Posted on 08/01/2012 5:36:49 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
(snip) My pessimism is supported by a simple historical observation. The achievements of the last 25 years were actually not that big a deal compared with what we did in the preceding 25 years, 1961-1986 (e.g. landing men on the moon). And the 25 years before that, 1935-1960, were even more impressive (e.g. splitting the atom). In the words of Peter Thiel, perhaps the lone skeptic within a hundred miles of Palo Alto: In our youth we were promised flying cars. What did we get? 140 characters.
Moreover, technoptimists have to explain why the rapid scientific technological progress in those earlier periods coincided with massive conflict between armed ideologies. (Which was the most scientifically advanced society in 1932? Germany.)
So let me offer some simple lessons of history: More and faster information is not good in itself. Knowledge is not always the cure. And network effects are not always positive.
....
By the same token, there was great technological progress during the 1930s. But it did not end the Depression. That took a world war. So could something comparably grim happen in our own time? Don’t rule it out. Let’s remind ourselves of the sequence of events: economic depression, crisis of democracy, road to war. ....
In the 1930s script, democratic decay is followed by conflict. I am not one of those who expects Europe’s monetary meltdown to end in war. Europeans are too old, disarmed, and pacifist for there to be more than a few desultory urban riots this summer. But I am much less confident about peace to Europe’s south and east. North Africa and the Middle East now have the ingredients in place for a really big war: economic volatility, ethnic tension, a youthful population, and an empire in decline—in this case the American Empire. ....
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
You are both right.
The first wave started with the steam engine and fossil fuels. Once we had a cheap, non animal or human source of energy, a lot of things were possible. It also dislocated much of the population in ways we haven’t adjusted to you. I grew up on a farm, and what my father farmed couldn’t support you now, and he farmed in an area covered by four small farms when he was a kid. That alone is 20 people who were no longer needed to do the job.
Industry is the same. The factory that needed 200 people to make a widget now only needs 50. The problem is that we still have the same or larger amounts of people who only have the ability to work in low skilled labor. We need to have something for them to do, beside eat on the dole.
One upcoming form of this is "large-scale 3D printing", to wit: rather than hiring a bunch of individually cheap workers to assemble a small building, a business can haul in a clever machine which can "print" the main structure with concrete, operated by just a few skilled workers. Example
The nature of human progress is to build a business serving a new need, satisfy that need, and to reduce the resources needed (human and otherwise) to produce it.
Bucky Fuller - Ephemeralization
the ability of technological advancement to do “more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeralization
and the thing about information is it objectifies human lives. A despot's dream.
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