Hi Arthur, At 10:45 21/12/01 -0500, you wrote: <<<< My view is that information technology is like no other. It is energy saving, capital saving and labour saving.
It is also distance insensitive. Put more bluntly information technology brings 'the death of distance.' I think it is still early days as to how IT will change and transform economy and society, so I wouldn't count it out from a Schumpeterian point of view. >>>> Yes, I agree that it's still too early to judge the overall effect of IT. (The full effect of electrification of 100 years ago is only just been realised by economic historians. For example, the ability to re-arrange machinery around the factory floor, instead of having them all in belt-driven line, which then led to wholesale dispersal of separate small factories -- a real revolution which took 50 years to reveal itself.) And, beside that, the IT revolution, without widescale broadband, is still hardly out of the diaper stage. But I still maintain that the really significiant "Schumpetings" only take place when there's a significant addition to energy sources. (Even apparently trivial energy innovations have huge effects. It was really the adoption of the Turkic horse collar instead of the Roman one [which strangled a horse when working hard] in the 14th century, allowing relatively easy haulage of freight, transformed the cities of Europe, road construction, the building of great stone cathedrals and so on.) So I've still got my money on solar technology as being the significant next step! Keith __________________________________________________________ “Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.” John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
