7 ms·

In the Future Everything Will Be A Coffee Shop

79 points by PixelRobot 15y ago

tpatke 15y ago
tl;dr - I shop a lot on Amazon. Therefore we no longer need shops. We have the internet. Therefore we no longer need universities. The nice thing about "in the future" kind of statements is that they are impossible to disprove - especially when it is not specified how far in the future we are talking about. However, I think we are a long way from having gasoline delivered to your door and I always need to pop out for eggs, bread and milk. I also might need a hair cut in the future. Clothes are unlikely to be optional. My wife and I like to go to the movies. The kids like all kinds of shops... Sure, the internet is affecting retail sales and education. To what extent is very difficult to predict but it is unlikely to be as drastic as the OP suggests.
- batista 15y ago
  There's also the problem of what will you do with the millions of people working in retail economy, and with the assorted collapsed buying ability of the middle to lower class. We don't just keep jobs because we need them. We also keep them because we need the distribution of wealth that they make possible --without a way to ensure that, everything collapses. There can't be a billionaire without millions of wage slaves.
  - MBlume 15y ago
    Guaranteed income. If the economy doesn't require everyone's labor, a bunch of people just shouldn't work, so make sure they can eat and you're done. I don't understand all this American obsession with jobs for everyone.
    - ctdonath 15y ago
      Promise free food, and suddenly way more people are demanding it than the economy can support. Even if the economy can afford to give away food, society stagnates because there is no incentive to produce nor advance anything of value - be it making widgets, sweeping floors, or writing sonnets. Those who do produce the wealth unproductive others live on will decide to not bother (look up "go Galt"). We Americans are obsessed with jobs because we realize to not work leads to death, be it individual or cultural.
      - khafra 15y ago
        > Those who do produce the wealth unproductive others live on will decide to not bother (look up "go Galt"). Has this ever happened? Has anyone at any wealth level ever simply stopped making money because he was upset about taxes? I hear a lot of small-time sole proprieters talk about it, but I've never heard reliable reports of it actually happening.
        karamazov 15y ago
        pg has a great essay on this: http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html. A quick summary is that yes, people probably do choose not to do certain kinds of work when taxes are too high, but not in the way that Bill O'Reilly tends to advertise it - it's unlikely that someone is going to quit a high-paying job because their marginal tax rate went up a point. However, if you're undertaking an endeavor with a 5% chance of success, and a 30x tax-free payout in case of success (relative to a safe option), your expected payout is 1.5x with no taxes; 1.35x with a 10% tax rate; and 0.9x with a 40% tax rate. Whether or not you'd take the risk in the first two cases varies from person to person, but in the latter scenario, most people wouldn't bother; you'd have better expectancy at a roulette table.
        khafra 15y ago
        I appreciate the EV calculation. That would probably raise the marginal value at which someone like Warren Buffett would buy a company, fix its problems, and make it productive again. I doubt he'd shut down Berkshire Hathaway, or that it would even slow down people intent on creating a startup; but it would have a marginal effect. Still a bit different from the classic "going galt," though.
        yummyfajitas 15y ago
        Has anyone at any wealth level ever simply stopped making money because he was upset about taxes? Yes, it happened to Ronald Reagan. When the top tax rate was 90% (he was an actor at the time), he chose to make only two movies/year. He saw little point in making more movies since he wouldn't get paid for it. http://toomuchonline.org/the-tax-that-turned-ronald-reagan-right/ http://toomuchonline.org/the-tax-that-turned-ronald-reagan-r...
    - simonsarris 15y ago
      At least one prominent American, Thomas Paine (of the American revolution) advocated a guaranteed minimum income for everyone in his pamphlet Agrarian Justice, which was a real fascinating read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice The US Social Security administration keeps a full text of the pamphlet online: http://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html http://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html
      - msrpotus 15y ago
        Was a common idea back in the 1970's; might have even happened if not for Watergate, stagflation and then Reagan.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      Jobs provide more than income, they also help with self-esteem and prevent idleness, which in turn keeps things like crime down. I think useless make-work jobs are ultimately more feasible than guaranteed income for those reasons.
      - MBlume 15y ago
        > prevent idleness, which in turn keeps things like crime down This, this right here is exactly the kind of puritan thinking I find infuriating. Seriously, leisure as a terminal negative term in your utility function?! Never mind the people who are going to use the time to learn, to create art and share it, to spend time with their families -- if we don't shackle people to their counters and desks, they'll be rioting in the streets! How much theft/violence do you think is driven by need, by looking for a way to get by? If anything, I would expect violence and theft to go down.
        philwelch 15y ago
