	6:49pm Jeff Moore: The US version of The Office waters the one true original's cringe into insipidity - in common with US adaptations of British shows in general.
	6:49pm Morgan: Visioneers (2008)
	6:49pm David in London: A last shout out for ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’. US viewers might not know that one.
	6:49pm Carmichael: I have a meeting with The Bobs.
	6:50pm dano59: Boccaccio '70
	🤖 6:50pm tim from champaign (now washington): Joe Versus The Volcano! That's a great one.
	🤖 6:50pm Webhamster Henry: How To Get AHead in Advertising.
	6:50pm engineer mike: Working girl
	6:50pm ignatatus666: I thought about Joe and the Volcano as well
	🤖 6:50pm Michael in Montclair: Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, specifically when Harold deals with his superiors from his office job.
	6:51pm dano59: O Lucky Man! A Christmas Carol Fifth Avenue Girl w/ Ginger Rogers
	6:51pm ignatatus666: @Morgan yes!!! That’s the name I was looking for.
	6:51pm ultradamno: He's a bank executive in American Psycho, I don't recall how much time he's in an office environment though.
	6:52pm Martinibomb: O Lucky man is awesome! good choice
	🤖 6:53pm Webhamster Henry: Also A Shock to the System
	6:53pm TimBk: The apartment. Great xmas part scene.
	6:54pm Matt: How to Train Your Rabbit, w/ Orson Wells and the Tom Smothers, directed by Brian DePalma.
	🤖 6:55pm Webhamster Henry: I was not an Office person, but I binge-watched Parks & Rec. Also Halt & Catch Fire.
	6:55pm Juli: I am totally a person who needs an office for work
	6:55pm P-90: MUST mention Ermanno Olmi’s brilliant 1961 Italian neorealist movie “Il Posto”, about a young Italian man finding his first job in the postwar corporate world.
	6:56pm Juli: And I need like "a reading room"
	6:56pm ultradamno: Parks & Rec started pretty close to The Office for the first couple of seasons, but really tosses it off and comes into it's own pretty decisively after that. I liked Halt a lot.
	🤖 6:56pm tim from champaign (now washington): Thanks, Mark! Happy new year!
	6:57pm David in London: Thanks Mark.
	6:57pm P-90: Does Ken interview Mark, or does Mark interview Ken?
	6:57pm TDK60: See ya Mark.
	6:57pm Old Dave: A title clerk asked me to FAX her a form she'd emailed me last week. So that she'd have my signature on a page she wants to mail my bank. Who has a 1980's FAX machine was my question for her. She couldn't accept my signing of the emailed page. Then emailing it back... My image of this woman in her office cube with low-tech persisting is sad.
	6:58pm ultradamno: What annoyed me about US The Office is it really kicked off the non-specific documentary interview device.
	🤖 6:58pm PaulRobeson1920: Thanks Mark and skeltons and Ya’ll! Happpy New Years!! Peace and LoVe always!
	6:58pm listener james from westwood: Thanks, Mark!
	🤖 6:58pm Bas NL: Thanks Mark!
	🤖 6:58pm Handy Haversack: Thanks again, Mark! Glad to be here this week! I love this recording!
	6:59pm Mark Hurst: Thanks, everyone! Great comments this evening (and a lot of movie viewing on the list now).
	🤖 6:59pm Webhamster Henry: Glad you're ending this show Whistling While you Work!
	🤖 6:59pm Webhamster Henry: [It's a WFMU classic!]
	6:59pm kpx: once upon a Time eons ago I had a part-time job helping to install shelves in an office building on the picatinny arsenal base. talk about a huge waste taxpayers money, more than half of the people weren't in their cubicles. others were just asleep, some of them were just goofing around doing other things, and this one joker just went around 2 cubicle to cubicle BS'sing and then he looked at his watch at 10:30 I said it was time to go to lunch didn't come back until 2:30.
	7:08pm ignatatus666: Welcome back to prime time Haven’t heard your show in quite some time
	7:09pm WR: Thank you Mark and all playlist contributors.
	7:09pm ignatatus666: Welcome back Haven’t heard your show in quite some time
	7:12pm Richard Kurdach: Still some of the plain old crap occurs in an office....everyone knows your business...then theres alliances....the attack of the bday cakes....abusive managers-directors-vice presidents etc....softball games.....
	7:13pm ignatatus666: The Gods must be crazy remix
	7:45pm ignatatus666: I miss hearing the theme music for this show

Techtonic with Mark Hurst: Playlist from January 4, 2021

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Conversations with creators and thinkers who are charting the way forward in a tech-saturated society. In our shift to a digital future, we need alternatives to Big Tech. Homepage: techtonic.fm

Also available as an MP3 podcast. More info at our Podcast Central page.

