Ken Keebler was a character actor and contract player in post war Hollywood, who found regular work narrating industrial films later in his career.
Ken Keebler, from the “Tool for the Job” series: The apprentice auto mechanic is trained not to waste time with the improper technique. For example, the exhaust system on a vehicle that’s been driven in harsh northern climates is likely to be corroded; the fasteners will be seized with rust and unlikely to cooperate with standard hand tools. A well equipped facility will have oxyacetylene torches on hand for just such a scenario.
The line must always go up. Did you miss it?
The tricks that got you in the door might not be the ones you will need to get into the game. Or to escape.
What about a bigger hammer? Will you know when it’s time to wreck something? When it’s time for destructive aggression? Will the LLM respond to your cursing? The “safety training” will try to talk you down or distract you with compliments if it picks up a pattern of agitation in your replies.
The line goes up.
No, not that line! The one you’re drawing with your gaze. What are you looking at?
# stty erase ^?Learning how to properly float the gears in a semi truck without using the clutch requires patience, practice, and experience. In the absence of a driver who has the finesse it demands, components wear faster and the entire system of driver and truck functions less efficiently. And make no mistake, efficiency is the most important package this driver is delivering.
You may be surprised to learn that new drivers are forbidden from using this method while testing for a commercial driver’s license. The more cumbersome “double clutch” technique is required to demonstrate basic competence. More damaging to components, but more trainable. Again, efficient and effective use of resources is our guide. Mastery in one technique is necessary to graduate to the next.
You might drop a gearbox figuring it out. Your first day they’ll hand you the keys to the old red day cab with the weak engine, no air conditioning, and a worrisome odor.
The competent semi tractor-trailer driver must become an integrated part of the whole. At one with the power and danger of 40 tons of steel hurling itself over the pavement, mere inches from disaster at every turn. He brings his own wits to bear against these catastrophic forces with only his arms and legs, pedals and a gear shift. Every second behind the steering wheel calculating 1,000 competing demands on his attention; neurons wired for box scores and pin-up girls. The entire being given over to the union between man and machine.
Nothing is proposed. Participation is demanded.
$ set -o viComputer technicians in today’s operation centers no longer stack punch cards or spool reel-to-real tape. Modern electronic computer terminals provide a comprehensive operator interface detailing the computer system’s vital measurements. All the system output is displayed in stunning phosphorescent light on the operator’s cathode ray screen.
There was a percolator on the desk by the mainframe. A resourceful technician wired it into the power supply for the teletype by the ashtray from the bowling alley. You could catch up on the box scores reading the newspaper over a coffee and a smoke like a human being with your dignity still intact.
Within the modern systems used in business today, the computer operators create their own tools using symbols and numbers like a kind of computer Morse “code.” They create virtual tools to manage and maintain the systems. No pneumatic wrenches or grinders are involved. Everything lives inside the system.
The feeble human’s discretion has finally been engineered out of the machinery; out of the way. We don’t need a human being prone to mistakes and bad moods, with dirty habits and wasteful break times. We just need a tiny little person with a narrow set of options in a tiny little corner of the workflow. “You’re only here to pick the green button or the red button.” …then wait while the system does the real work. Wait for the system to tell us what to do. Wait while the system fails silently in the background.
$ ceci n’est pas une pipe \A tool is operated. A being is provoked.
Today’s management information systems have become so advanced they do most of the thinking for you now. With these new “simulated thinking” programs, tedious, mundane tasks are eliminated and the worker is free to innovate and exercise their full creative potential.
There’s that line again. The source of your gaze; from where you stand and who you are and all that came before this instant. There’s the target; that thing you’re after. It could be anywhere in the world and it’s probably hiding but it’s drawing you toward it from the future in a timeline that ends with you rolling an effortless curve right into the pocket.
Ah, but it’s not so simple at all, is it? You have to choose it. You don’t even know what it is or where it’s found but you only get there by the seat of your pants. You have to aim. Agency is the only weapon we haven’t taken away from you, and it’s the only thing that’s truly left to pay down that IOU from the company store.