The office is obsolete. And that's a good thing

A world where the office is obsolete is more positive, more communal and more productive

Before Covid-19, a recent US census estimated that 5.2% of US workers (8 million people) worked from home. I’d personally say that number likely increased by a factor of 10, based on Zoom’s daily active user growth (10 million in December 2019 to over 300 million in April 2020), the world forced by disaster into an almost fully remote workforce for many sectors, including the entertainment industry and services like yoga and personal training. As companies like Salesforce and Twitter make working from home permanent, many are already dreading our remote future.

Kevin Roose of the New York Times recently warned that remote work leads to isolation, and removed the serendipity of the office. 

Nick Martin of the New Republic warned against the push of people to be “more productive” working from home – that we should not be expected to use the hours of commute time that we’re saving to do more work, but live healthier lives, a sentiment echoed by Roose’s colleague Taylor Lorenz.

‘Now that we’ve got Apple, Google and Facebook working entirely remote, it’s obvious that the office is somewhat of a farce - a temple of assumed importance.’ Photograph: 31456.000000/Getty Images

And they’re right. Hustle culture is poisonous: the idea we must endlessly strive for personal and professional productivity is degenerative to society. But to assume it’s entirely tied to tech-based work is missing a larger problem of the corporate workforce – the religious attachment to work, that work should give our lives meaning.

The “best” of us aren’t necessarily the hardest workers, but those who excel in our careers – lauded, appreciated, and rewarded for our work beyond money. We uproot our families to live closer to work. We fear losing our job, because then we can’t afford the house we need to live close to work, a house that costs so much because everyone around us is trying to live close to work too. We forgo time with friends and family for work happy hours, where we need to be seen to know that we’re dedicated to our work and maybe even get a better position at work. Much is sacrificed for our work, much of which is because we have to physically be there. Work becomes our personality, who we date, how we dress, how we look – so much of that is tied to having to physically be there.

The table stakes for any conversation around removing the office start with the average commute of an American, which last year hit over 27 minutes. I haven’t met many people with a commute under 45 minutes, and a recent report said that commuters wait an average of 54 hours a year stalled in traffic. An estimated 128 million of the 150 million working Americans commute to work in a car, the rest predominantly using a lackluster public transport system. Intelligence firm Inrix showed a 30% or so drop in cars on the road in America from Covid-19 – with Italy showing a stunning 65% drop in traffic. This significant drop in transportation will likely have a part to play in the fight against global warming, and we now have a rare chance to take significant numbers of cars off the road by seeing the office for what it is – a paper tiger with assumed importance and effect on productivity.

The concept of face time is used to keep us in the office, with managers believing remote work dilutes people’s work to numbers and documents – a sanitized and creativity-free wasteland. 

Ironically, that same appearance at the office is often used to evaluate people based on whether they’re “nice” or “productive”, which usually means someone looks busy or stressed out. An excellent piece by Michelle Ruiz of Vogue referred to Bill Gates’s creation of the obsession around face time, citing a survey where employees at large American companies spent 54% of their time on email, meetings, administrative tasks and “interruptions”. She calls face time “a mirage, the symbolic appearance of working (going to meetings, chatting with co-workers) but not actually getting much done”.

The physical office reinforces the expectation that you’re white, attractive, from the right school, that you’re dressed the right way and that you do the things that your gender or race (or both) are expected to do.

In a world where 86% of employees believe physical appearance matters – with 73% believing it affects competency – removing physical appearance as a factor of evaluation is incredibly valuable. 

Appearance continues to be exacerbated by race, with women of color continually left out of executive roles and experiencing more sexual harassment and bullying than anyone else. When we’re all reduced to squares on a video chat, where nobody has great angles or perfect lighting. We’re all unified by how imperfect we look – it’s refreshing, and a lot fairer.

A world where the office is obsolete is more positive, more communal and more productive. It’s one that reconnects us with our neighbors nearby and grounds us in personal principles rather than professional achievements.

There is a place for a physical office to exist, but it should be an optional space for employees to choose based on preferred working style. Working from home’s stigma has always been around a perception of a person being less relevant to the bigger picture, or a remote company being less significant. Now that we’ve got Apple, Google and Facebook going entirely remote, it’s obvious that the office is somewhat of a farce – a temple of assumed importance.

