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FNPL 19
Well, we had Scott for two topics, but then he had to run.
Here are the topics:
--Ask the Economist.
--reductionism and the enjoyment of life. Does understanding everything in daily life to a fundamental level destroy the capacity to enjoy it? Does greater understanding of the universe make life less desirable? (9:06)
--In a future world of hyper efficiency, what will people do for a living? (16:20)
--Say you are a billionaire and you want to make your home town a better place. How do you use your money to make this happen? (21:03)
--Dave's Stalin Quote: death of a soldier is a tragedy, the death of a 1000 soldiers is a statistic. Was this ever true? Is it true today? (39:43)
--What will it take for Linux to make really progress in the marketplace against Windows? (44:21)
--Golf: is it still how business is acquired? Do you have to play golf to be successful? Can you play WoW instead? (53:21)
David was supposed to put us up on Digg, but I can't find it. If anyone is fooling around with Digg's podcast section and puts us up, we'd be most appreciative.
Here are the topics:
--Ask the Economist.
--reductionism and the enjoyment of life. Does understanding everything in daily life to a fundamental level destroy the capacity to enjoy it? Does greater understanding of the universe make life less desirable? (9:06)
--In a future world of hyper efficiency, what will people do for a living? (16:20)
--Say you are a billionaire and you want to make your home town a better place. How do you use your money to make this happen? (21:03)
--Dave's Stalin Quote: death of a soldier is a tragedy, the death of a 1000 soldiers is a statistic. Was this ever true? Is it true today? (39:43)
--What will it take for Linux to make really progress in the marketplace against Windows? (44:21)
--Golf: is it still how business is acquired? Do you have to play golf to be successful? Can you play WoW instead? (53:21)
David was supposed to put us up on Digg, but I can't find it. If anyone is fooling around with Digg's podcast section and puts us up, we'd be most appreciative.
Comments
I must say that as a fellow Ohioan, the local references and issues are quiet interesting.
No, I do not think we should actually hold back advancement of science and technology. If anything, we should push them forward with utmost speed, otherwise we will never solve the many problems of the world.
Yes, it is true that no technological advancement up to this point has reduced actual employment rates. However, there are two observations I make. The first is that I truly believe that current advances in technology have truly significantly decreased our need of labor. However, we employ far more labor than we need. There are millions upon millions of employed people who effectively do no work. They go to work and sleep, play solitaire, listen to podcasts, watch Youtube, etc. all day. Some, like myself, only do that for about half of each day. But that still means my company is hiring .5 employees too many, just counting myself.
The second observation is that in the vast majority of workplaces, technology is not being used to its maximum. At RIT for example, a technological institution, I worked part-time in multiple administrative offices in order to pay my way through. In most of these offices I was doing work that could have been done by a computer. Instead of hiring me to do the work I was doing part-time over multiple years, they could have hired me to create a computer system to do the work in a month or two. Also, the full-time administrative employees were doing work all day long, but they could have become part-time employees if technology was used as efficiently as possible. Most of it was simply a matter of replacing paper filing cabinets with MySQL databases and web interfaces. That alone would have saved multiple thousands of hours of manpower each year. There is lots of unnecessary inefficiency in the work place that is keeping people employed because technology is not utilized at any rate close to its full potential.
The last part of my point is that as time goes on we are going to slowly use the current technology more and more efficiently. Yes, that will lose some people their jobs. Yes, that will create some new jobs. In the ultra-long term, I don't see any other possibility besides widespread unemployment. When we have replicator technology a-la Diamond Age, all manufacturing will be eliminated forever. When we have people who actually know how to use computers, databases will replace most office workers. Yes new jobs will be created, but how will it add up to anywhere even close to those that are lost?
If insane unemployment results in an economic disaster of sorts, that will also result in a collapse of scientific and technological advancement. We can't do more research without more resources. It is possible for technology to advance at such a rate that we eliminate a need for labor before we solve the economic problem of having a huge surplus of labor. In that situation, we may end up with a halting of advancement. Therefore, we might by slowing scientific advancement and waiting for economic advancement, actually prevent slowing down science. There is a possible scenario where slowing research actually extends it, and we should watch out for it.
To answer the question "how will it add up" the answer really is that it always has. Free markets make the best use of human capital.
Wally is the majority. Wally is everywhere, and no one cares.
That's the point. There's NO ONE who cares in many companies. Not a single person. It's just that the rest of a given industry is equally wasteful, so there's no loss of competitiveness.