Barricadin' Buses. Why?

This week we began our section on 'Race, Technology and Everyday Life' to broaden our understanding of technology beyond those who work in the 'information industry' and investigate how technology comes into contact with peoples' everyday experiences.  Specifically we do not merely want to understand how a technology is used but uncover the contests around technology that are always linked to larger struggles for economic mobility, political maneuvering and community building. 

For this week's blog I want you to read about the controversy between Google Bus and San Francisco residents and discuss how it is connected to issues of gentrification, theorizing work in the information society, activism, the ways in which activism is reported (how is race reported).  How does this fit into our discussions about technology, race and everyday life?  Please remember to use class readings to ground your analysis.  You may start here and here and here for resources. 

I had not heard of the Google bus blockade before, and it was definitely an interesting story to read, though quite sad as well. From what I understand, Google wanted to get its employees to work faster, so it started using buses to get their employees to work faster. Why have each employee drive a separate car when you can bus them all to work? This means fewer cars on the road for other commuters, and Google gets its employees to work more efficiently. Was Google illegally using Muni's bus stops? It appears so. Should Google be paying to use those stops? I think so. It sounds to me like that problem got ironed out pretty quickly. Problem solved, right?

Well, not quite, because the protesters are still blocking the bus from moving? Why are they doing that? Oh I see their signs now, they say something about “no more gentrification”. What exactly is “gentrification”? It is the process where neighborhoods become wealthier, housing prices go up, and the poor are often displaced. That's what these bus protesters are complaining about. They want to maintain a status quo. They don't want local road conditions improved for fear of their dwellings becoming more desirable, and therefore more expensive. . In other words, they are so concerned with their own comfort, that they think it's right to go out and stop other people from getting work so the road conditions don't improve. After all, if the Google employees can't get to work, the housing prices won't go up, right? If other people are remedying the congestion problem, then, by golly, stop traffic and create a problem yourself. Oh, wait. If you have to create the problem yourself, you probably are the problem already.

Artificially maintaining the status quo doesn't work this way. You argue as that the only reason housing prices are going up is because Google is making roads emptier. It's as though you want smog and clogged roads simply so you don't have to move. When your landlord wants to charge higher rates because people are willing to pay to live somewhere where its easier to get to work, that's perfectly fine. It's called the free market. Things change. Cities change, and its about time people learned that. If anything, stagnancy, not change, should be avoided.

Are there solutions to this gentrification? I believe so, but stopping a bus isn't one of them. Creating affordable housing is. Creating a city that is easier to move around in is another option. City governments have a duty to make their cities easier and better to live in, and one way of doing that is by adding mass transportation. Google has actually helped resolve that problem, and the “residents” aren't helping. That's not a very good term though, “residents”. It creates an artificial divide, as though Google employees are some evil master race while the underdog “residents” are the oppressed minority. At least one protester painted the picture that way in this article. As far as I'm concerned, those “Google-etes” are residents too. They just happen to work at Google. The protesters are the ones who say that the Google employees don't have a right to live where they do. The protesters are creating the divide, not Google and its employees.

 P.S. Having to impersonate the "enemy" to make people hate them is pretty low (and lame), if you ask me: