Bill,
Thanks for your comments. Let me add some more of my own and clarify a few
things:
At 16:12 16/01/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Keith, while I agree with a lot of what you have written, I have added
some notes of my own.
>
>---
>Bill Ward
>Research Director
>Arthritis Research Institute of America
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>**********************************************
>Keith Hudson wrote:
>
>> Happy New Year to all FWers. (I'm assuming that Futurework is operational
>> now!) Here's something I wrote over the break and which will appear in a
>> new type of Internet encyclopedia starting in about a month
>> (<www.calus.org>)
>>
>> ---------------------
>>
>> THE STRUCTURE OF FUTURE WORK AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
>> Keith Hudson
>>
>> The structure of future employment will not be compatible with the
>> distribution of talent
>>
>> ----------------------
>>
>> In human history there have been four distinctly different types of
>> economies, each requiring different working structures, or intellectual
>> inputs. The four phases are: 1. Hunter-Gatherer; 2. Peasant Agriculture; 3.
>X Manufacturing Industry; 4. Post-industrial Service Society.
>
>You might add that these types have co-existed and all 4 types are fund
somewhere in the world today. Plus, ith technology, you may see
horticultural, matriarchal societies in places like rural Ghana jump over
#2 and #3 and go directly to a fiber-optic network which allows them to
write software program code in their village and sell it by internet
thousands of miles away.
To say that all four types of job societies have co-existed is muddying the
water somewhat. Yes, at present they co-exist on a world-wide basis but, at
successively finer scales (e.g. down to hamlet level, for instance), the
society involved is quite distinctly one or the other. Generally (that is,
in 99% of cases), societies have proceeded step-wise through the first
three stages and some (such as Silicon Valley, London and the South-east of
England and one or two other spots) are now seriously dipping their toes
into the Post-industrial Service Society. I wouldn't deny that some small
societies (the Ghanaian example) are theoretically able to jump through an
intermediate stage, but I doubt if this can be achieved very often. I'm not
so sure that this example (that is, without a cultural memory of previous
stages) can be consolidated over the longer term and I'd like to know more
about this one.
>>
>> 1. Hunter-gatherer. Homo sapiens emerged from primate origins several
>> million years ago and became indistinguishably human at about 50,000 years
>> ago. Most of man's food was collected by the females, but topped up with
>> animal protein from the hunting expeditions of the males. Their daily life
>> was perilous because predators could easily attack their primitive camps
>> and hunting groups, and the unintelligent or incapable would be easily
>> culled. By definition, the normal genetic distribution of abilities that
>> man's predecessors had evolved over millions of years precisely matched the
>> 'job structure' of early man. For our purposes, this genetic distribution
>> may be considered to be a diamond shape in which the abilities of the broad
>> mass of the population lie across the widest part of the diamond, with
>> decreasingly fewer people of much higher or lower abilities occupying the
>> top and and bottom parts of the shape.
>>
>> 2. Peasant Agriculture: From the time when man had finally extinguished
>> most slow-moving large game at around 10,000BC, he had to resort
>> increasingly to settled agriculture. Generally, this required far less
>> intelligence than hunting. However, the ability to store cereals and the
>> development of metal products (including coinage) which then followed meant
>> that wealth could be passed on within families and, from then onwards,
>> society became dynastic and intensely hierarchical. The various civil and
>> religious authorities ensured that the peasantry were well and truly
>> conditioned to accept their role and not to develop their inborn abilities.
>> While suppression of this sort could be maintained for quite a long time
>> within a hierarchical society it could not be maintained for ever. The bad
>> fit between the distribution of abilities and the nature of
>> work/opportunities and the subsequent tensions have been the cause of
>> repeated strife and savagery in every agricultural civilisation from about
>X 5,000BC until the present day.
>
>This type of society emerged due to a sufficiency of food. In the Hindus
and Mesopotamian river valleys, the need to regulate irrigation gave rise
to some of the higher orders of bureaucracy.
Yes, indeed.
>> 3. Manufacturing Industry. The first successful long-term development of
>> manufacturing industry from about 1700 onwards in Europe meant that the
>> uneducated peasants were forced off the land and into the factories. Here,
>> a higher skill level was necessary and many new skills had to be acquired.
>> In addition, the industrial society required a considerable extension in
>> the number of professional and academic jobs, and there were huge
>> opportunities for able and enterprising individuals. The pyramidal
>> structure of jobs of the previous agricultural era would no longer do. The
>> requirements of industrial society were much more akin to the
>> diamond-shaped distribution of abilities and, generally speaking,
>> industrial societies have been somewhat more peaceful than the wars and
>X revolutions that characterise peasant societies.
>
>More people have been killed by war in this century than in all of the
wars before. Industrial societies are characterized by the growth of
pyramidal corporation structures where a few lead the many and receive
remuneration equivalent to thousands of times the wages of the average person.
In terms of absolute numbers, you are quite right, but in terms of
percentages, the mortalities of the two world wars (less than 5%) are still
quite modest compared with the sort of permanent brigandage and local wars
that characterised peasant society in all countries in history. In the
Middle Ages, for example, mortality rates of 20-50% and even higher in some
incidents were quite common. The chances of any peasant dying a violent
death at any time throughout history are probably 20 times higher than any
ordinary person in an industrial society during the last 200 years.
The same line of argument applies to your second point. Industrial
societies are indeed characterised by large pyramidal companies and they
were immensely hierarchical in their earliest decades, but in terms of the
overall population, the small and medium firm has always employed far more
people, even in the heyday of manufacturing.
>> 4. Post-Industrial Service society. Since about the middle of the 20th
>> century, the types of industry which needed large numbers of workers of
>> average abilities have seriously declined. Automation, plus an even faster
>> growth of brand new service occupations, means that people with high
>> abilities are at a premium. At the same time, there is a considerable
>> dumbing down of many traditional service jobs. The job structure in the
>> developed countries is thus rapidly becoming more akin to an hourglass
>> rather than a pyramid or a diamond. The shape of an hour-glass is very
>> different from that of the diamond. The mismatch betwen abilities and
>> requirements will undoubtedly lead to renewed civil problems in developed
>> countries and, as some aver, a widening gulf between two parts of the human
>> population.
In another FW reply, I have said that the very recent developments in
germ-line research and the likely consequences of genetic engineering
affordable only by the better-off (that is, the rich and those in jobs)
means that the division of society into two largely isolated breeding
groups is increasingly likely.
Keith Hudson