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Upcoming events:

Mon. Dec 23rd, 6pm - 7pm: Don Fleming guest hosts Techtonic

January 4, 2021: The past and future of the office with Sheila Liming, author of "Office"

Listen to this show: Pop-up listen Pop-up player!

Tonight: Sheila Liming, author, "Office"

Links:

• Office, by Sheila Liming

• Twitter: @seeshespeak

• Web: sheilaliming.com and Champlain College

• Post by Aral Balkan, replying to Google's Alex Hanna: "Congratulations on the union. How you reconcile your position as 'Ethical #AI' at a company whose business model is to profile us and use that intimate insight to manipulate us for profit? How's your presence any different to that of a doctor in a cigarette ad for Big Tobacco?"

• Thread by recent guest Cory Doctorow: "There are lots of problems with ad-tech:
* being spied on all the time means that the people of the 21st century are less able to be their authentic selves;
* any data that is collected and retained will eventually breach, creating untold harms;
* data-collection enables for discriminatory business practices ("digital redlining");
* the huge, tangled hairball of adtech companies siphons lots (maybe even most) of the money that should go creators and media orgs; and
* anti-adblock demands browsers and devices that thwart their owners' wishes, a capability that can be exploited for even more nefarious purposes;
That's all terrible, but it's also IRONIC, since it appears that, in addition to everything else, ad-tech is a fraud, a bezzle. . . .

• How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually (by Max Read in New York magazine, Dec 26, 2018): "The metrics are fake."

- - -

PAST EPISODES: techtonic.fm lists recent Techtonic interviews and Little Slice of Tech Pie segments.

PODCAST: Subscribe to the Techtonic podcast

Artist	Track	Album	Approx. start time
The past and future of the office - with Sheila Liming, author of "Office"
Tomaš Dvořák	Game Boy Tune "Game Boy Tune" by "Tomaš Dvořák"
	Mark's intro "Mark's intro"
	Interview with Sheila Liming "Interview with Sheila Liming"		0:09:33 (Pop-up)
	Mark's comments "Mark's comments"		0:40:02 (Pop-up)
	Work Song from Postal Employees in Ghana	James Koetting / Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's Peoples	0:56:07 (Pop-up)

