So, ...can the average consumer eat it, drink it. . . .? If not, what does the average consumer get out of this ...information recycleables?
Just exactly how old are you and where have you been living? Your CD and DVD collection is full of "information," although as I said I hate this standardized definition of the word because it is confusing. If your car is newer than my 1980 model, it has a computer that controls the ignition, fuel flow, ABS, climate control and myriad other operations, and all of that software is "information." You can say the same for half the appliances in your house. The elevators, security and other infrastructure in your office building are similarly controlled by computers. So are airplanes and airports. Factories are full of IT. I get the impression you aren't even aware of the number of "knowledge workers" who are employed
just writing software, or if you are, in your usual gruff way, you dismiss them as parasites even though the U.S. economy would collapse a la "Dark Angel" without them. (I'm sure you thought the Y2K scare was all over nothing. Our bank's mortgage statements, our electric bills, and the expiration dates on our diet soda cans weren't correct until 2001. All of us old Cobol programmers did triage and spent 1999 frantically remediating the most critical systems, so the bank's ATMs, the power company's computer-controlled generators, and the expiration date labelers for insulin actually did work right.)
Add to that the number of knowledge workers who work with the information that's manipulated by the software, and the picture starts to become clear. Why do you think automation continues to reduce the amount of human labor necessary to complete the tasks of the industrial era? This is no longer done with servomotors. It's all software and data files.
But the real explosion of IT and knowledge work is in what used to be called the discretionary income sector. Entertainment and other types of recreation have become digitized. I'm sure you think Pong is the state of the art in digital entertainment and you have no idea what was going on in the three-part South Park episode about World of Warcraft. (You surely watch South Park, since Parker and Stone obviously modeled Eric Cartman after you.) It's not just for the young. I know three highly disabled retired people who LIVE on the internet. One is a master in a MOMRPG and spends about twelve hours a day on it. Another is more of a producer than a consumer, and does research and sends daily reports on historical events to a number of companies that pay him for it. The third is the gatekeeper for five generations of his family. (My family, he's a cousin I never knew about until he tracked me down on the internet.)
In your above statement, I seem to see these new "workers" as creating goods that only other such similar "workers" use. So, ultimately, who pays for all that info crunching?
We all consume those goods, as I just explained.
It's also interesting that apparently the Indians can do this "information crunching" better, cheaper and faster. And I've heard that the Chinese are getting heavily involved. So, once this "information crunching" is shippped overseas, what are the present "information crunchers" gonna' do? Find more info to crunch?
Your information is way out of date. They're all immigrating to the USA and doing it here now. Inspire your great-grandchildren to do better in school than their parents, and maybe they'll be able to do those jobs too. We invented IT and we haven't quite lost our grip on the market yet the way we did on autos. Still, IT is a world market and the entire world will participate in both production and consumption. Estonia is becoming a real powerhouse in software development, but knowledge work is by no means limited to software development. I can see the traditionally compulsive recordkeepers in England becoming champions of data collection and distribution. And there's always music and art, and probably a hundred new kinds of stuff that we haven't imagined yet, just as medieval people couldn't have imagined most of the things we expend our labor and money on today.
None of them are supporting evidence of the claim, which is that you can get this stuff to work for people who don't know and don't care how it works, so that they can do their jobs unaided by computer pros.
Balderdash. They said the same thing about every new technology. I have three friends in their 80s who mastered the internet and a large variety of software. Still, we obviously have to making this stuff more user-friendly. That's my job: bring real engineering principles to software.
You are a computer jockey by trade. Once you have access to your network, you are basically home free.
Actually these days I'm a writer. I do exactly the same thing on the clock that I'm doing right now.
And that is where I think the whole scene hits a rock. Regardless of whose fault it is, as far as I can see almost everyone who does "knowledge work" with a computer in a corporation learns the essentials via oral transmission in the presence of someone who knew what to do. . . .
