Building a Human Wall

As Alexandra Harney tells us, there are popular protests against the health situation of workers in manufacturing companies in China. Everyday work is a threat to people's health.

But the symptoms of an unhealthy society uncovers a bigger issue: The Great Economic Wall of China. And not only in China but the Great wall is expands into international waters...

In other words, the social impact of the World Economic Wall System is unethical...

But is there really an alternative?

What is it about this system that is constraining us to change?

Ursula Franklin has an answer: We are prisoners of PRESCRIPTIVE TECHNOLOGY societies.

(Franklin, Ursula. The real world of technology. The Massey Lectures. Toronto: Anansi Press, 2-25. 1990.)

“When work is organized as a sequence of separately executable steps, the control over the work moves to the organizer, the boss or manager. The process itself has to be prescribed with sufficient precision to make each step fit into he preceding and the following steps. Only in that manner can the final product be satisfactory.” (p.16)

  “Prescriptive technologies constitute a major social invention. In political terms, prescriptive technologies are designs or compliance. When working within such designs, a workforce becomes acculturated into a milieu in which external control and internal compliance are seen as normal and necessary. Eventually, there is only one way of doing something. The Chinese could probably not have imagined making bronze in any other manner, just as we can’t imagine cars being manufactured in any other way.” (p.16)

Somehow, this last quote is exactly what Alexandra Harney illustrates in her book. 

Somehow, this is also what Kafka was trying to say in between the lines.

The universal common question between Kafka, Harney and Franklin for me comes to this:

How paradoxical is the building of our contemporary GREAT WALL 

at the same time de-humanizing us?

Conclusion: Any Wall, to be GREAT has to be HUMAN. 

To a certain extent then, I consider that the 2008 Chinese Olympics was an attempt.