        Having been quite the slacker, I assure you there are massively diminishing returns to leisure time, unless you turn it into work. If you don't get anything done, you feel worthless. Maybe 20 hours a week is enough, but no work at all isn't good for you. Rioting in the streets is exactly what the welfare class of Britain did mere months ago. Art and study could certainly be more heavily subsidized, though. But I would count those as types of work.
        rms 15y ago
        Agreed with parent that this is basically a Puritan attitude. This idea that one creates self-worth via work is not anything like a cultural absolute. One of my favorite things about Balinese culture is that they don't have the idea that poverty is vice.
        philwelch 15y ago
        Maybe it's a Puritan attitude, but is it wrong? Who cares about cultural universals; if the Balinese are happier as impoverished slackers, live and let live.
  - JumpCrisscross 15y ago
    There can't be a billionaire without millions of wage slaves Except for where there can. Economic productivity is nowhere close to decoupling from population mass yet, but when it does, you won't need low or semi-skilled workers. There is a careful calculus happening at every level comparing the productivity of a human versus machines (and other humans). To deny that competitive spirit, à la Greece or Italia, builds systematic inefficiencies into the economy. At a certain point there won't be a place in the world for unskilled humans - they will be un-differentiable from a defective tool. TL;DR This may be a problem, but will be un-avoidable. Social structures, demographics, or both will have to adapt to new realities of productivity.
    - rbarooah 15y ago
      Do you know where there is any good analysis of the kinds of adaptations that might be possible to this new reality of productivity?
      - JumpCrisscross 15y ago
        It's funny, a Treasury paper from a 1994 conference in Canberra [1] looks like the oeuvre on the topic. Everything more recently has focused on rising productivity as a desired effect instead of an a priori cause. The paper concludes that in the short-run, rising productivity decreases inflation, increases the current account balance, increases GDP, and increases unemployment (and real wages) as aggregate supply increases without a commensurate increase in aggregate demand. The system starts equilibrating as people internalise the higher productivity into their investment assumptions. We could see falling rates on student loans coupled with rising returns on education (note: not just college education, as the OP pointed out) as increasing the incentive to invest in one's education. Given that our culture creates barriers to education the older one gets it seems like we will have a wasted generation of un-skilled workers who will just need to be worked through the system (being a cold, pragmatic macroeconomist here). Being civil to those people without incurring undue cost to the system will be the challenge. [1] http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/239/PDF/paper07.pdf http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/239/PDF/paper07.pdf
    - 15y ago
- onemoreact 15y ago
  I spent last year living next door to the mall. I went there for food, clothing, and some candles and that's about it. I live 1 block from a Best Buy and still buy all my electronics online, and I am happy to replace the local bookstore which died with my kindle. Thanksgiving was the last time I went into a grocery store (Peapod). Gas is just about the only thing I can't buy online and buying an electric car is becoming tempting. edit: I did get my replacement iPhone 4gs at the Apple store, but I got my first iPhone 4gs line despite walking past the place several times a week. PS: I expect something like a 30% reduction in retail store sales in the next 20 years, that may or may not be huge, but it is significant.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    The malls aren't for you, they're for people--predominately women--who shop recreationally.
    - bishnu 15y ago
      Are you sure? I would think that malls make a ton more money off of people popping in and out looking for specific items than people who hang out there all day, look for the best deals, sales (which are probably loss-leaders), etc. I have no numbers to back this up, so if anyone does I would be very interested in seeing it.
    - jrockway 15y ago
      Based on the amount of not-strictly-necessary stuff I own, I'm pretty sure I shop recreationally too... but I still don't go to malls or Worst Buy.
gregheo 15y ago
"Coffee shop" as in "gathering place". We have GitHub (social coding!) and now MITx (social learning?) I like the idea. It's like the whole point of the Internet -- bringing people together -- has reached brick and mortar.
justinhj 15y ago
I'd love it if my office could be the coffee shop, or wherever I happen to be, but so far I've found that after a certain level of complexity and team size you pretty much have to be in the same room to make constant progress. I'm not sure if this is a problem with software development in general or just in the niche that I work within.
- dsr_ 15y ago
  My company does a SAAS product aimed at banks. Everybody except the office manager telecommutes... sometimes. And everybody is in the office a large chunk of the time. It's good to be able to concentrate alone, AND it's good to be able to collaborate in person.
- ctdonath 15y ago
  [looks in desk drawer] What, doesn't everyone have at least two sets of barista tools in their cube?
Anirak 15y ago
It's always been my belief that the massive overhead of a college is not needed to get the best quality education, and that, in fact, this overhead causes too many students to be able to get by with less-than-stellar learning. Small group apprenticeships, 20-40 people, paying an expert full time to work 40 hours a week would completely immerse students in the material, allow them to pay less money than a traditional university, and allow the teacher to be paid more. It's a win for everyone, except the universities. Obviously you would lose the campus feel and the college experience, which is no doubt a very important factor for a number of people. But for those who perhaps a little older, this system would allow them to get arguably a better, more complete, experience, for a lower price. I'd love to get something like this started, but since I am but a mid-twenties man, I wouldn't know where to begin.