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Listener comments!
	6:00pm ultradamno: Mark! Techtaphone Operators!
	6:01pm Rand al'Thor: Hello, everyone!
	🤖 6:01pm Handy Haversack: Mark and all the Techyon Drives! Happy New Year and day and evening and show! Where have I been? It feels like it's been a long time? I dunno. Glad to be here. As an office person, I am very interested in how capital tried to retrench and use pandemic habits to further precariatize and anomize workers and take away the already ragged solidarity among them. Hey, ultradamno!
	6:01pm P-90: Happy New Year!
	6:02pm Constance De Witt: Hi Mark! Happy New Year, looking forward your show, as usual.
	6:02pm listener james from westwood: Good 2021, Mark and all!
	6:02pm ultradamno: Hiya Handy!
	🤖 6:02pm Webhamster Henry: Hi Mark! As a longtime remote worker, I'm ready to be contentious.
	6:03pm TDK60: Hello Mark. It's the Future, they say.
	🤖 6:03pm Webhamster Henry: Hey! 1976 used to be far in the future.
	🤖 6:04pm tim from champaign (now washington): Hey Mark and Gin and Techtonics!
	6:04pm space_cadet: long time listener, new time chatter - checking in! looking forward to the show.
	🤖 6:04pm Handy Haversack: Greetings, space_cadet!
	🤖 6:04pm DjLorraine: Present
	6:06pm Constance De Witt: I have to say, I was relieved that Slack was down today for a few hours...
	🤖 6:06pm tim from champaign (now washington): Luddite question....what is Slack?
	🤖 6:06pm Webhamster Henry: The Church of the Sub-Genius could have helped with that slack problem.
	6:06pm space_cadet: It's a chat service marketed towards buisness - it's supposed to eliminate emails
	6:07pm TDK60: I think it's when you spend too much time around the water cooler, Tim.
	🤖 6:07pm PaulRobeson1920: I remember my parents unplugged the computer when 1999 turned to 2000. They taped a piece of paper on the monitor that read “do not plug in!” lol
	6:07pm ultradamno: @Tim I think it's a fancy trouser app
	6:08pm P-90: “free from the shackles of Slack...”
	🤖 6:08pm tim from champaign (now washington): I could use that app, ultra!
	6:09pm P-90: The Subgenius clergy should have sued them for using that name...
	6:09pm Constance De Witt: People constantly messaging on Slack, and few people use the "thread" or "pin" functions. A pet peeve of mine... so much information gets lost, even if it is 'archived'.
	🤖 6:10pm Webhamster Henry: Python is named after Monty Python, and of course SPAM comes from them as well.
	🤖 6:10pm Handy Haversack: tim, as Mark's saying, but it's a project-management system, basically, but styled like a social media feed (though with the added Damocles sword of your job depending on it) and using, as best I can tell, the same habit-forming and -rewarding feedback systems that things like Facebook use, and for much the same purpose -- to get businesses and their employees to route as much data through it as possible for its own purposes. I don't have to use it and recently tried very hard to defeat an effort to get us to try it. In abeyance, at least for now.
	🤖 6:11pm Webhamster Henry: Before Slack, we used AOL's messaging.
	6:11pm space_cadet: @Constance De Witt - agreed, a lot of information gets lost in the weeds via the "slackening" of project coordination
	🤖 6:11pm Handy Haversack: Jeez, I miss my colleagues! And my commute! And putting wear and tear on a space other than my tiny apartment, where there's room for decent tech and where the risk to that tech is borne by my employer and not me personally.
	6:12pm wenzo llc.: "Sorry To Bother You"!! great... slightly disturbing
	🤖 6:12pm Webhamster Henry: I've also run my own server with the desiccated open sourced husk of Google Wave for nefarious robot assisted messaging.
	🤖 6:12pm tim from champaign (now washington): After Hours isn't about working in the office but I do enjoy the beginning and end of that movie which shows the bleak doldrums of the office.
	🤖 6:13pm Handy Haversack: I guess The Pale King, though it's unfinished and unrealized.
	🤖 6:13pm Webhamster Henry: I was going to mention After Hours too!
	6:13pm DocBlueDog: No, it’s not okay because if they make me, if they, if they take my stapler then I’ll have to, I’ll set the building on fire…
	🤖 6:14pm Webhamster Henry: I had offices that I never went to. Even with an Aeron Chair.
	6:14pm Constance De Witt: Sadly, I prefer Slack + working remotely than office + sitting in front of HR.
	6:14pm listener james from westwood: For me, Office Space nailed it. The UK Office made me angry and depressed when I was shown it.
	6:15pm David in London: Hello Technoid groovers! Happy new year Mark.
	6:15pm Mark Hurst: Hi all, thanks for joining!