You, or probably the company you work for, are waaaay out of date. Besides, "knowledge work" is not just specifically using a corporate MIS database. Every time you look something up on the internet, or even on Animal Planet or the History Channel, you're a consumer of information, and if you use that information in your work or family you're probably also producing information. Don't get locked into the Industrial Era model of "work" taking place in an "office" and "home" being the place where you don't "work." That's what telecommuting is all about.
. . . . the same way guildmembers learned their trades in the Middle Ages, and depends on the continuing physical presence of computer professionals to keep their system functional.
There is a certain sense of the medieval guild craft in IT, which is why I refuse to call it "software engineering." But that's changing. And this is where the foreign professionals are pushing us. They believe in the CMM(I) and the PMBOK. Once again, America needs to catch up or get out of the way.
And you are talking about massively complicating that interface.
The software/software interface, to be sure. But not the human/computer interface. Compare OS/X to Windows, then compare Windows to DOS, then microcomputers to any legacy mainframe system.
Who makes those "automation" machines? Who makes the steel used in those machines? Who digs the iron ore? Who ships the iron ore? Who makes those ships? Who loads and unloads the iron ore? Who services those "automation" machines?
Do you really not keep up? Pick almost any industrial operation and you'll find that the number of humans required to do hands-on work has been steadily dropping. Even mining and farming.
What do those "automation" machines make?
As I noted earlier, they operate most of the apparati you own, from your coffeemaker to your car. Everything from your coffeemaker to your car provide far more service than their predecessors fifty years ago, and the services they provide are more accurate and convenient. But industrial processes are also the beneficiaries of "automation machines," or, as everyone else in the 21st century calls them, "computers."
And who buys what the "automation" machines make?
Some of them direct industrial processes that end up "making" coal and flour. But an increasing number "make" information, which we all buy, either as information, such as research articles, statistical tables and music CDs, or as process contol, such as the aforementioned software in your car or the programming in my electronic piano.
And where do the buyers get the money to buy what the machines make?
We're all producers and we get paid for it.
Supply and demand is not illogical, nor is it rooted in my own generation. It's a simple concept that's been the mainstay of civilization since man began to walk upright on the African plains.
Nonetheless the world of humans and its economic model has gone through three Paradigm Shifts since the advent of bipedal walking: agriculture and permanent settlements; city-building; and industry.
Man does not live by bread alone can just as easily be stated as ...Man does not live by technology alone.
Interesting comparison, since the balance of bread to technology made a quantum jump in each of those Paradigm Shifts. In the Mesolithic Era the "economy" was entirely about food, and we didn't even have bread yet.
Most of the technology of toolmaking was part of the food "industry," spears and arrows, with a tiny portion of it going into things like making clothes and inventing medicines. After the Agricultural Revolution there was suddenly a surplus of food so a measurable amount of capital (surplus resources not needed for food production) was diverted to other "markets," such as housing, furniture, brewing, and a bit of arts and entertainment. The Dawn of Civilization created an even greater surplus so people could become full-time professional teachers, musicians, priests, etc. The Industrial Revolution swung the balance the other way, and today far less than half of workers in the developed countries have anything to do with food production or distribution.
Most of what we have today--cars, tv sets, guitars, electric furnaces, skis, lawnmowers--are things that Max's forebears would have said, "Pish tush, no one will ever have enough money to support a big market in those things." They were wrong.
And yet you and Fraggle seem to feel that "information trading" is all that's needed. I just think "information" might not be very edible or nutritious.
You get a big kick out of pretending to be dense. We'll always need food production, but the portion of the workforce employed in it will continue to fall. Virtually everything else we spend money on is something about which some prehistoric Max once said, "Our civilization can't afford that, we need to put all of our labor into food production." And "information trading" is a naive term to encompass everything from the development of software to the design of computerized machinery to the planning of driverless highways to the creation of entire new databases to the explosion of art, music and MOMRPGs on the internet.
Yes, automation can grow our food, build our homes, entertain us, (even pick up the trash, etc.) with only a tiny fraction of the work force and is doing more so every year. Thus, more of the population will be concerned with "information processing" but the social / economic concepts are stuck in the past. Just because few are needed to produce the consumed goods does not mean we have a social structure that can distribute them.
