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> 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
by 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 agoYeah, 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.