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I forget what the effect is called but when some new technology or industry becomes the dominate method or form of productivity it tends to cause other areas of
by KingMachiavelli 5y ago
I forget what the effect is called but when some new technology or industry becomes the dominate method or form of productivity it tends to cause other areas of industry to suffer. Partly due to brain drain from previous industry X to new industry Y. It's also just that people think Y is newer and worth more so more time and energy gets moved from X to Y.
In the 20th century, new building materials was one of the new technologies of the day so it makes sense that a lot of time and energy was spent doing things related to buildings/construction. The end of the 20th century and the 21st are dominated by technology and software being the growing method of productivity. Plus now we have software and math that (probably) shows moving a building 90 degrees is going to cause 10 new problems we didn't even consider in the 20th century.
It's all about opportunity cost. In the 20th century we built a ton of buildings that stored and manipulated giant volumes of paper documents and physical files. Now we have databases and virtual filesystems so we don't need giant clerk offices or document storage buildings. Giant data-center buildings might be the most apt comparison on some level.
- Wolfenstein98k 5y agoInteresting, thanks. I guess in a way we perform majestically-large relocations of digital storage buildings all the time now, which as you put it is roughly equivalent.
- anamax 5y agoIt's related to Jevon's "Paradox", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox, which actually isn't a "paradox" at all, but merely an entirely foreseeable consequence of supply/demand. It's also related to "The pinnacle of {technology} happened right as it was superseded by {other technology}". (Well, duh. People stopped trying to improve {technology}, so no improvements happened.)
- Aeolun 5y agoNot entirely related, but I’m sort of sad that these giant storage buildings don’t need to exist any more. There’s something about having everything on paper, and getting a printed memo on your desk that can’t be replaced by email.
- atom_arranger 5y agoI think you’re thinking of “Dutch disease”: “In economics, the Dutch disease is the apparent causal relationship between the increase in the economic development of a specific sector (for example natural resources) and a decline in other sectors (like the manufacturing sector or agriculture).”