(Source: The Guardian)

Tokyo joins world film festivals for 10-day YouTube event

As competition programmer for the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), Yoshi Yatabe has pretty much seen it all. But finding an email from Robert De Niro in his inbox still felt like a big deal.

“It was very difficult to neglect that email,” he says with a laugh.

It was mid-April when De Niro and his producing partner, Jane Rosenthal — co-founders of New York’s Tribeca Film Festival — contacted Yatabe with an intriguing proposition: Would TIFF be interested in joining an online event they were organizing?

They didn’t mention any other names at that point, but the resulting We Are One: A Global Film Festival, which will take place on YouTube from May 29, would turn out to feature contributions from many of the biggest festivals: Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Sundance, Toronto.

“It’s kind of a historic event,” says Yatabe. “It’s the first time for all these festivals to gather in one place and do a festival together, so it’s very exciting.”

There are 21 festivals taking part, each providing its own program, from features and shorts to talks and musical performances. In addition to bringing comfort to cinephiles, the 10-day event aims to raise money for a variety of COVID-19 relief efforts.

Tokyo’s program includes director Masaaki Yuasa’s 2008 animated short, “Genius Party: Happy Machine,” and Akiko Ooku’s eccentric romantic comedy “Tremble All You Want,” which won the Audience Award at TIFF in 2017.

There will also be multiple shorts by festival regular Koji Fukada, including a new film, “The Yalta Conference Online,” which stages Oriza Hirata’s historical play “The Yalta Conference” over Zoom.

Yatabe says that putting the program together was a learning process.

“It was much more difficult than I’d expected to clear the film rights for an online festival, on YouTube,” he says. “When you do a festival, for example in Tokyo, you only have to clear the domestic rights — but here, I (had to do it) for the whole world.”

Festivals typically serve as a film’s coming-out party: a place to create positive buzz, secure distribution deals or build momentum ahead of awards season.

With COVID-19 forcing many festivals to take a year off or drastically reconfigure, Yatabe says, “The whole film industry is in a bit of a mess.”

Movies that were selected for this year’s Cannes, for instance, now face an uncertain fate: Do their producers take the films elsewhere, or sit tight until next year’s festival?

“They’re kind of like lost children,” Yatabe says. This may seem like an opportunity for TIFF to snag some prestige titles, and he reveals he’s already been contacted about potential submissions for films that have seen their original plans fall through.

“I don’t think I can say I hope that these kinds of films will come to us, because it’s kind of taking advantage of other festivals’ cancellations,” he says.

As for TIFF — due to start on Oct. 31 — Yatabe thinks there’s a “very high probability” that the festival will go ahead. He’s less confident about whether it will be able to invite its usual bevy of overseas filmmakers and industry folk, given that many travel restrictions could still be in place.

“The question is: Can we make an international program without having guests?” he says. “I think that’s a challenge.”

Toronto International Film Festival, which takes place a month earlier, has said it is considering a hybrid model this year, using a mixture of physical and online screenings. Yatabe says Tokyo may do something similar, and concedes that festivals should be doing more to embrace digital platforms.

After a couple of months of lockdown, he says, “Nobody can ignore the importance of online viewing. So I think that the physical festival and the online part of the festival should be compatible.”

Yatabe also sees a more long-term role for distribution models such as Temporary Cinema, where films are streamed online and proceeds are split equally between the distributor and exhibitor.

“I think that scheme could stay after theaters reopen,” he says, “so that people in remote areas can also have access to new films.”

Given that Yatabe professes to have spent most of his free time in cinemas before Japan’s state of emergency went into effect, you would think it was a struggle for him to go cold turkey over the past couple of months. Not so, apparently.

“In one month, I watched 25 Ingmar Bergman films,” he says. “I was not expecting to be able to do that until after retirement. I hope that theaters will open as soon as possible, but I’m not bored at all staying home.”

(Source: JT)

Hong Kong security legislation backed by China's parliament

China's parliament has backed security legislation for Hong Kong which would make it a crime to undermine Beijing's authority in the territory.

The resolution - which now passes to China's senior leadership - has caused deep concern among those who say it could end Hong Kong's unique status.

It could also see China installing its own security agencies in the region for the first time.

The move has already sparked a new wave of anti-mainland protest.

Hong Kong police confronted pro-democracy protesters on Wednesday. AFP

Clashes broke out on Wednesday as Hong Kong's parliament debated a different proposed law, which would make it a crime to disrespect the Chinese national anthem. Hundreds of people were arrested in protests over that and the security law.

