Month: June 2021

When researching about the issue, Amazon recommends me a book on technological unemployment: Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. Here are some quotes, which are already very unsettling, and I will put more here when I finish the book.

The fact is that “routine” may not be the best word to describe the jobs most likely to be threatened by technology. A more accurate term might be “predictable.” Could another person learn to do your job by studying a detailed record of everything you’ve done in the past? Or could someone become proficient by repeating the tasks you’ve already completed, in the way that a student might take practice tests to prepare for an exam? If so, then there’s a good chance that an algorithm may someday be able to learn to do much, or all, of your job.

The unfortunate reality is that a great many people will do everything right—at least in terms of pursuing higher education and acquiring skills—and yet will still fail to find a solid foothold in the new economy.

Jobs remain the primary mechanism by which purchasing power gets into the hands of consumers. If that mechanism continues to erode, we will face the prospect of having too few viable consumers to continue driving economic growth in our mass-market economy.

This is the syllabus I copied when auditing the course by Prof Tien-En Kao [高天恩] in spring 2013. I hope I will have time to reread these poems, and good poetry definitely rewards those who rereads.

Week 1
Alexander Pope: “Sound and Sense”
Archibald MacLeish: “Ars Poetica”
Adrienne Rich: “Poetry: I”
Week 2
Wilfred Owen: “Dulce et Decorum Est”
Keith Douglas: “Vergissmeinnicht”
Thomas Hardy: “Channel Firing”
Week 3
William Shakespeare: “Winter”
Robert Hayden: “Those Winter Sundays”
Thomas Hardy: “The Darkling Thrush”
Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Spring”
Week 4
William Carlos Williams: “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime”
e.e. Cummings: “in Just__”
William Shakespeare: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Robert Hayden: “The Whipping”
Gwendolyn Brooks: “Kitchenette Building”
Week 5
Langston Hughes: “Cross”, “Dream Deferred”, “Suicide Note”
William Carlos Williams: “The Red Wheelbarrow”
Philip Larkin: “A Study of Reading Habits”, “Toads”
Week 6
Philip Larkin: “Aubade”, “Church Going”
Matthew Arnold: “Dover Beach”
Week 7
Wallace Stevens: “Sunday Morning”
Week 8
A.E. Housman: “Is My Team Plowing?”, “Loveliest of Trees”, “Terence, this is stupid stuff”
Week 10
Sylvia Plath: “Mirror”
Ellen Kay: “Pathedy of Manners”
Adrienne Rich: “Storm Warnings”, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”, “Living in Sin”
Week 11
Linda Pastan: “Ethics”, “To a Daughter Leaving Home”
Elizabeth Bishop: “One Art”, “The Fish”
Week 12
Richard Eberhart: “For a Lamb”
Walt Whitman: “A Noiseless Patient Spider”
Robert Frost: “Bereft”, “Fire and Ice”
Week 13
Frost: “After Apple-Picking”, “Desert Places”, “Design”, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Week 14
Frost: “Mending Wall”, “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, “The Road Not Taken”, “Out, Out”
Week 15
Seamus Heaney: “The Forge”, “Digging”
Richard Wilbur: “Mind”, “The Writer”
Week 16
William Shakespeare: “That Time of Year”
John Keats: “When I have fears that I may cease to be”, “To Autumn”, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
Week 17
William Butler Yeats: “When You Are Old”, “The Wild Swans at Coole”, “Sailing to Byzantium”, “The Second Coming”