	6:15pm Mark Hurst: @Handy welcome back! nice to see you on the chat again.
	6:15pm ultradamno: I don't know Office Space that well, but I think I've seen a movie called Office Lust. Probably not much in common.
	🤖 6:15pm PaulRobeson1920: But but but my stapler
	🤖 6:16pm Handy Haversack: Yeah, the deal was the office bore the risk and expense. It's nefarious to shift that back to the worker. I live in a glorified hallway with great towers of books blocking the light and threatening to topple and crush us -- there's no room for a nice double monitor and a standing desk! Thanks, Mark! I realized I was in Jersey City during the show last week last year -- which feels like forever ago already!
	🤖 6:16pm PaulRobeson1920: They moved my desk 4 times this year and i said i’ll quit and i told so and so that my stapler...
	6:16pm listener james from westwood: My last full-time office job ended in 2008 when I was caught by the fourth wave of layoffs in my 18 months there. The office looked like a neutron bomb test by that point. Half empty and sad. The HR Dept had only one setting: Treat employees like toddlers and facilitate the horseshit decisions of the VC firm that owned the company. Went freelance the night I got laid off. 12 years later and I've only been in an office if the client wanted me to proofread on paper there b/c secrecy or whatnot.
	6:17pm P-90: Good ol’ Bro Dom
	6:17pm Dean: Liming has also written a work of literary criticism/history, What a Library Means to a Woman: Edith Wharton and the Will to Collect Books. This is consonant with her appreciation of the Xerox monk in the new scriptorium.
	6:17pm listener james from westwood: I do miss riding the train to NYC, though, for my second FT office job. Nothing like that skyline and the pulse running thru those streets.
	6:17pm P-90: Classic ad
	6:17pm WR: About 1.5 years before the pandemic my company moved to new office and we had a year of wework post old office before new office was ready. WEWORK WIFI sucked so I started working from home. Then I was surprised that at the new office I no longer had an assigned desk. As a result I have worked from home since July 2018. The only thing I miss about the office is their printer copier scanner and those times when I could corner a superior to shortcut problem solving. And the old office had better and more network connections that I could have at home. Unfortunately that changed in the new office. Main thing I've had to learn is taking care of tedious paperwork. If office has resources I am good with it.
	6:18pm Feff Cacho: My lineage is far from noble.
	🤖 6:18pm PaulRobeson1920: Thank gooodness for those monks preserving a glimpse of the ancient worlds written material. We have less then 1% of 1% of all the written material from the ancient world! For example Epictetus and his cohorts.
	🤖 6:18pm Handy Haversack: (Mark, the office printers are also MUCH more convenient for printing out modules on 17 X 11 paper, bookleted and double-sided ...)
	6:20pm TimBk: I'll take a cubicle over an open floor plan anyday. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2019/06/30/open-plan-work-spaces-lower-productivity-employee-morale/?sh=4043acef61cd
	6:21pm ultradamno: Kafka is king of office lit en.wikipedia.org...
	🤖 6:21pm PaulRobeson1920: Kafka worked at an insurance office or somthing right?
	6:21pm Mark Hurst: It's true, a good shared copier is hard to replicate (so to speak) in a home environment
	6:21pm ultradamno: Jinx!
	🤖 6:22pm Handy Haversack: ultradamno, it's true -- and Wallace was a huge appreciator.
	6:22pm David in London: You know...for kids!
	6:22pm Mark Hurst: @ultra thanks, had never heard of Kafka's office writings
	🤖 6:23pm Handy Haversack: Glengarry Glen Ross, of course ...
	6:23pm WR: There are far far more office parks than urban tall buildings with white collar workers. Also call centers (those still in the USA) are in office park campuses in semi-rural locations.
	🤖 6:24pm Handy Haversack: And DFW's story "The Suffering Channel" is a directly 9/11-related workplace tale, and it's devastating.
	🤖 6:24pm Webhamster Henry: And How To Succeed InBusiness Without Really Trying!
	6:25pm P-90: Kafka is THE office guy.
	🤖 6:25pm Webhamster Henry: BRAZIL's fantastic office scenes are oddly accurate.
	🤖 6:25pm Bas NL: Happy 2021 Mark, all!
	6:26pm Mark Hurst: @Bas welcome! Happy new year.
	🤖 6:26pm tim from champaign (now washington): Hudsucker Proxy is a god one!
	6:26pm P-90: Don Marguis is the go-to for the lowdown on the home office (after hours.)
	🤖 6:27pm tim from champaign (now washington): @Webmaster Henry - I was just thinking about Brazil too.