Security remains high on Thursday, as a tense debate in the Legislative Council continues.

At least two pro-democracy legislators were ejected from the council on Thursday. One lawmaker, Ted Hui, threw rotten plants on to the floor of the chamber, saying it symbolised the decay of Hong Kong's political system.

"I want the speaker to feel what is meant by rotten," he said.

The speaker deemed the package to be an "unknown dangerous object", and called police and fire crews.

What has the reaction been?

Full details about exactly what behaviour will be outlawed under the new security law are not yet clear. It is due to be enacted before September.

But hours before the vote was taken in Beijing, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said developments in Hong Kong meant it could no longer be considered to have "a high degree of autonomy" from mainland China.

Firefighters check the Legislative Council chamber after a lawmaker threw foul-smelling plants on to the floor. EPA

That meant that Hong Kong no longer merited being treated differently from the mainland under US law.

The declaration could have major implications for Hong Kong's trade hub status and drew an angry reaction from Chinese authorities in the territory.

In a strongly worded statement on Thursday, the office of China's foreign ministry in Hong Kong said it "firmly opposed and refuted" Mr Pompeo's statement and urged the US to "immediately stop meddling" in China's internal affairs.

It described US criticism of the new draft law as "utterly imperious, unreasonable and shameless".

On Friday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesman said the UK was "deeply concerned" about the new security law, which "risks undermining the principle of 'one nations, two systems'".

Japan said it was "seriously concerned" by Beijing's move. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Hong Kong was an "extremely important partner" and that democracy and stability there must be maintained.

What happens next?

The National People's Congress (NPC) - meeting in Beijing after a two-month delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic - backed the security bill resolution with 2,878 votes in favour, one against and six abstentions.

President Xi Jinping and other senior figures applauded when the security law was passed. AFP

"It will uphold and improve the 'one country, two systems' policy," NPC chairman Li Zhanshu told delegates during the closing ceremony.

"It is in line with the constitution and Hong Kong's Basic Law and is in the interest of all Chinese people including Hong Kong people," he added.

The NPC only ever approves legislation put to it by the government so there was no chance the bill would not be supported.

The legislation - referred to as the Draft Decision - now passes to the Standing Committee of the Communist Party which will draw up the full details of the new law.

It is expected to criminalise:

• secession - breaking away from the country
• subversion - undermining the power or authority of the central government
• terrorism - using violence or intimidation against people
• activities by foreign forces that interfere in Hong Kong

The resolution also says that "when needed, relevant national security organs of the Central People's Government will set up agencies in Hong Kong to fulfil relevant duties to safeguard national security in accordance with the law".

That means China could potentially have its own law enforcement agencies in Hong Kong, alongside the city's own.

The authorities in Hong Kong insist the law is essential to tackle growing violence and "terrorism", and that the territory's residents have nothing to fear from it.

Critics fear it could lead to Hong Kongers being prosecuted - even retroactively - for criticising their or the mainland's leadership, joining protests or exercising their current rights under local laws.

Why did China do this?

Hong Kong was handed back to China from British control in 1997, but under a unique agreement - a mini-constitution called the Basic Law and a so-called "one country, two systems" principle.

They are supposed to protect certain freedoms for Hong Kong: freedom of assembly and speech, an independent judiciary and some democratic rights - freedoms that no other part of mainland China has.

Under the same agreement, Hong Kong had to enact its own national security law - this was set out in Article 23 of the Basic Law.

But its unpopularity meant it has never been done - the government tried in 2003 but had to back down after protests.

Then, last year, protests over an extradition law turned violent and evolved into a broader anti-China and pro-democracy movement.

China is keen to avoid a repeat of that unrest.

(Source: BBC)

Stay-home request spurs a reading revival

In many urban areas of Japan, people were recently urged to stay home for weeks on in the fight to contain the spread of COVID-19. Most big bookstores in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto were closed through the end of the Golden Week holidays, making it difficult to buy books.

As adults were told to work from home and children to study at home, many of them had more free time than they knew what to do with. Many of the adults are said to have recalled the joy of reading, and spent their time in seclusion reading.

People living in suburban communities were able to buy books at large stores that remained open, but those in big metropolitan areas had no choice but to order books online since most bookstores were closed.

