mp6903

Luvina:
“The people from there say that when the moon is full they clearly see the figure of the wind sweeping along Luvina’s streets, bearing behind it a black blanket; but what I always managed to see when there was a moon in Luvina was the image of despair–always.” (114)

The Invention of Morel:
“I have the uncomfortable sensation that this paper is changing into a will. If I must resign myself to that, I shall try to make statements that can be verified so that no one, knowing that I was accused of duplicity, will doubt that they condemned me unjustly.” (12)

“The people who live hear are dreadful snobs–or else they are the inmates of an abandoned insane asylum!” (24)

The photograph I chose is called Gold Mine. It was taken by Sebãstio Salgado who is a Brazilian-born photojournalist and social documentary photographer. Salgado traveled in over 120 countries for his projects and in 1979 he joined the prestigious Magnum Photos cooperative for photojournalists. He has many famous works centered around portraying marginalized groups, including Terra: Struggles of the Landless and Workers — a striking portrait of the working class. The black and white image I picked is part of Salgado’s renown Serra Pelada collection that is comprised of 28 images, all taken at the Serra Pelada gold mine in Brazil in 1986. The photos were impressive due to their ambition, honesty, artistic mastery, and the fact that Serra Pelada was Brazil’s largest and most dangerous gold mine. The photograph was not staged, but quite the opposite. Indeed, to get the most accurate depiction of events taking place at the mine, Salgado committed to living at the Serra Pelada for several weeks, while he observed the brutal conditions that the mine’s workers had to face. Many of the pictures depict hundreds of tightly packed workers who are climbing up and down the cliff and carrying heavy weight on their backs. The workers appear very small in comparison to the cliff itself, most likely serving as a representation of their low social status. Meanwhile, some of the other images are of workers digging pits, as well as powerful portraits that reveal the unimaginable toil that the Serra Pelada gold mine workers experienced on a daily basis.

Test

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/10/la-county-dcfs-failed-protect-gabriel-fernandez/571384/

Another article I wanted to share — this one from The Atlantic, published in 2018. It’s specifically about the tensions existing for social workers in child protective services. What I like about it is that it looks realistically at both the failings of the system and the impossible demands that the public puts on it.

— Katherine

In the writing, ‘Beyond Disruption’ the writers discuss about algorithmic management. Algorithmic management is a term used to describe the ways management functions are redistributed from a human manager to semi-automated and algorithmic systems. This raises an important question in my mind. How ethical is it for us to let algorithms set the rules and decide on our work behavior? We know that there are a lot of things about human behavior that computers are still not able to grasp. Also we know that the workers are being surveilled by this algorithm, but do we know to what extent exactly are this algorithms doing surveillance on their workers?