batista 15y ago
There are two candidates: one from the local state school with an appropriate college degree, a second with relevant MITx certificates of completion. Let’s say all other things between the candidates are equal. Which should be chosen? It’s true that an online education is not the same as the college experience. The candidate who went to college probably enjoyed his experience more, but how much is that experience worth to a potential employer? Unless he’s a member of the same fraternity, probably not as much as the college candidate would hope. And here’s the reality: the student debt of the college candidate controls, to some extent, his salary requirements. Since the MITx candidate appears to have the knowledge required, and has no student debt, he probably can be hired cheaper. Actually it's the inverse. The student debt accumulated will make the college graduate more desperate to accept any wage offer, and more fearful of keeping the job once there. People hiring love this kind of dependance.
- arethuza 15y ago
  If you have two candidates who appear to have the same skill levels and only one of them has had the distinct advantage of being to a top university and then it's surely the one with the more modest education who is likely to be most talented?
- JumpCrisscross 15y ago
  The debt burden makes the college graduate more desperate to work, but not for any wage. There is a hard line below which the student is unable to make payments and a softer line above that allowing for various qualities of life. The key in the analysis is if the non-grad can under-price the college grad near (or even below) that hard line for long enough to get entry level experience and thus be treated as another experienced hire. There is also something to be said for a self-starter who drives himself through an online programme and comes out with a working understanding of a topic.
antidaily 15y ago
Hopefully of the Amsterdam variety.
swalsh 15y ago
This whole scenario is kind of silly. I can understand the simplification in order to debate the merits of a free mass scale online education. However it's not realistic. No two candidates will ever be the same. Everyone has different levels of communication, most will think a little differently. If they're programmers, there's probably different levels of understanding of language concepts, or OOP concepts. In the scenario of one entry level candiate from a brick and mortar institution vs the candidate from MITx. I'm going to choose the person answers my questions most coherently, and writes the better code on my sample problem. I'm going to hire the employee who i believe will work with me better, and who will produce a higher quality product. I don't care which school he/she went to.
- bayleo 15y ago
  It's a gedankenexperiment and he's invoking ceteris paribus. It's no different than isolating the velocity of two balls rolling down a slope by opting to ignore things like friction & drag in a physics problem.
verelo 15y ago
"Book Stores Will Shrink to Coffee Shops" This could turn out to be true, i just hope that as paper books turn into history, we dont lose the quality associated with something going into print. The process of having enough confidence to "Print it" is pretty intense, and therefore the quality of a printed book v's any e-book or website will not match up without a significant amount of effort (which i suspect for business reasons wont get as much attention, because for business reasons you dont want to screw up a paper book) Its an interesting concept, i think we're just not there yet. People like paper books, the only way they'll go away is if they become unaffordable or just stop being produced (in which case i'm starting a publishing company focusing on paper books!)
lnanek 15y ago
Just because he prefers to buy online doesn't mean other people do. Google tried to sell phones online and it just didn't work, for example...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- rafd 15y ago
  It may be an issue of timing. Online shopping only took off in the last decade; the batch of consumers born after 1990 will have been exposed to internet shopping since childhood and will need much less convincing of buying anything online (than those who grew up used to buying things in stores).
- artsrc 15y ago
  Currently there is a complex and non-transparent pricing for phones purchased bundled with a service. This is used maximize profit share, disguise cost and create market power etc. Google tried to challenge this model. This has nothing to do with whether people buy from brick and mortar stores or online. I bought my phone online disentangled: http://www.clove.co.uk/ But I could have bought it online entangled: http://www.virginmobile.com.au/shop There are many things where I currently prefer buying online. And others where I prefer brick and mortar. The online stores are getting better more quickly than the brick and mortar stores.
mdasen 15y ago
