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This is nearly incoherent… He doesn't order from Sprig because it's too efficient? I mean you are welcome to value whatever you want, but if you're against effi

by jvm 11y ago

This is nearly incoherent… He doesn't order from Sprig because it's too efficient? I mean you are welcome to value whatever you want, but if you're against efficiency you will probably have a problem with nearly every for-profit business; all his complaints are at least as true of any restaurant that hires full time employees. > In the hypothetical future we can label Full Josephine, many people don’t cook, but some people cook a lot more, and better, than ever before, and all of us, cooks and non-cooks, derive pleasure from that." Minus rhetorical flourishes, this is identical to the Sprig future, with the difference that in the case of Sprig the cooks are compensated with full-time employment rather than the joy of cooking. It sounds like the author doesn't really value that, but I bet a lot of Sprig employees do! The actual future: Some people cook for Josephine, some work for Sprig, some work for traditional restaurants, some people eat the above food, lots of people still make their own food.

adminprof 11y ago
I think his point is that Josephine has a sense of community, that the people behind the cooking are fully visible, whereas in Sprig the people are just cogs in a system.
- e_modad 11y ago
  But are they just cogs in a machine? The author betrays his own thoughts on the subject by discussing it that way. I order delivery all the time and have never though of the cooks and delivery people as "cogs in a machine." They're people with jobs, with their own complex lives. It's not my responsibility to worry if the delivery boy who's a Sophomore is having trouble doing his homework because he's working part time for Sprig. I tip well and always smile and don't feel guilty that it's convenient.
protomyth 11y ago
The author isn't against efficiency. The author wants a human touch and doesn't believe Sprig provides that. This is a "oh, the humanity" article.
- rhizome 11y ago
  In the service industries, a human touch costs extra.
jacinda 11y ago
I thought his point was that Sprig promotes a more "megacorp" future where if you enjoy cooking and want to do it for a living you must work for Sprig or a similar megacorp as an employee, with little agency in your cooking or career. On the other hand, he thinks Josephine's model promotes a future where telecommunications helps connect people who are more akin to small-business owners than employees with customers. These people then have more agency in their cooking (in addition to the human connection with customers). I personally think that eventually AIs will be able to master cooking as well so we won't have human cooks involved at all except as a fashion statement.
- AJ007 11y ago
  This is very relevant http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/31/436377616/the-restaurant-with-no-visible-workers http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/31/436... I have been starting to think, what if in the future we have all of these platforms - like Uber - and the just suck? Honestly the mediocre UberX drivers now are considerably worse than the average cab driver (city specific.) Some combination of IP law and marketplace-platform dominance may enable fairly mediocre exchange platforms to exist at scale for a really long time and be difficult for anyone to disrupt. Craigslist, eBay, aren't that great and in some cases are downright horrible, but once all of the buyers congregate there, its hard for innovation to exist in either the classifieds or auction space. What if IP law, patents, trademarks, made it really hard to even offer specific types of services? Contrarian thinking, and quite negative, but seeing Uber go from incredible and high quality to fair made me realize that maybe at scale some of this stuff won't be as joyful.
  - hobs 11y ago
    I think you are very likely close to the mark, and that is because the switching cost for these types of services (due to networking effects) means that the shoddy but working service will last a LONG time.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      We may get a wild west of crappy deregulated services, and then through many decades of blood and tears we'll regulate them back into order. We've done that once, little over a century ago.
gozo 11y ago
I think his "objection" is similar to mine in that technology supposedly promises that everyone can be a producer, but instead we are getting even more centralization. We see the same thing in technology, were instead of open standards we get e.g. Facebook. Or in startups were the prospects of actually competing with one of the larger players is almost theoretical at this point. A lot of people are fine with living for the moment hoping they can make it rich before opportunities shift. Others think more about what future they want to see.
- mc32 11y ago
  Technology never promises anything. People may have presumptions, projections, etc. But technology itself never makes promises. Some individuals may make some claims, but you can get all kids of claims from all kinds of people.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- vonklaus 11y ago
  I agree that there is something off putting about these companies in that, as a cynic, I think they are simply putting a nice whitelabel wrapper on someone else's work. That being said, it is hard to make the case that this is centralization and I have concluded that I believe these businesses are good because: * Everyone is a private contractor, they are free to make their own choices and work (or not work) for a company. * They can be flexible service providers and they can create their own reputation. * Companies like airbnb/uber/sprig simply provide a platform . It is likely that many platforms will arise as for some of these businesses the barriers to entry are pretty low. The workers and producers can be on all platforms or go completely independent but Uber without driver's isn't a 50b company. * If your options are make some money in the "sharing economy" or make no money in the "real economy" I think you would choose to hop in. i see this as the new websearch model. Companies provide the best results and ratings, while offering ancillary support to users and charge them instead of showing adverts. the problem is if one gets really good, really powerful and effectively controls a lions share of virtually all of the search results routing all queries and related services through a single provider. lets hope that if that were to happen that not only would they not be evil but that they would good.