Suddenly the 1947 novel “The Plague” by Albert Camus became a bestseller among paperbacks, which is unusual for such serious fiction. Also on the list of top-selling books were nonfiction works about epidemics, along with cook books and light novels. Children, meanwhile, were buying study-aid publications and exercise books.

Interest in reading books has risen as people spend more time at home. | AFP-JIJI

Because so many people started reading at home, the overall sales volume of books has remained steady. More orders for books are placed on e-commerce sites than in bookstores, leading even large bookstores to open online shops in a bid to boost their sales.

After suffering from a long period of declining sales, the situation may be turning around for the publishing industry thanks to the stay-home request. Recently I was taking a train to the institute where I work and found that while there were only 10 or so passengers in each car, three or four of them were reading paperbacks. As someone who writes books, I felt a sense of relief that Japanese people are once again interested in reading.

But then I realized that that I was being simply optimistic. It appeared that the books they were reading were mostly related to the COVID-19 pandemic or their respective fields of business. I would have assumed that people who have grown tired of their daily lives would want to read literature, philosophy, history and natural sciences. It is a pity that people do not seem to be showing much sign of interest in such books.

The internet is often blamed for people losing interest in books. The new “common sense” among the younger generation is it's outdated and inefficient to search for information in books when that information can be quickly found online.

The traditional mental process followed by old-time intellectuals has been to read books, think deeply and arrive at their own conclusion. Depending on the internet for collecting information is tantamount to halting the thinking process on the relevant subject.

In both the administrative and business sectors, statements are made in abundance that are not based on plausible thinking processes. In their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, policies and actions taken by Japanese politicians and bureaucrats do not appear to be backed by deep thoughts or foresight.

The internet has not only exacerbated the loss of interest in reading books among the Japanese, but has served to lower the intellectual standards of Japan’s business, administrative, journalism and academic sectors.

The aversion to reading that has taken root in Japan has not occurred in the advanced nations of the West or in China, Taiwan or South Korea, all of which have digital technologies more advanced than that in Japan. In Europe and North America, it is mandatory for high school and university students to read Western classics as part of their liberal arts education.

Before the turn of the century, even in Japan it was deemed essential for a university student to read Japanese and foreign literature as well as Western classics. Especially for graduate students majoring in humanities and social sciences, reading constituted their entire academic activities. Students aspiring to become economists had on their bookshelves highly reputed classics such as “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith (published in 1776), “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx (1867) and “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” by John Maynard Keynes (1936), at least in Japanese translation, if not in their original.

Itsuro Sakisaka (1897-1985), a Marxian economist and professor emeritus at Kyushu University, decided early in life that the money spent on purchasing Japanese, English and German books constituted expenses necessary for his academic pursuits. He persuaded his wife not to have children so that he could spend more money on books, and collected a mountain of books.

In his later years, when he lived in Tokyo, he built a reinforced concrete library in his backyard, and stored 50,000 books there. After his death in 1985, his wife donated the books to the Ohara Institute for Social Research of Hosei University. 

The institute’s librarians spent 10 years sorting through those books before placing them in the library.

In this column last month I said that I can gain nothing more than piecemeal knowledge from reading the electronic version of a book, and that what the author is trying to say to the readers cannot be fully comprehended unless the book is read in its original printed form.

Yet I make it a rule now to buy the electronic versions of new books I find interesting. The reason is that I don't have enough space in my house to store all the printed volumes. My library is already full and books I purchased recently are scattered all over the living room.

After retiring from my university job, I classified my books into two categories: those I need to keep and those I do not. I have sold the latter to a secondhand bookshop at a cheap price, and placed the former in storage.

Because e-books do not require physical storage space, they have added value given the housing conditions in Japan in general, and those of a retired university professor like myself.

(Source: JT)

Sex, lies and despair: Unseen letters reveal Larkin's tortured love

A cache of 2,400 letters between the poet and his long-time lover and muse, Monica Jones, charts an explosive and flawed romance

“He lied to me, the bugger, but I loved him.” So Monica Jones described the revered poet Philip Larkin – a pithy but affectionate account of a lover who was serially unfaithful, but whose “utterly undistinguished little house” in Hull she turned into a shrine after his death.

Previously unpublished letters, however, reveal the full extent of her fury, fears and frustrations over a painful four-decade-long partnership with the man who wrote some of the most cherished verse in the English language.