This somewhat assumes that the purpose of universities is to gain knowledge useful to employers. While that might be a purpose of it, universities are also screening mechanisms. This is something by people in educational economics. While I think the author has a great point that we're looking to get workers who can get the job done, that isn't necessarily how businesses hire. The benefits from education don't just come in the form of increased human capital. Basically, you get bonus points for having the degree regardless of what it means to your human capital (there's a term for it that I can't come up with right now). For a long time, we've heard of jobs that don't need a college degree, but that you won't get hired for without it. In fact, that's the reasoning behind getting a college degree in many majors where one doesn't have the intention of working in that area. College is also a place where people get sorted into social groups according to smartness - social groupings that can continue well past college. After college, you meet friends of friends you had in college who also went to schools similar to your own and you get to build a network of people like you somewhat regardless of your success in life. Finally, the appeal of letters is great. If you're "John Smith, BS", you will always be that. You will get the respect of being a college grad for the rest of your life. In a world where things seem in flux, items that we place undue weight on are comforting. Heck, the same can be said of going to a good school. If you went to Harvard, you will always have gone to Harvard - something very few people can say. No matter how much you fail at life in the future, you have proven that you're the top by having gone there. Getting a certificate of completion from MITx isn't the same for many of these things. The fact that there aren't entrance requirements or limitations means that it isn't a certification that you're the top rung of society - just that you've learned some knowledge. Because it's so broadly available, it isn't sorting you into a social grouping. If universities are for knowledge transmission, the author is right - that these new offerings are wonderful. While maybe they should be for that purpose, I think that universities play a broader role in our society (I'm not saying it's a good or desirable role, just a role). They prove to others that I was accepted as not just someone they could transmit knowledge to, but a really smart person well above what would be needed to pass the courses. They connect me to other smart people who will become my social group as well as professional networking group. They make sure that no matter what I do in the future, I've proven that I'm one of the smart ones - one of the elite. My neighbor with a high-school diploma may make millions as a real-estate agent, but I'm a college grad! I can still feel proud (and maybe a little smug) because someone has certified that I'm part of the top of society - and no one has done that for him!
imperialWicket 15y ago
Could this be extended to a need for startups or meetups that focus entirely on internet-based education? Something akin to a formal book club with paid/volunteer instruction. I'm thinking about events like, "MyAwesomeEduStartup sponsors instructor [someone]'s coverage of [some MIT xCourse]." It would definitely be cool as a community service or meetup event. I think it would be hard to get people to pay for this just yet, but maybe in the near future.
rsanchez1 15y ago
People romanticize coffee shops too much.
- cryptoz 15y ago
  Could you explain what you mean? I've done my best work in coffee shops, hands down. I've also had the most enjoyable time doing it. It's way nicer than a library or an office or a chair at home. When you have a collection of other caffinated people working near you on different projects, you are often more motivated to work yourself. The atmosphere is ambient and doesn't offer much distraction, unless you want it to. I only get to spend about 3 or 4 hours / week in cafes these days (I have an office job) but those are some of the best work hours I get. I wish I could transition full-time to coffeeshops, and if I get a startup going I might try it.
LukeRB 15y ago
This post raises a bigger question for the US: What will we do with all of the vacant retail space that is abandoned as shopping continues to go online? I wonder if there are companies out there working on innovative ways to fill this space. After all, not _everything_ will be a coffee shop...right?
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
  There are many, many businesses other than retail shops that need space.
- reinhardt 15y ago
  Parking lots
EzGraphs 15y ago
The comparison between the local state university and MITx is noteworthy. One of the big arguments that I hear continuously for traditional colleges is that they provide opportunities for research and are a place to make social connections. While these opportunities are a very real incentive for top schools, there are a ton of colleges and universities that add little value on these fronts (especially relative to the cost).
georgemcfly 15y ago
Universities will shrink to coffeshops? That's a very CS/math-centric viewpoint. How are you going to do MITx with with Chemsitry? Physics? Biology? Med School? Anything that requires specialized equipment? How will you do team projects that require people to be in physical proximity to one another (building complicated things, for instance). Universities aren't going away. At most, some programs may become "virtualized" but even then there's a lot of value add with college. They have specialized libraries and librarians to help you find information that may not be on the internet. They can afford expensive equipment and the people to take care of them. It's often useful just to be around people in your same program to talk about projects and learn from each other. It may not be $100k value add, but that just means college will get less expensive and possibly shrink, not that it will go away all together.
Navarr 15y ago
I certainly hope not. I hate coffee.
jonybluz 15y ago
yeah right. Correspondance school courses aren't for everyone, even if they are hosted online these days(shiny and new, nothing like the old!). not everyone can grind it out in solitude. most people need strong social interaction associated with educational experiences to keep them interested. witness the prevalance of fraternity/sorority life on campus

