The Curse of the Computer

[kentuck]

If we look at the world with a more futuristic eye, we can see the technological revolution taking shape as we speak. We worry about the high unemployment rate. Jobs have left this country and they aren't coming back. Jobs that are here are being downsized or done away with completely. Why?

Computers.

Computers and the Internet is making it possible to sell and advertise almost entirely without human hands. There is a minimal amount of human "work" required to run much of the business in America anymore. The added advantage is that computers do not require days off or insurance coverage.

Even manufacturing has been shipped overseas to countries where labor is much cheaper. When we bailed out General Motors, they were making great profits overseas. They were just not making any money in this country. The advanced stages of capitalism has seized our country.

What does the future hold? The jobs that will be the best paying will be the ones that are today considered the most menial, for example, garbage collection, plumbers, and general repairmen. Even the computer jobs will migrate to the cheapest labor market. It is happening already. We are entering a brave new world.

In a consumer society, the only secure jobs are those of necessity. People get sick. They must have a roof over their heads and they must have a degree of comfort. They must be able to travel from one place to another as quickly and as comfortable as possible. Those jobs will remain. Others have already left or are leaving.

On the positive side, it could make for a shorter work week and more leisure time. The pursuit of wealth would no longer be the national past-time. There would be more time for families and pleasurable pursuits. The trick is to transition ourselves for these changes.

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[jotsy]

1. Check out the Institute for Local Self Reliance.

I see a time when corporate interests are going to dump us on our hineys because as a public we're of no value as a labor market or a consumer base. Likely among the most comprehensive of challenges a civilization can encounter, I think we're up to it, but not without abandoning the gimmees.

Have a bunny sunny day, sir.

[Greyhound]

2. Intersting take.

The networked computer is the next major advance in human communication, and as has happened in each preceding major advance, it will dramatically change the face of humanity. Writing, books, printing press, telephony*, and now computers literally change how people view the world and their place in it. Unfortunately, this is never good for the existing powers and so it is met with violence, and there is no reason to expect it will be any different this time.

What we have today is a paradigm shift (in the accurate sense of the term) butting up against an obsolete system of power distribution. We simply don't need very many people working to meet the needs of humanity, but the anachronistic systems of economy/control cannot cope with a large percentage of population that doesn't have to toil long hours every day to subsist. So the response of power is to suppress, slow, divert, distract, whatever it can to prevent it's growing irrelevance.

It is not a curse, rather it is the means to the next stage in human society, provided the inevitable conflict between the old and the new doesn't burn the whole thing down. But like the Chinese curse tells us, the transition will be bad.
:kick: & R