	6:27pm Feff Cacho: All I needed to know about offices I learned from Bartleby, the Scrivener.
	6:27pm Dean: Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" Not entirely tangential, "Desk Set"
	6:27pm phlipsmith: Being John Malkovich for office surrealism, the weird half floor.
	🤖 6:27pm Webhamster Henry: I actually disassembled my cubicle (aka veal pen) once, but a later version of it was supporting my desk (when I had a desk).
	🤖 6:28pm Webhamster Henry: Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich!
	🤖 6:28pm Handy Haversack: The "open" office were such an obvious panopticon con (panoptiCON?). Knowing you are always observed, you do as your masters demand unconsciously.
	6:29pm P-90: Billy Wilder’s The Apartment a fascinating document of mid-century American corporate office politics and social studies.
	🤖 6:29pm tim from champaign (now washington): @Dean - I'd say Desk Set fits into the overall theme of Techtonic. Maybe not as much champagne on Techtonic though.
	6:29pm Dean: Agreed, @tim.
	6:29pm ultradamno: Somewhat off topic, I was reminded of this show while watching Netflix's 2020 special in which Kumail Nanjiani plays an Elon Musk like evil tech billionaire who watches Greta Thunberg speak and is so moved he builds a survival bunker in a mountain "don't people call you selfish" "I don't know, the walls are soundproof"
	6:29pm ignatatus666: Chiming in Swimming with Sharks Horrible Bosses Office Space And I think if I have the name right The langoleers? I worked inTaxi dispatch offices for many years and that my fellow listeners is not for the typical office workers. Not for the faint of heart Happy new Point of reference to all
	6:31pm P-90: No one mentioned Mad Men yet?
	6:31pm ultradamno: The Apartment is on the very shortlist of Wilder masterpieces, for sure. Just under Sunset Blvd. for me
	🤖 6:31pm Webhamster Henry: Open Plan and Standing Desks are things I kind of escape by working at home.
	6:31pm uptowner: Actually - as if it acutely aware of the irony and insidiousness of the "Don't Be Evil" slogan - Google actually dropped it from it's official internal mission statement, a few years ago
	6:32pm ultradamno: Fred MacMurray playing a predatory sleaze and killing it.
	🤖 6:32pm Webhamster Henry: I couldn't for the life of me figure out who'd have time for those foosball tables at the office.
	6:32pm David Shortell: I recall the 1933 film "Baby Face" where Barbara Stanwyck seduces her way to the top of a skyscraper heirarchy, meeting office worker John Wayne on the way.
	6:32pm Greg from ZONE 5: Evening, Mark & all!
	6:32pm Martinibomb: Hi Mark! And fellow listeners
	6:33pm Constance De Witt: Finance and marketing have time for foosball, Henry...
	6:33pm Dean: Related, Cornelia Visman's Files.
	6:33pm Mark Hurst: @Greg hi! Thanks for joining!
	6:33pm ignatatus666: My reference to langoleers is incorrect It was a movie where people’s heads explode for no reason.
	6:33pm Mark Hurst: @Martinibomb welcome!
	6:34pm ultradamno: Lars Von Trier's The Boss Of It All is an interesting play on the undercover boss concept.
	🤖 6:34pm Webhamster Henry: Red Headed Woman: sleeping your way to the top! Good ol' pre-code movies! en.wikipedia.org...
	6:34pm Dean: Visman, per the publisher of the English translation: "Files are not simply administrative tools; they mediate and process legal systems. The genealogy of the law described in Vismann's Files ranges from the work of the Roman magistrates to the concern over one's own file, as expressed in the context of the files kept by the East German State Security. The book concludes with a look at the computer architecture in which all the stacks, files, and registers that had already created order in medieval and early modern administrations make their reappearance."
	🤖 6:34pm Bas NL: I work best when the rest is in the coffee corner.
	6:34pm Glenn: What do you think is going to happen with residential ISP pricing now if a large portion of the market starts working from home? 1Gbs FIOS for residential is $79 1GBs for business is $1000+ /mo
	6:35pm uptowner: @WMHenry - that's precisely the point of the foosball tables - to remind you of the fact that you'll never actually have any "free" time to use them. Any more than you'll be able to take advantage of that "unlimited vacation" many of these companies like to offer (without the slightest hint of irony)
	6:35pm Feff Cacho: And can’t forget Joe Versus the Volcano. Office life gave Tom Hanks a brain cloud.
	6:36pm David in London: Does American Psycho count as an office movie? Well, Christian Bale with an axe is my kind of workplace anyway.
	6:36pm Ike: A little less dryness and a few more plants sounds like a great concept for an office space.