79 points by PixelRobot 15y ago

tl;dr - I shop a lot on Amazon. Therefore we no longer need shops. We have the internet. Therefore we no longer need universities. The nice thing about "in the future" kind of statements is that they are impossible to disprove - especially when it is not specified how far in the future we are talking about. However, I think we are a long way from having gasoline delivered to your door and I always need to pop out for eggs, bread and milk. I also might need a hair cut in the future. Clothes are unlikely to be optional. My wife and I like to go to the movies. The kids like all kinds of shops... Sure, the internet is affecting retail sales and education. To what extent is very difficult to predict but it is unlikely to be as drastic as the OP suggests.

batista 15y ago
There's also the problem of what will you do with the millions of people working in retail economy, and with the assorted collapsed buying ability of the middle to lower class. We don't just keep jobs because we need them. We also keep them because we need the distribution of wealth that they make possible --without a way to ensure that, everything collapses. There can't be a billionaire without millions of wage slaves.
- MBlume 15y ago
  Guaranteed income. If the economy doesn't require everyone's labor, a bunch of people just shouldn't work, so make sure they can eat and you're done. I don't understand all this American obsession with jobs for everyone.
  - ctdonath 15y ago
    Promise free food, and suddenly way more people are demanding it than the economy can support. Even if the economy can afford to give away food, society stagnates because there is no incentive to produce nor advance anything of value - be it making widgets, sweeping floors, or writing sonnets. Those who do produce the wealth unproductive others live on will decide to not bother (look up "go Galt"). We Americans are obsessed with jobs because we realize to not work leads to death, be it individual or cultural.
    - khafra 15y ago
      > Those who do produce the wealth unproductive others live on will decide to not bother (look up "go Galt"). Has this ever happened? Has anyone at any wealth level ever simply stopped making money because he was upset about taxes? I hear a lot of small-time sole proprieters talk about it, but I've never heard reliable reports of it actually happening.
      - karamazov 15y ago
        pg has a great essay on this: http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html. A quick summary is that yes, people probably do choose not to do certain kinds of work when taxes are too high, but not in the way that Bill O'Reilly tends to advertise it - it's unlikely that someone is going to quit a high-paying job because their marginal tax rate went up a point. However, if you're undertaking an endeavor with a 5% chance of success, and a 30x tax-free payout in case of success (relative to a safe option), your expected payout is 1.5x with no taxes; 1.35x with a 10% tax rate; and 0.9x with a 40% tax rate. Whether or not you'd take the risk in the first two cases varies from person to person, but in the latter scenario, most people wouldn't bother; you'd have better expectancy at a roulette table.
        khafra 15y ago
        I appreciate the EV calculation. That would probably raise the marginal value at which someone like Warren Buffett would buy a company, fix its problems, and make it productive again. I doubt he'd shut down Berkshire Hathaway, or that it would even slow down people intent on creating a startup; but it would have a marginal effect. Still a bit different from the classic "going galt," though.
      - yummyfajitas 15y ago
        Has anyone at any wealth level ever simply stopped making money because he was upset about taxes? Yes, it happened to Ronald Reagan. When the top tax rate was 90% (he was an actor at the time), he chose to make only two movies/year. He saw little point in making more movies since he wouldn't get paid for it. http://toomuchonline.org/the-tax-that-turned-ronald-reagan-right/ http://toomuchonline.org/the-tax-that-turned-ronald-reagan-r...
  - simonsarris 15y ago
    At least one prominent American, Thomas Paine (of the American revolution) advocated a guaranteed minimum income for everyone in his pamphlet Agrarian Justice, which was a real fascinating read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice The US Social Security administration keeps a full text of the pamphlet online: http://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html http://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html
    - msrpotus 15y ago
      Was a common idea back in the 1970's; might have even happened if not for Watergate, stagflation and then Reagan.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Jobs provide more than income, they also help with self-esteem and prevent idleness, which in turn keeps things like crime down. I think useless make-work jobs are ultimately more feasible than guaranteed income for those reasons.
    - MBlume 15y ago
