#GreyMatterSocials: What is a pension? (iii)

I woke up this morning to yet another upgrade notification from my circa-2016-Mavericks-to-Yosemite-to-Sierra macOS, wondering if my HumanOS actually needed the update / upgrade more. And if there was a quick wifi download to some invisible Texan router to enable it, from the time i brushed my teeth, to the time i was out of my wifi’s range.

Probably not.

I contemplate the rate of change we go through in a week, and understand the fallibility of human to a host of external factors: from the corrupt mindsets, to stretch mark anxiety, to seriously boring meals.

The host of problems that we have, as a contemplation to being vulnerable as un-encased walking OperatingHumanSystems, are actually not unlike your <1kg laptops, as it is actually more complicated to work out.

Or fix.

There are human needs that aren’t open to the routine fixes, or even a diagnostics team that are overpaid to excess in stocks and mutual funds, to be able to work out the problems and anticipate the failures of our technology-based systems - from needing the re-boot, or the overall systemic overhauls. Or even the temperature server collapses - when we have power outages in the middle of Texas or 300 feet deep under the sea to deliver bandwidth into information cables, or frozen in the middle of arid environs that keep satellites and solar wafers from fracturing.

And yet, we have no idea how to fix humans.

I have a tweet that needs addressing / or a short commentary, before we offer gathering around traditional fare in a move to strengthen our spiritual faith:

How many people in certain countries, as a percentage of the Labour
populace, actually can say they had this problem - in 10 years or more,
per contract - or per country, depending on their length of stay per country?#MobilePeople https://t.co/R8ix0LDsoF

— Kristin MdashO (@KrisSn) November 27, 2019

*One think-tank has proposed a family carer top up for employees working part-time or taking a break because of caring responsibilities, worth up to £820 per year (the equivalent of an employer’s auto enrolment contribution at National Living Wage level). 

It’s a good idea, but if initiatives like this ever become policy, they must capture self-employed workers too.

We should also consider why so many women like me are self employed in the first place.

We can’t fix pensions, and negativity, and in a fortnight - in a blink of an eye - or as fast as the next Intel chip can suffice the processing of three million per second, but we can absolutely build the systems that border and harmonise with all our diatribes - and the cultural foundations that should be able to cope with the change - or rates of change/s. Plural. Should we subliminally be more worried, even as the frailty of processing is now relegated unto the bigger systems, and micro-processing, that disables our capacity, in the long run? We have bigger social problems to fry, and maybe we need a stark set of global minds to the task, that tackles the small, to the huge. Or a circular that actively lets us know that we are heard.

And so, maybe, we can fix this first.