	6:37pm P-90: Iconic modern office image begins at about 1:30 in this clip from The Crowd (1927): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-9rcO0eFaA
	6:37pm Dean: Yeah, but Disney delivered the Tiki Room way before Rainforest Cafe.
	🤖 6:37pm Webhamster Henry: My sister worked at Bloomberg, they had open salad bar all day and people walking around distributing candy.
	6:37pm listener james from westwood: Rainforest Café was forced to close after an irate chef braised a toucan.
	6:37pm Kpx: @Webhamsterhenry: did you take your cue from the movie office space when Peter gibbons dismantled his cubicle.
	6:38pm TDK60: I worked in a music club "office" once. Almost off-topic to mention.
	🤖 6:38pm Webhamster Henry: @Kpx Office Space: 1999. Me: 1985 or so.
	6:41pm Dean: Not ironic: "Whether displaying a corporate art collection in the workplace, providing free museum access to employees and their families, or sponsoring a gallery event in the community, investments in the arts can work to assuage some of the concerns keeping CEOs up at night."--https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Art-Is-Good-for-Business
	6:41pm ultradamno: Well, those mists sound like a Terry Gilliam concept, maybe for the upper floors in Brazil
	6:42pm anon Amazon subsidiary employee: that sounds very Amazon, at least at our subsidiary in terms of wacky ideas that somebody brainstormed and then abandoned, they’re always coming up w/these new concepts and then bailing on em
	🤖 6:42pm Webhamster Henry: @Dean Bloomberg HQ has art sprinkled around it as well. Because: Bloomberg.
	🤖 6:42pm Handy Haversack: Really great interview! Thanks, Mark and Sheila.
	6:42pm P-90: I was wondering how far we’d get into the first Techtonic of the new year before getting bummed out...
	6:42pm Dean: I guess Bloomberg's C-Suite has trouble sleeping?
	6:42pm wenzo llc.: they should make a sequel to office space... set in space
	6:42pm David in London: Tati’s Playtime gives a wry overview of some classic 60s office life too.
	🤖 6:43pm Webhamster Henry: There so much more to be said about offices, so I guess I'll have to take a look at her book.
	6:44pm Dean: I always admired the pun of Back Orifice.
	6:45pm JJ NY-SC: Working Girl
	6:45pm wenzo llc.: Brazil... that's about an office... sort of...
	6:45pm David in London: After Hours had to settle with Joe Frank for ‘similarities’, didn’t it?
	6:45pm P-90: Anyone mention Mike Nichols’ Working Girl?
	6:45pm kora: Working Girl
	6:45pm JJ NY-SC: Working Girl-The movie that is
	6:45pm Jeff Moore: I hate hate hate the open plan office. It's basically impossible to concentrate on anything.
	🤖 6:46pm Webhamster Henry: 9 to 5!
	6:46pm Carmichael: Clock Watchers.
	6:46pm Aitch: As per W Henry, Malcovich.
	6:46pm kpx: @Webhamsterhenry: so when you saw that did you ever suspect that someone seen you do that and passed it on down the line until eventually it got to the writer of office space.
	🤖 6:46pm Handy Haversack: "Would you go to LUNCH, George?!"
	6:46pm Carmichael: Coffee is for closers!!
	🤖 6:46pm PaulRobeson1920: @Handy @6:01 Solidarity would imply being aware of participating in something larger than yourself. The working poor and un-educated can never never constitute “a class”, let alone a revolutionary class.
	6:47pm The Butterman: Joe vs. the Volcano! I know he can get the job, but can he DO the job?
	6:47pm ultradamno: If The Office makes you angry and depressed, don't watch Extras, Gervais pushes the nyah-nyahs at the pathetic to the point of being insufferable.
	6:47pm P-90: Yes @ David in London, the After Hours script was largely stolen from Joe Frank (the director and producers didn’t know until later).
	6:47pm Carmichael: Office Space.
	6:47pm listener james from westwood: @Mark: The guy who intro'd me to the UK Office had never worked a real job, just gofer BS for his .001%'er parents. He had literally no idea how mordant and accurate the show was about toxic jerks in middle management. By contrast, I proofread Jenna Fischer's "how to get into acting"/autobio and she made the Office US set sound much kinder than the UK show. Also she was an utter dear to read and possibly learn from.
	6:47pm Alison Porchnik: The Apartment!
	6:48pm grtyvr: Way Downtown is a Gary Burns film about living indoors.
	6:48pm Dean: Do we know that Stevens didn't enjoy his insurance work? Ives was in the same line.
	6:48pm listener james from westwood: @ultradamno: I fucking hate Gervais, so it saves me a lot of decisions on his projects.
	🤖 6:48pm Webhamster Henry: @kpx I think dismantling veal pens is one's first instinct about them. There are people who fear the consequences of that; I was not one of them. And I had an Allen wrench and knew how to use it.