      > prevent idleness, which in turn keeps things like crime down This, this right here is exactly the kind of puritan thinking I find infuriating. Seriously, leisure as a terminal negative term in your utility function?! Never mind the people who are going to use the time to learn, to create art and share it, to spend time with their families -- if we don't shackle people to their counters and desks, they'll be rioting in the streets! How much theft/violence do you think is driven by need, by looking for a way to get by? If anything, I would expect violence and theft to go down.
      - philwelch 15y ago
        Having been quite the slacker, I assure you there are massively diminishing returns to leisure time, unless you turn it into work. If you don't get anything done, you feel worthless. Maybe 20 hours a week is enough, but no work at all isn't good for you. Rioting in the streets is exactly what the welfare class of Britain did mere months ago. Art and study could certainly be more heavily subsidized, though. But I would count those as types of work.
        rms 15y ago
        Agreed with parent that this is basically a Puritan attitude. This idea that one creates self-worth via work is not anything like a cultural absolute. One of my favorite things about Balinese culture is that they don't have the idea that poverty is vice.
        philwelch 15y ago
        Maybe it's a Puritan attitude, but is it wrong? Who cares about cultural universals; if the Balinese are happier as impoverished slackers, live and let live.
- JumpCrisscross 15y ago
  There can't be a billionaire without millions of wage slaves Except for where there can. Economic productivity is nowhere close to decoupling from population mass yet, but when it does, you won't need low or semi-skilled workers. There is a careful calculus happening at every level comparing the productivity of a human versus machines (and other humans). To deny that competitive spirit, à la Greece or Italia, builds systematic inefficiencies into the economy. At a certain point there won't be a place in the world for unskilled humans - they will be un-differentiable from a defective tool. TL;DR This may be a problem, but will be un-avoidable. Social structures, demographics, or both will have to adapt to new realities of productivity.
  - rbarooah 15y ago
    Do you know where there is any good analysis of the kinds of adaptations that might be possible to this new reality of productivity?
    - JumpCrisscross 15y ago
      It's funny, a Treasury paper from a 1994 conference in Canberra [1] looks like the oeuvre on the topic. Everything more recently has focused on rising productivity as a desired effect instead of an a priori cause. The paper concludes that in the short-run, rising productivity decreases inflation, increases the current account balance, increases GDP, and increases unemployment (and real wages) as aggregate supply increases without a commensurate increase in aggregate demand. The system starts equilibrating as people internalise the higher productivity into their investment assumptions. We could see falling rates on student loans coupled with rising returns on education (note: not just college education, as the OP pointed out) as increasing the incentive to invest in one's education. Given that our culture creates barriers to education the older one gets it seems like we will have a wasted generation of un-skilled workers who will just need to be worked through the system (being a cold, pragmatic macroeconomist here). Being civil to those people without incurring undue cost to the system will be the challenge. [1] http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/239/PDF/paper07.pdf http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/239/PDF/paper07.pdf
  - 15y ago
onemoreact 15y ago
I spent last year living next door to the mall. I went there for food, clothing, and some candles and that's about it. I live 1 block from a Best Buy and still buy all my electronics online, and I am happy to replace the local bookstore which died with my kindle. Thanksgiving was the last time I went into a grocery store (Peapod). Gas is just about the only thing I can't buy online and buying an electric car is becoming tempting. edit: I did get my replacement iPhone 4gs at the Apple store, but I got my first iPhone 4gs line despite walking past the place several times a week. PS: I expect something like a 30% reduction in retail store sales in the next 20 years, that may or may not be huge, but it is significant.
- philwelch 15y ago
  The malls aren't for you, they're for people--predominately women--who shop recreationally.
  - bishnu 15y ago
    Are you sure? I would think that malls make a ton more money off of people popping in and out looking for specific items than people who hang out there all day, look for the best deals, sales (which are probably loss-leaders), etc. I have no numbers to back this up, so if anyone does I would be very interested in seeing it.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    Based on the amount of not-strictly-necessary stuff I own, I'm pretty sure I shop recreationally too... but I still don't go to malls or Worst Buy.