“I don’t want to be and I won’t be an object of pity like a beggar’s sore,” she wrote to him in one letter. “I know you just think of me as a SITUATION, something to be fixed,” she lamented in another. She wrote repeatedly of feeling terribly alone and “so frightened”. Such was her despair that she referred to a bruised shoulder as “a kind of company”.

Monica Jones in a photograph taken by Philip Larkin. Photograph: The estate of Philip Larkin

Her heart-wrenching thoughts are contained in 54 boxes filled with 2,400 letters to Larkin that she left to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, with the strict instruction that they were to remain closed until decades after her death. She died in 2001, aged 78.

Now Professor John Sutherland, a leading scholar and Jones’s close friend, has been given unrestricted access to the extraordinary collection.

He told the Observer that the letters were “explosive in their nature”, and represented “virtually everything that she wrote to Larkin over 37 years of separated love”.

Describing it as “the last great exchange of letters in literary history”, he said it was “like she’s ripping open her soul and her mind, letting it pour out. There’s a whole range of emotions. 

Sometimes she is furious when he doesn’t turn up for a meal she’s cooked. Other times, she’s just meditative.” She wrote of her emptiness: “Every smallest thing is too much for me.”

Larkin and Jones were both born in 1922 and studied at Oxford, although they first met at the then University College Leicester in 1946. He was a newly appointed deputy librarian and she was an English lecturer, a striking woman with peroxide hair. Larkin transferred to Queen’s University Belfast in 1950 and then five years later to the University of Hull. Jones lived for his visits. Their once-passionate relationship, blighted by their heavy drinking, lasted until his death in 1985.

Philip Larkin and Monica Jones at the memorial service for Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman at Westminster Abbey, London, in 1984. Photograph: Getty Images

Sutherland said: “Larkin had two women in Hull [one of whom was Maeve Brennan]. He would fit Monica in when he was visiting his mother up the road [in Loughborough] … Then he’d be back to Hull and the other women.”

Jones knew of those women, yet she repeatedly declared her love for Larkin in her letters: “I am so blessed to have you in my life.”

Sutherland said: “Her letters resemble a literary stream of consciousness – at times, more surging flood than stream. They have odd disjunctions. After a pages-long savage diatribe against Maeve, Monica suddenly reminds Philip to water the flowers.”

Larkin appreciated Jones as his intellectual equal, unlike his other women. He dedicated his breakthrough collection, The Less Deceived, to her – though it includes poems about his other partnerships. He bequeathed the bulk of his estate to her.

But the fact that he wrote so little poetry has been blamed on the stultifying effect of Jones, Sutherland said: “His poetry depends on four slim volumes … Around 100 poems.”

He noted that Kingsley Amis, Larkin’s closest friend from Oxford, was particularly vicious, dismissing her as a “grim old bag”.

“Margaret Peel in [Amis’s novel] Lucky Jim is a terrible caricature of Monica. Kingsley hadn’t met her at that point. Philip gave Kingsley all the details. He could be cruel in that way. She wrote an incredibly impassioned letter to Philip saying, ‘I am not so egotistical as to think everybody wants to put me in a book and I do not believe you would be so treacherous’.”

Jones has also been vilified for destroying 30 volumes of his diaries and private papers.

Sutherland, professor emeritus of modern English literature at University College London, was taught by Jones, and he attributes his career to her. He is now finishing a book on Jones, based on the letters, to be published next year by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. He expressed surprise that no one had written a biography of her before as she was the most important person in Larkin’s life.

Monica Jones photographed by Larkin on the Isle of Mull, Scotland, 1971. Photograph: The estate of Philip Larkin

He said no other biographer of Larkin had “enjoyed access to these letters”, which the Bodleian has catalogued in a “feat of librarianship at the highest level”. Poignantly, some of the envelopes still bear her lipstick marks.

The correspondence ends in the early 1970s when they got telephones. Sutherland said: “After that, he would telephone every night. When her health collapsed in the early 1980s, she moved in with him. They got drunk together. He died and she lived on drunkenly.

“She was a strange woman. You had to know her, to know the good things about her. He treated her badly, but always wrote fondly. It was an odd mixture … He did come near to trying to break up with her, but they needed each other. They were both very unhappy people.”

Sutherland hopes “to salvage Monica Jones from the versions of Monica Jones which circulated in her life and still circulate”. “From the unplumbed depths of the 54 boxes, one can exhume a Monica Jones to stand alongside Philip Larkin, not behind him as his dim correspondent shadow.”

(Source: The Guardian)