	6:49pm ultradamno: Yeah, he's awful
	6:49pm wenzo llc.: what about Terry Gilliam's "The Crimson Permanent Assurance" from the meaning of life... that's about an office... technically...
	6:49pm Jeff Moore: The US version of The Office waters the one true original's cringe into insipidity - in common with US adaptations of British shows in general.
	6:49pm Morgan: Visioneers (2008)
	6:49pm David in London: A last shout out for ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’. US viewers might not know that one.
	6:49pm Carmichael: I have a meeting with The Bobs.
	6:50pm dano59: Boccaccio '70
	🤖 6:50pm tim from champaign (now washington): Joe Versus The Volcano! That's a great one.
	🤖 6:50pm Webhamster Henry: How To Get AHead in Advertising.
	6:50pm engineer mike: Working girl
	6:50pm ignatatus666: I thought about Joe and the Volcano as well
	🤖 6:50pm Michael in Montclair: Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, specifically when Harold deals with his superiors from his office job.
	6:51pm dano59: O Lucky Man! A Christmas Carol Fifth Avenue Girl w/ Ginger Rogers
	6:51pm ignatatus666: @Morgan yes!!! That’s the name I was looking for.
	6:51pm ultradamno: He's a bank executive in American Psycho, I don't recall how much time he's in an office environment though.
	6:52pm Martinibomb: O Lucky man is awesome! good choice
	🤖 6:53pm Webhamster Henry: Also A Shock to the System
	6:53pm TimBk: The apartment. Great xmas part scene.
	6:54pm Matt: How to Train Your Rabbit, w/ Orson Wells and the Tom Smothers, directed by Brian DePalma.
	🤖 6:55pm Webhamster Henry: I was not an Office person, but I binge-watched Parks & Rec. Also Halt & Catch Fire.
	6:55pm Juli: I am totally a person who needs an office for work
	6:55pm P-90: MUST mention Ermanno Olmi’s brilliant 1961 Italian neorealist movie “Il Posto”, about a young Italian man finding his first job in the postwar corporate world.
	6:56pm Juli: And I need like "a reading room"
	6:56pm ultradamno: Parks & Rec started pretty close to The Office for the first couple of seasons, but really tosses it off and comes into it's own pretty decisively after that. I liked Halt a lot.
	🤖 6:56pm tim from champaign (now washington): Thanks, Mark! Happy new year!
	6:57pm David in London: Thanks Mark.
	6:57pm P-90: Does Ken interview Mark, or does Mark interview Ken?
	6:57pm TDK60: See ya Mark.
	6:57pm Old Dave: A title clerk asked me to FAX her a form she'd emailed me last week. So that she'd have my signature on a page she wants to mail my bank. Who has a 1980's FAX machine was my question for her. She couldn't accept my signing of the emailed page. Then emailing it back... My image of this woman in her office cube with low-tech persisting is sad.
	6:58pm ultradamno: What annoyed me about US The Office is it really kicked off the non-specific documentary interview device.
	🤖 6:58pm PaulRobeson1920: Thanks Mark and skeltons and Ya’ll! Happpy New Years!! Peace and LoVe always!
	6:58pm listener james from westwood: Thanks, Mark!
	🤖 6:58pm Bas NL: Thanks Mark!
	🤖 6:58pm Handy Haversack: Thanks again, Mark! Glad to be here this week! I love this recording!
	6:59pm Mark Hurst: Thanks, everyone! Great comments this evening (and a lot of movie viewing on the list now).
	🤖 6:59pm Webhamster Henry: Glad you're ending this show Whistling While you Work!
	🤖 6:59pm Webhamster Henry: [It's a WFMU classic!]
	6:59pm kpx: once upon a Time eons ago I had a part-time job helping to install shelves in an office building on the picatinny arsenal base. talk about a huge waste taxpayers money, more than half of the people weren't in their cubicles. others were just asleep, some of them were just goofing around doing other things, and this one joker just went around 2 cubicle to cubicle BS'sing and then he looked at his watch at 10:30 I said it was time to go to lunch didn't come back until 2:30.
	7:08pm ignatatus666: Welcome back to prime time Haven’t heard your show in quite some time
	7:09pm WR: Thank you Mark and all playlist contributors.
	7:09pm ignatatus666: Welcome back Haven’t heard your show in quite some time
	7:12pm Richard Kurdach: Still some of the plain old crap occurs in an office....everyone knows your business...then theres alliances....the attack of the bday cakes....abusive managers-directors-vice presidents etc....softball games.....
	7:13pm ignatatus666: The Gods must be crazy remix
	7:45pm ignatatus666: I miss hearing the theme music for this show

Techtonic with Mark Hurst: Playlist from January 4, 2021

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