gregheo 15y ago

"Coffee shop" as in "gathering place". We have GitHub (social coding!) and now MITx (social learning?) I like the idea. It's like the whole point of the Internet -- bringing people together -- has reached brick and mortar.

justinhj 15y ago

I'd love it if my office could be the coffee shop, or wherever I happen to be, but so far I've found that after a certain level of complexity and team size you pretty much have to be in the same room to make constant progress. I'm not sure if this is a problem with software development in general or just in the niche that I work within.

dsr_ 15y ago
My company does a SAAS product aimed at banks. Everybody except the office manager telecommutes... sometimes. And everybody is in the office a large chunk of the time. It's good to be able to concentrate alone, AND it's good to be able to collaborate in person.
ctdonath 15y ago
[looks in desk drawer] What, doesn't everyone have at least two sets of barista tools in their cube?

Anirak 15y ago

It's always been my belief that the massive overhead of a college is not needed to get the best quality education, and that, in fact, this overhead causes too many students to be able to get by with less-than-stellar learning. Small group apprenticeships, 20-40 people, paying an expert full time to work 40 hours a week would completely immerse students in the material, allow them to pay less money than a traditional university, and allow the teacher to be paid more. It's a win for everyone, except the universities. Obviously you would lose the campus feel and the college experience, which is no doubt a very important factor for a number of people. But for those who perhaps a little older, this system would allow them to get arguably a better, more complete, experience, for a lower price. I'd love to get something like this started, but since I am but a mid-twenties man, I wouldn't know where to begin.

batista 15y ago

There are two candidates: one from the local state school with an appropriate college degree, a second with relevant MITx certificates of completion. Let’s say all other things between the candidates are equal. Which should be chosen? It’s true that an online education is not the same as the college experience. The candidate who went to college probably enjoyed his experience more, but how much is that experience worth to a potential employer? Unless he’s a member of the same fraternity, probably not as much as the college candidate would hope. And here’s the reality: the student debt of the college candidate controls, to some extent, his salary requirements. Since the MITx candidate appears to have the knowledge required, and has no student debt, he probably can be hired cheaper. Actually it's the inverse. The student debt accumulated will make the college graduate more desperate to accept any wage offer, and more fearful of keeping the job once there. People hiring love this kind of dependance.

arethuza 15y ago
If you have two candidates who appear to have the same skill levels and only one of them has had the distinct advantage of being to a top university and then it's surely the one with the more modest education who is likely to be most talented?
JumpCrisscross 15y ago
The debt burden makes the college graduate more desperate to work, but not for any wage. There is a hard line below which the student is unable to make payments and a softer line above that allowing for various qualities of life. The key in the analysis is if the non-grad can under-price the college grad near (or even below) that hard line for long enough to get entry level experience and thus be treated as another experienced hire. There is also something to be said for a self-starter who drives himself through an online programme and comes out with a working understanding of a topic.

antidaily 15y ago

Hopefully of the Amsterdam variety.

swalsh 15y ago

This whole scenario is kind of silly. I can understand the simplification in order to debate the merits of a free mass scale online education. However it's not realistic. No two candidates will ever be the same. Everyone has different levels of communication, most will think a little differently. If they're programmers, there's probably different levels of understanding of language concepts, or OOP concepts. In the scenario of one entry level candiate from a brick and mortar institution vs the candidate from MITx. I'm going to choose the person answers my questions most coherently, and writes the better code on my sample problem. I'm going to hire the employee who i believe will work with me better, and who will produce a higher quality product. I don't care which school he/she went to.

bayleo 15y ago
It's a gedankenexperiment and he's invoking ceteris paribus. It's no different than isolating the velocity of two balls rolling down a slope by opting to ignore things like friction & drag in a physics problem.

verelo 15y ago

"Book Stores Will Shrink to Coffee Shops" This could turn out to be true, i just hope that as paper books turn into history, we dont lose the quality associated with something going into print. The process of having enough confidence to "Print it" is pretty intense, and therefore the quality of a printed book v's any e-book or website will not match up without a significant amount of effort (which i suspect for business reasons wont get as much attention, because for business reasons you dont want to screw up a paper book) Its an interesting concept, i think we're just not there yet. People like paper books, the only way they'll go away is if they become unaffordable or just stop being produced (in which case i'm starting a publishing company focusing on paper books!)

lnanek 15y ago

Just because he prefers to buy online doesn't mean other people do. Google tried to sell phones online and it just didn't work, for example...

deleted 15y ago
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rafd 15y ago
It may be an issue of timing. Online shopping only took off in the last decade; the batch of consumers born after 1990 will have been exposed to internet shopping since childhood and will need much less convincing of buying anything online (than those who grew up used to buying things in stores).
artsrc 15y ago
Currently there is a complex and non-transparent pricing for phones purchased bundled with a service. This is used maximize profit share, disguise cost and create market power etc. Google tried to challenge this model. This has nothing to do with whether people buy from brick and mortar stores or online. I bought my phone online disentangled: http://www.clove.co.uk/ But I could have bought it online entangled: http://www.virginmobile.com.au/shop There are many things where I currently prefer buying online. And others where I prefer brick and mortar. The online stores are getting better more quickly than the brick and mortar stores.

