Slim Virgin wrote:
On 5/30/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Yeah, people who feel it is implausible that a person could hit a button 5-10 times a minute for hours on end with reasonable quality control have apparently not ever had a modern manufacturing job.
I doubt that anyone with a modern manufacturing job would do it without pay, William.
I think Mark Twain said it best:
"If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger- coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign."
The only difference I see 150 years later is that constructing artificial flowers and using treadmills are now also play.
Also consider World of Warcraft. Most people play it for fun; gold farmers play it for money. As far as I can tell it's no more boring than the kind of cleanup that Gracenotes was doing, and he was actually accomplishing something.
William