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To: Mr. Bird
It certainly is an emotional issue, and I understand the turmoil IT people are going through. But I don't think anyone should dismiss the very real possibility that such happenings are good for everyone in the long run.
Except that as you contine to dismantle our technological base, you degrade our ability to spawn 'the next big thing'. The explosion of internet-related technology didn't spring out of nowhere. It sprang out of the minds and labor of countless technically skilled people who were part of a thriving computer industry. As you ship more and more IT jobs out of the country, you decrease the likelyhood that you'll have an enthusiastic, technically creative workforce that will *allow* such industries to arise in the US.
But hey, maybe The Next Big Thing will be a new way of flipping burgers or greeting Walmart customers. Then we'll be in perfect position to seize the opportunity!
88 posted on 02/04/2004 11:53:16 AM PST by blowfish
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To: blowfish
It may not be flipping burgers, but one of the problems about contemplating the Next Big Thing is that everyone just assumes it will spawn from the head of a programmer.

It is quite plausible that the Next Big Thing will merely be a new use for current technology (information or otherwise). After all, the "internet" was certainly the Next Big Thing, but the real economic benefits came from the creative people who figured out how to use it to make money.

Will we watch a movie 30 years from now and laugh when a young man is told the future is in "computers", just as we laugh now when Dustin Hoffman is told about "plastics" in The Graduate? I mean, are we so centered on IT as the boom industry that we fail to see opportunities elsewhere?

89 posted on 02/04/2004 12:11:16 PM PST by Mr. Bird
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To: blowfish
But hey, maybe The Next Big Thing will be a new way of flipping burgers or greeting Walmart customers. Then we'll be in perfect position to seize the opportunity!

Hey, don't give these globalists any ideas. They'd probably cheer on such an outcome. A new "job" for the Ph.D.'s in condensed matter physics that are forced to work at Wendy's and Mac's: figure out the optimum closest-packing arrangement of the fries as you stuff them into the box or packet. You can get the Ph.D. in chemical engineering to calculate the optimum mix or water and chemicals as he's mopping the floor at KMart. Tell the weapons designer to use his skills down at the local beauty shop to redesign all those hairdryers. But, hey, its the "free market", and these people have only themselves to blame for choosing the wrong career. Who cares if we lack the intellectual capital and infrastructure to be a world power in military and technology capabilities? If the "free market" tells us to give those people the boot, we must do it.

90 posted on 02/04/2004 12:14:00 PM PST by chimera
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