I found one section of this particularly ironic: "For instance, consider the poor souls whose work entails implementing the ubiquitous feature of automatic pho

I found one section of this particularly ironic: "For instance, consider the poor souls whose work entails implementing the ubiquitous feature of automatic phone systems: when you call about a bill or service issue, you have to speak your name into a computer system; once you’ve articulated “speak to an agent” some 16 times to said computer system, waited 20 additional minutes, and finally reached a human being, you immediately have to provide the same information you already gave the system." We work with rural smallholder farmers in Kenya, building phone systems to serve them and help them get information about better farming and helping service their agricultural input loans. I don't feel my job is pointless at all. Then again, we're on track to build much better phone systems than the average mega-corporate in the US builds, but I still think this is amusing.