by jvm 11y ago

adminprof 11y ago

I think his point is that Josephine has a sense of community, that the people behind the cooking are fully visible, whereas in Sprig the people are just cogs in a system.

e_modad 11y ago
But are they just cogs in a machine? The author betrays his own thoughts on the subject by discussing it that way. I order delivery all the time and have never though of the cooks and delivery people as "cogs in a machine." They're people with jobs, with their own complex lives. It's not my responsibility to worry if the delivery boy who's a Sophomore is having trouble doing his homework because he's working part time for Sprig. I tip well and always smile and don't feel guilty that it's convenient.

protomyth 11y ago

The author isn't against efficiency. The author wants a human touch and doesn't believe Sprig provides that. This is a "oh, the humanity" article.

rhizome 11y ago
In the service industries, a human touch costs extra.

jacinda 11y ago

I thought his point was that Sprig promotes a more "megacorp" future where if you enjoy cooking and want to do it for a living you must work for Sprig or a similar megacorp as an employee, with little agency in your cooking or career. On the other hand, he thinks Josephine's model promotes a future where telecommunications helps connect people who are more akin to small-business owners than employees with customers. These people then have more agency in their cooking (in addition to the human connection with customers). I personally think that eventually AIs will be able to master cooking as well so we won't have human cooks involved at all except as a fashion statement.

AJ007 11y ago
This is very relevant http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/31/436377616/the-restaurant-with-no-visible-workers http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/31/436... I have been starting to think, what if in the future we have all of these platforms - like Uber - and the just suck? Honestly the mediocre UberX drivers now are considerably worse than the average cab driver (city specific.) Some combination of IP law and marketplace-platform dominance may enable fairly mediocre exchange platforms to exist at scale for a really long time and be difficult for anyone to disrupt. Craigslist, eBay, aren't that great and in some cases are downright horrible, but once all of the buyers congregate there, its hard for innovation to exist in either the classifieds or auction space. What if IP law, patents, trademarks, made it really hard to even offer specific types of services? Contrarian thinking, and quite negative, but seeing Uber go from incredible and high quality to fair made me realize that maybe at scale some of this stuff won't be as joyful.
- hobs 11y ago
  I think you are very likely close to the mark, and that is because the switching cost for these types of services (due to networking effects) means that the shoddy but working service will last a LONG time.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    We may get a wild west of crappy deregulated services, and then through many decades of blood and tears we'll regulate them back into order. We've done that once, little over a century ago.

gozo 11y ago

I think his "objection" is similar to mine in that technology supposedly promises that everyone can be a producer, but instead we are getting even more centralization. We see the same thing in technology, were instead of open standards we get e.g. Facebook. Or in startups were the prospects of actually competing with one of the larger players is almost theoretical at this point. A lot of people are fine with living for the moment hoping they can make it rich before opportunities shift. Others think more about what future they want to see.

mc32 11y ago
Technology never promises anything. People may have presumptions, projections, etc. But technology itself never makes promises. Some individuals may make some claims, but you can get all kids of claims from all kinds of people.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
vonklaus 11y ago
I agree that there is something off putting about these companies in that, as a cynic, I think they are simply putting a nice whitelabel wrapper on someone else's work. That being said, it is hard to make the case that this is centralization and I have concluded that I believe these businesses are good because: * Everyone is a private contractor, they are free to make their own choices and work (or not work) for a company. * They can be flexible service providers and they can create their own reputation. * Companies like airbnb/uber/sprig simply provide a platform . It is likely that many platforms will arise as for some of these businesses the barriers to entry are pretty low. The workers and producers can be on all platforms or go completely independent but Uber without driver's isn't a 50b company. * If your options are make some money in the "sharing economy" or make no money in the "real economy" I think you would choose to hop in. i see this as the new websearch model. Companies provide the best results and ratings, while offering ancillary support to users and charge them instead of showing adverts. the problem is if one gets really good, really powerful and effectively controls a lions share of virtually all of the search results routing all queries and related services through a single provider. lets hope that if that were to happen that not only would they not be evil but that they would good.