mdasen 15y ago

This somewhat assumes that the purpose of universities is to gain knowledge useful to employers. While that might be a purpose of it, universities are also screening mechanisms. This is something by people in educational economics. While I think the author has a great point that we're looking to get workers who can get the job done, that isn't necessarily how businesses hire. The benefits from education don't just come in the form of increased human capital. Basically, you get bonus points for having the degree regardless of what it means to your human capital (there's a term for it that I can't come up with right now). For a long time, we've heard of jobs that don't need a college degree, but that you won't get hired for without it. In fact, that's the reasoning behind getting a college degree in many majors where one doesn't have the intention of working in that area. College is also a place where people get sorted into social groups according to smartness - social groupings that can continue well past college. After college, you meet friends of friends you had in college who also went to schools similar to your own and you get to build a network of people like you somewhat regardless of your success in life. Finally, the appeal of letters is great. If you're "John Smith, BS", you will always be that. You will get the respect of being a college grad for the rest of your life. In a world where things seem in flux, items that we place undue weight on are comforting. Heck, the same can be said of going to a good school. If you went to Harvard, you will always have gone to Harvard - something very few people can say. No matter how much you fail at life in the future, you have proven that you're the top by having gone there. Getting a certificate of completion from MITx isn't the same for many of these things. The fact that there aren't entrance requirements or limitations means that it isn't a certification that you're the top rung of society - just that you've learned some knowledge. Because it's so broadly available, it isn't sorting you into a social grouping. If universities are for knowledge transmission, the author is right - that these new offerings are wonderful. While maybe they should be for that purpose, I think that universities play a broader role in our society (I'm not saying it's a good or desirable role, just a role). They prove to others that I was accepted as not just someone they could transmit knowledge to, but a really smart person well above what would be needed to pass the courses. They connect me to other smart people who will become my social group as well as professional networking group. They make sure that no matter what I do in the future, I've proven that I'm one of the smart ones - one of the elite. My neighbor with a high-school diploma may make millions as a real-estate agent, but I'm a college grad! I can still feel proud (and maybe a little smug) because someone has certified that I'm part of the top of society - and no one has done that for him!

imperialWicket 15y ago

Could this be extended to a need for startups or meetups that focus entirely on internet-based education? Something akin to a formal book club with paid/volunteer instruction. I'm thinking about events like, "MyAwesomeEduStartup sponsors instructor [someone]'s coverage of [some MIT xCourse]." It would definitely be cool as a community service or meetup event. I think it would be hard to get people to pay for this just yet, but maybe in the near future.

rsanchez1 15y ago

People romanticize coffee shops too much.

cryptoz 15y ago
Could you explain what you mean? I've done my best work in coffee shops, hands down. I've also had the most enjoyable time doing it. It's way nicer than a library or an office or a chair at home. When you have a collection of other caffinated people working near you on different projects, you are often more motivated to work yourself. The atmosphere is ambient and doesn't offer much distraction, unless you want it to. I only get to spend about 3 or 4 hours / week in cafes these days (I have an office job) but those are some of the best work hours I get. I wish I could transition full-time to coffeeshops, and if I get a startup going I might try it.

LukeRB 15y ago

This post raises a bigger question for the US: What will we do with all of the vacant retail space that is abandoned as shopping continues to go online? I wonder if there are companies out there working on innovative ways to fill this space. After all, not _everything_ will be a coffee shop...right?

HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
There are many, many businesses other than retail shops that need space.
reinhardt 15y ago
Parking lots

EzGraphs 15y ago

The comparison between the local state university and MITx is noteworthy. One of the big arguments that I hear continuously for traditional colleges is that they provide opportunities for research and are a place to make social connections. While these opportunities are a very real incentive for top schools, there are a ton of colleges and universities that add little value on these fronts (especially relative to the cost).

georgemcfly 15y ago

Universities will shrink to coffeshops? That's a very CS/math-centric viewpoint. How are you going to do MITx with with Chemsitry? Physics? Biology? Med School? Anything that requires specialized equipment? How will you do team projects that require people to be in physical proximity to one another (building complicated things, for instance). Universities aren't going away. At most, some programs may become "virtualized" but even then there's a lot of value add with college. They have specialized libraries and librarians to help you find information that may not be on the internet. They can afford expensive equipment and the people to take care of them. It's often useful just to be around people in your same program to talk about projects and learn from each other. It may not be $100k value add, but that just means college will get less expensive and possibly shrink, not that it will go away all together.

Navarr 15y ago

I certainly hope not. I hate coffee.

jonybluz 15y ago

yeah right. Correspondance school courses aren't for everyone, even if they are hosted online these days(shiny and new, nothing like the old!). not everyone can grind it out in solitude. most people need strong social interaction associated with educational experiences to keep them interested. witness the prevalance of fraternity/sorority life on campus