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The entire article hinges on the principle that everything collapses because there is "on-paper upward mobility of functional industrial workers to dysfunctiona

The entire article hinges on the principle that everything collapses because there is "on-paper upward mobility of functional industrial workers to dysfunctional knowledge economy workers." Translation: the knowledge economy isn't as robust as the industrial economy because, reasons. He never gets into those reasons because he doesn't seem to understand industrial production, and many get it wrong. The industrial worker is actually not an intrinsically special person. The engineers behind the industrial systems, sure. But those engineers still exist in the knowledge economy, and the barrier to become an engineer in a knowledge economy, I would argue, is far lower. In many ways, the industrial worker can be a liability to the knowledge economy, not an asset, because they need to be trained, systems need to be made to met their capabilities, and they will hold on to those systems for a labor generation, while innovations get tabled. I actually agree with a lot of isolated premises in the article, but he arrives at the conclusion in a roundabout way. He says, for instance, factories in a post-industrial society would be local. Yes, I agree. We will only have resource streams and local cities would have factories that make everything. That's the actual realization of a pure knowledge economy, with many millions of decentralized factories making everything, with a few smart engineers running things, and people dropping out of the labor pool. This is all good, and does not lead to technological decline in any way.

notpachet 4y ago
> Translation: the knowledge economy isn't as robust as the industrial economy because, reasons. While I didn't agree with everything in the article myself, I would say the translation is actually more along the lines of: "As a civilization becomes more efficient, fewer of the members of the population need to know how to actually do anything. The civilization becomes less robust in the face of new pressures because all everyone knows how to do is sit around in their underwear and play Call of Duty when they aren't LARPing being a knowledge worker." If you can survive without chopping wood, soon enough you'll forget how to chop wood. If a civilization can survive long enough without anyone knowing how to build/repair the technology that sits a level below the current water mark, it will. See: Cobol codebases.
- joshcryer 4y ago
  Yeah, I know the argument, but how many people in industrial society know how to do anything? The engineers build the systems that the factory workers use. In fact, the workers generally know only one subset of some problem that is being solved by the manufacturing process. You have to be able to show how this "knowledge gap" causes a collapse because the "new engineers" fail to understand the building blocks and the systems will erode over time. As long as the standards exist someone can "follow the recipe." I can totally concede that over long epochs of time of stability there would be a wax and wane of technological prowess and that at some point interest, or active knowledge, would be lost. But as long as the knowledge is still there then it would not take much for this future society to repair and regain its knowledge. I see absolutely no justification for a collapse scenario. Your CoD LARPers will have to unclog their toilet eventually.

notpachet 4y ago

> Translation: the knowledge economy isn't as robust as the industrial economy because, reasons. While I didn't agree with everything in the article myself, I would say the translation is actually more along the lines of: "As a civilization becomes more efficient, fewer of the members of the population need to know how to actually do anything. The civilization becomes less robust in the face of new pressures because all everyone knows how to do is sit around in their underwear and play Call of Duty when they aren't LARPing being a knowledge worker." If you can survive without chopping wood, soon enough you'll forget how to chop wood. If a civilization can survive long enough without anyone knowing how to build/repair the technology that sits a level below the current water mark, it will. See: Cobol codebases.

joshcryer 4y ago
Yeah, I know the argument, but how many people in industrial society know how to do anything? The engineers build the systems that the factory workers use. In fact, the workers generally know only one subset of some problem that is being solved by the manufacturing process. You have to be able to show how this "knowledge gap" causes a collapse because the "new engineers" fail to understand the building blocks and the systems will erode over time. As long as the standards exist someone can "follow the recipe." I can totally concede that over long epochs of time of stability there would be a wax and wane of technological prowess and that at some point interest, or active knowledge, would be lost. But as long as the knowledge is still there then it would not take much for this future society to repair and regain its knowledge. I see absolutely no justification for a collapse scenario. Your CoD LARPers will have to unclog their toilet eventually.