the new economy, a question

[Henry C.K. Liu]

Your observations are valid.  High tech itself CAN be neutral, except that it tends
to fall under the control of the oppressive elite who impose socio-political
dimensions of its appplication for an exploitative social order.
Gunpowder was invented in China as a by-product in the search for extending
longivity and it was then used to kill.  There are peaceful uses of nuclear energy
but we are still waiting for them.
The trickling down of high tech to the disadavantaged perpetuates exploitation.  The
arguement has similarity to issues of gun control.
People kill people with guns.  Guns in the wrong hand kills the wrong people.

Henry C.K. Liu

Paul Henry Rosenberg wrote:


> Henry C.K. Liu wrote:
>
> > The organization of a high tech economy is the bipolar shift
> > toward the highly skilled and the minimally skilled at the
> > expense of the middle.
>
> This is, however, VERY MUCH a product of social, cutltural, political
> and economic forces that have nothing to do with high tech per se.
>
> The internet itself is proof of how high-tech CAN be a levelling force.
>
> Email is simplicity itself. HTML is a relatively simply programming
> languae, and programs to automate Webpage creation are almost as easy to
> use as doing it yourself from scratch.  It's taking an AWFUL lot of
> capital investment to reshape cybersapce into a sharply hierarchical
> domain.
>
> IMHO, the long-term consequences of the high-tech revolution we're going
> through are still very much up for grabs.  The technology itself is
> HIGHLY plastic, and can be as easily shaped into broadly inclusive
> directions as into narrowly exclusive ones.
>
> > It is the nature of a high tech economy that retraining of
> > skill generally means a down grading of skills, because high
> > tech skills are more efficiently embeddable in more receptive
> > youthful minds.
>
> Oldsters entering new fields at midlife are VERY likely to outperform
> youngsters.  They are far LESS likely to work long hours at lousy pay.
> Unionization would have an ENOURMOUS impact on the supposedly
> "technological logic" at work.
>
> > The are two immediate impacts of these trends.  The first is the financial
> > impact of a shift in income pattern toward a shrinking high income group and a
> > growing low income group.  The second is the social impact of declining job
> > satisfaction and personal esteem.
>
> Both due to POLITICAL economy, same as it ever was, NOT to high tech per
> se.
>
> --
> Paul Rosenberg
> Reason and Democracy
> rad at gte.net
>
> "Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"