4 ms·

Why do I suddenly get the sense that no amount of stimulus funding is going to solve the structural unemployment issue in the USA? We appear to have crossed the

by FD3SA 15y ago

Why do I suddenly get the sense that no amount of stimulus funding is going to solve the structural unemployment issue in the USA? We appear to have crossed the technology Rubicon, whereupon the ratio of jobs created to jobs destroyed by technology becomes less than unity. The Luddite fallacy only holds true as long as the ratio is above or at unity. Interesting times.

TylerE 15y ago
That's been true for a looong time. Remember when offices had typing pools and messenger boys?
morrow 15y ago
http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_... I agree that it won't be fixed by stimulus - but it's because I believe that the current system is undergoing a form of violent restructuring, where current institutions and platforms are fighting for their survival against a tidal shift that's moving from a society dominated by centralized, few, powerful institutions, to decentralized, numerous, systems and platforms of democratic organization. I think what makes technology an always doubted, yet positive, force is that the rate of change and the instability it causes makes short term guesses easier to make successfully than longer term ones. For example, at the birth of the cell-phone, it's easier to predict that this new tech will kill off the pay-phone industry than it is to predict the future coming of the iPhone, or app stores, or the market 3d cell-phone cameras. It's easier to look at the current landscape, and predict how this new tech will damage it, than it is to look at a blank slate, and predict what of an infinite number of possibilities will actually work in the newly created space.
- DanielBMarkham 15y ago
  It's also easy to step back until something good comes of it, focus on just the good, and ignore the bad. Take your cell phone example. Cell phones are allowing the government to track the location of all it's citizens. Without a warrant in some cases. If somebody would have predicted that back when cellphones were introduced, people would have laughed them out of town. It was a ludicrous and paranoid idea. Yet here we are. We sit around watching videos, liking Facebook comments, and checking in at various events, all while a critical part of our anonymity has been destroyed. I'm not saying it's all bad. I'm saying there is a mix. If you ask me, I'd rather not have cell phones and have a more private life. No amount of slick packaging and voice control interfaces is going to make up for what I've lost. But we don't have to choose, of course. We can have our cake and eat it too. What's happened is that technology is staying leaps and bounds ahead of politics. It's like we're having to re-engineer the social contract every couple of decades or so. And the yahoos we have in power around the world are much more interested in their petty political games than this seismic shift that's occurring under them (which, in all honesty, they probably don't understand and probably couldn't deal with anyway). So the system gets more and more out of whack. Just wanted to balance what you were saying. This isn't a story of technology always making things better even though we sometimes doubt. It's a story of technology making things more complicated and making the individual more powerful in some ways and that having effects that we poorly understand.
  - morrow 15y ago
    I completely agree with you, it's definitely easy to filter the evidence in favor of or against new technology to make a point, or to satisfy a worldview. I also agree that every new technological advancement offers the possibility to use it for both good and bad purposes. I think what I was trying to say to the original commenter was what you've offered me, which is a balance to the argument that new technology will have an inherently good or bad effect on the world. I probably mis-represented my opinion by overstating the positive effects of tech - I think my real point was that most kinds of change begin with negatives - and that the reason people continually doubt technology or seem to overplay the negatives is due to it's ever-changing nature. Not that it will inevitably lead to something good and the bad part is just a hiccup - it's just easier to predict the short-term bad than it is to predict the long term good.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
This is like saying that no amount of firebombing is going to solve the problem of forest fires in the US. Excess government spending doesn't create jobs or "stimulate" the economy. Japan tried it for nearly 2 decades and barely survived. The current state of the global or American economy proves absolutely nothing about technology or the equilibrium level of structural unemployment. Similarly, the boom of the late 1990s did not prove that it had become possible to start a profitable company without a business plan or means of revenue, it was merely a temporary state, not a steady state condition.
tonyedgecombe 15y ago
I think the issue is the shift of jobs away from unskilled labour towards skilled. Up until recently there were plenty of jobs for people without an academic ability, those jobs have either gone or are going. At the moment we seem to be brushing this problem under the carpet, sooner or later we are going to have to deal with it.

by FD3SA 15y ago

TylerE 15y ago

That's been true for a looong time. Remember when offices had typing pools and messenger boys?

morrow 15y ago

http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_... I agree that it won't be fixed by stimulus - but it's because I believe that the current system is undergoing a form of violent restructuring, where current institutions and platforms are fighting for their survival against a tidal shift that's moving from a society dominated by centralized, few, powerful institutions, to decentralized, numerous, systems and platforms of democratic organization. I think what makes technology an always doubted, yet positive, force is that the rate of change and the instability it causes makes short term guesses easier to make successfully than longer term ones. For example, at the birth of the cell-phone, it's easier to predict that this new tech will kill off the pay-phone industry than it is to predict the future coming of the iPhone, or app stores, or the market 3d cell-phone cameras. It's easier to look at the current landscape, and predict how this new tech will damage it, than it is to look at a blank slate, and predict what of an infinite number of possibilities will actually work in the newly created space.

DanielBMarkham 15y ago
It's also easy to step back until something good comes of it, focus on just the good, and ignore the bad. Take your cell phone example. Cell phones are allowing the government to track the location of all it's citizens. Without a warrant in some cases. If somebody would have predicted that back when cellphones were introduced, people would have laughed them out of town. It was a ludicrous and paranoid idea. Yet here we are. We sit around watching videos, liking Facebook comments, and checking in at various events, all while a critical part of our anonymity has been destroyed. I'm not saying it's all bad. I'm saying there is a mix. If you ask me, I'd rather not have cell phones and have a more private life. No amount of slick packaging and voice control interfaces is going to make up for what I've lost. But we don't have to choose, of course. We can have our cake and eat it too. What's happened is that technology is staying leaps and bounds ahead of politics. It's like we're having to re-engineer the social contract every couple of decades or so. And the yahoos we have in power around the world are much more interested in their petty political games than this seismic shift that's occurring under them (which, in all honesty, they probably don't understand and probably couldn't deal with anyway). So the system gets more and more out of whack. Just wanted to balance what you were saying. This isn't a story of technology always making things better even though we sometimes doubt. It's a story of technology making things more complicated and making the individual more powerful in some ways and that having effects that we poorly understand.
- morrow 15y ago
  I completely agree with you, it's definitely easy to filter the evidence in favor of or against new technology to make a point, or to satisfy a worldview. I also agree that every new technological advancement offers the possibility to use it for both good and bad purposes. I think what I was trying to say to the original commenter was what you've offered me, which is a balance to the argument that new technology will have an inherently good or bad effect on the world. I probably mis-represented my opinion by overstating the positive effects of tech - I think my real point was that most kinds of change begin with negatives - and that the reason people continually doubt technology or seem to overplay the negatives is due to it's ever-changing nature. Not that it will inevitably lead to something good and the bad part is just a hiccup - it's just easier to predict the short-term bad than it is to predict the long term good.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

This is like saying that no amount of firebombing is going to solve the problem of forest fires in the US. Excess government spending doesn't create jobs or "stimulate" the economy. Japan tried it for nearly 2 decades and barely survived. The current state of the global or American economy proves absolutely nothing about technology or the equilibrium level of structural unemployment. Similarly, the boom of the late 1990s did not prove that it had become possible to start a profitable company without a business plan or means of revenue, it was merely a temporary state, not a steady state condition.

tonyedgecombe 15y ago

I think the issue is the shift of jobs away from unskilled labour towards skilled. Up until recently there were plenty of jobs for people without an academic ability, those jobs have either gone or are going. At the moment we seem to be brushing this problem under the carpet, sooner or later we are going to have to deal with it.