Every Paradigm Shift ushered in a new economic model. In a hunter-gatherer culture, all the members of the small "tribe" were extended family members who did not need to keep accounts of who did what for whom. The technology of agricultural villages populated by multiple families required at least rudimentary unwritten accounting so that no one was allowed to be a deadbeat. The technology of cities populated by total strangers required real accounting (thus the invention of writing), but also economic planning to manage a significant surplus of capital wisely (thus the invention of money). Industry brought about the birth of economics as a discipline, with the supply/demand model and the formal concept of capitalism, banking, incorporation and stocks, and an explosion of contracts and business laws.
Everything we "know" about economics is a product of the Industrial Revolution. Before that, 98% of life was about food for 98% of the population and "economics" was so simple it didn't have a name. After the Information Revolution, people will think the same about us. "How quaint, for 98% of them, 98% of life was about physical products like food, fuel and machinery!"
In advanced societies, to a large and growing extent, the problem is not how to produce enough for all, but how to distribute this potential, without destruction of the incentives needed for it to be made.
That's been true since long before the Industrial Revolution. Our ancestors practiced slavery--a disincentive if ever there was one--for thousands of years. As recently as the 19th century, tens of millions of people believed that slave labor could power a modern economy.
Many living in virtual worlds (sciforums included) or wasting their time in role playing games, etc. - many ways now exist to "kill the surplus time."
You've completely missed the Paradigm Shift if you think SciForums does not add value to the economy. Sure we get frivolous, but a significant amount of individual tertiary and quaternary scholarship goes on here. This type of research and learning, including the arguments that eventually help the members sort out the truth, makes everyone a better citizen and better citizens give back to civilization what it needs, in compensation for what they receive from it. The cost of what we get from civilization continues to fall as civilization becomes more automated, so we can spend more of our time being entertained, but if each of us occasionally helps someone else find their way, we've done our part.
Remember that in the post-industrial economy the emphasis is no longer on mass production. My cousin who organizes the family records and the family reunions is doing the job of a genealogist and a travel agent. People who post funny videos on YouTube that are viewed by only a hundred people are doing the job of entertainers. Every time we help some befuddled young member figure out his math homework, we're doing the work of tutors. All of these are contributors to the economy.
Toffler even talks about the resurgence of what he calls "prosumers," people who make things for themselves. After all, in the not-too-distant past, most of what people had were things they produced for themselves. In the Industrial Era we got used to buying everything at Sears and Safeway, but now look at all the things we make for ourselves with our power tools, our sewing machines, our hobby equipment, our TiVos and our iPods. Not to mention the wealth of perfectly organized data on our computers.
Perhaps there won't be a lot of need for the exchange of money, as the things we make for ourselves become a larger portion of our shopping basket, and the prices of the other things in that basket (plus the occasional material or tool needed for "prosuming") keep falling because of automation. (And, to get back to my original point, because of a drastically decreased need to travel anywhere except for pleasure.)
Keep in mind that before the Industrial Revolution, many people lived their entire lives without ever having a significant quantity of money, because there just wasn't that much to spend it on.
I delude myself into justifying time spent here at sciforums by trying to correct errors (nonsense, I usually call them) when I can and think that is a "contribution"; but in truth sciforums etc. for most other entertainment IT is just a pointless game, to fill in surplus time.
No, the delusion is what you said last. You really are contributing to civilization by answering questions and having arguments. People get paid millions of dollars for doing that on TV and many of them aren't any better at it than we are.
Soon only a handful of people will have enough money to buy food let alone electronic gizzmos.
Wrong. Dead wrong. You're stuck in the economic model of the Industrial Era. A few hundred years ago, who could have foreseen making money by investing in the "stock" of a profitable "company"--whatever those words mean? Or by teaching the children of farmers to read and write? Or by practicing medicine on dogs and cats? We have no idea what the economy of the Information Era will look like.
