"Takeaway workers, trapped in an algorithm."

Do you remember this lament?

Just last September, an article titled "Takeout Riders, Stuck in the System" broke the internet.

This documentary article reveals that takeout workers are "forced" by the platform's AI algorithm to keep delivering food faster and faster, so that the road to delivering food has almost become a road to death.

Algorithms that serve humans are eroding them. The survival predicament of the takeout workers is thought-provoking.

Paradoxically, the number of delivery workers on delivery platforms continues to rise while they are trapped in algorithms. By October of last year, a takeout platform spotlighted in the article had more than 4 million takeout riders nationwide.

Why are people still clamoring to be "trapped in the algorithm"?

And while the number of delivery workers is hitting new highs, the number of factory workers is still plummeting.

Ningbo, Dongguan and other manufacturing bases, "labor shortage" intensified, a Dongguan electronics factory boss complained:

"Dust-free workshop, comfortable and air-conditioned, the base salary of 1,720, the production of employees per month, even after overtime, a minimum of 4,000, soldering skilled plus subsidies for high

Behind the take-out workers are service industries such as catering, while behind the workers are manufacturing industries such as electronics factories.

The labor force on this and that, in essence, is the proportion of the service industry and manufacturing industry adjustment. That is, in recent years has been repeatedly referred to: off the real to the virtual.

The manufacturing labor force is losing, and the direction is the service industry, similar transformation in the United States, Japan, Germany and other developed countries, have occurred.

From the perspective of economic development, the trend is to move away from the real to the virtual, but from the perspective of the national interest, the sudden hollowing out of the manufacturing sector will cause endless harm. Today's United States is a clear evidence.

It should be noted that we have not ignored the lessons of the United States, the great master craftsmen are still the cornerstone of the country, manufacturing power is still the bottom of China. But the pain of industrial structural transformation is still knotted in the head of the workers.

Why don't the workers go to the factory, and go to do the takeaway? The root cause, in the words of Jack Ma: money is not in place, the heart is aggrieved.

From the factory owner's point of view, their own pay is excellent, but in the eyes of the workers, it is squeezed, and full of sets - such as recruiting said 4000 guaranteed, but into the factory only to find that the base salary of 3,000, the other 1,000 are overtime sweat money.

Horizontal comparison, a job a money takeaway, more attractive.

The "cannibalization effect" of the Internet algorithm is not only reflected in the takeout workers, but also in the workers.

In a nutshell: a purely rational allocation of resources, which is essentially a misallocation of resources.

Algorithms are not humane, but purely rational calculations.

But this rationality is one-sided, in the case of the deliveryman, it only calculates the distance per unit of time delivery, but does not take into account the transportation environment, the physical state of the deliveryman and safety factors. Thus resulting in the misallocation of resources, seemingly efficient, but the heart of the prison.

In the Internet era, this purely rational system, in fact, has also spread to the factory. There are algorithms behind the deliveryman, and there are algorithms behind the worker.

On the production line, a series of time management tools are running, and productivity is "drying up", and under the oppressive labor development, factory workers are trapped in the algorithm.

For example, a parts worker on the production, his best performance is a minute to install 60 parts, but when the efficiency management algorithm captures his performance, it will be the "best performance" as "universal performance", the limit of the squeeze will be this a hair The limit presses are out of control.

And the fact that the production line is standardized means that this squeeze happens regularly, as opposed to the flexibility of the delivery worker, whose work varies from order to order.

To put it more clearly, both the delivery person and the worker face an "algorithmic cannibalization" dilemma, and the worker's is "more cannibalistic".

What is culture? In fact, the essence of all cultures is the relationship between people.

China is moving from an agrarian, rural culture to an industrial, urban culture, and the links between people are changing dramatically.

The Spring Festival hit movie "Hello, Li Huanying" presents the form of urban civilization in China decades ago, under the underdeveloped industry.

People in the city are connected by factories, which provide them with the necessities of life, including healthcare, housing, and education, and the fundamental relationship between people in the city is that of "workers".

Nowadays, along with the development of industry, urban culture has also completed its iteration. The takeaway is the relay point in the lives of city dwellers, and, in fact, the relay point in the transmutation of urban culture.

In the increasingly atomized modern city, where is the link between people and their offline connections?

Figuratively speaking, it is the deliveryman, who is the bearer of the relationship between production and life. Of course, in the perspective of the economic base, it is the replacement of restaurants to factories, the replacement of the service industry to the manufacturing industry.

Behind the take-out workers and workers is the generational evolution of urban culture. The production-centered urban culture has become weaker than the entertainment-centered urban culture.

Regardless of the economic level and industrial structure of any kind, the starting point of life is human beings, and the increase in the number of takeaways and the decrease in the number of workers leaves the fundamental question of the times -

What kind of human relationship should we establish?