High tech and recessions
-- From: Gary Chapman To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: L.A. Times column, 9/14/98 Date: Monday, September 14, 1998 10:11AM Friends, Below is my Los Angeles Times column for today, Monday, September 14, 1998. Please feel free to pass this on, but, as always, please retain the copyright notice. Gary Chapman Director The 21st Century Project LBJ School of Public Affairs Drawer Y, University Station University of Texas Austin, TX 78713 (512) 263-1218 (512) 471-1835 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/21cp -- If you have received this from me, Gary Chapman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), you are subscribed to the listserv that sends out copies of my column in The Los Angeles Times and other published articles. If you wish to UNSUBSCRIBE from this listserv, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], leave the subject line blank, and put "Unsubscribe Chapman" in the first line of the message. If you received this message from a source other than me and would like to subscribe to the listserv, the instructions for subscribing are at the end of the message. -- Monday, September 14, 1998 DIGITAL NATION Is High Tech Recession-Proof? Don't Bet on It By Gary Chapman The wild gyrations of the stock market in recent weeks, combined with the frightening turmoil in Russia, Asia and Latin America, have shaken many people in the high-tech industry. Uncertainty in the world economy has led some to question the widely shared view that high tech is immune to the business cycles that periodically plunge us into recession. There are still optimists, of course. Esther Dyson and Donna Hoffman, two prominent technology gurus, told the magazine Industry Standard that the Internet's economic growth is so strong that a recession won't be significant for information technology firms or workers. They and other industry analysts argue that whatever happens in the economy as a whole, information technologies have "crossed over" from luxury goods to necessities, and that the cost savings from electronic commerce and from restructuring enterprises around networks will offset any losses from depressed revenues. But the recent jolts in the stock market should prompt some deeper thinking about the character of the "new economy." It's too facile to say that computers, software and the Internet have become necessities for individuals and companies; the high-tech economy is far more complex than that. If we take a longer, bird's-eye view, we can see that we've created a system with many strengths and an equal number of vulnerabilities. Some of these strengths and weaknesses have the same sources. What is the nature of the high-tech economy in the last few years of the 20th century? . What we've witnessed over the last 20 to 25 years is the United States' extraordinary ability to pile layer upon layer of "value-added services" on top of a mature industrial and agricultural base. For the last half-century, nearly all the productivity gains in the U.S. economy have come from manufacturing and agriculture, which now employ small fractions of the national work force -- 2% to 3% in agriculture, 15% to 16% in manufacturing. The wealth generated by these two "basic" sectors of the economy has allowed us to develop and refine a service economy that now employs the majority of wage earners. We began with an initial layer of applying computers to business problems. We soon added business-to-business solutions, then more general networking, then Internet ubiquity. Microsoft, Intel and the major hardware manufacturers still thrive at the base of our pyramid of value-added services. But layered on top of this base are countless companies that constantly push technology and the character of value-added services, so that at the apex of this pyramid you find cutting-edge companies exploring technologies and ideas that only a handful of people have even heard of and whose mass-market appeal appears distinctly distant. At this apex we find obscure but "cool" Internet features, eccentric but potentially promising services, and intriguing ideas that may or not succeed in the marketplace. This has been the great strength of the American economy, which no other country has even been able to approach, let alone compete with. But this system also has significant vulnerabilities. Each layer of value-added services is dependent on the health and growth of the one beneath it. All of them are dependent on the perception of customers that the value offered is indispensable. The further up one goes in this pyramid, the more likely it is that the technologies and services are those that consumers could forgo in hard times. Viewed one way, during good times, this pyramid of "value-added" is as strong as the stone pyramids of Egypt. Viewed another way, in an economic downturn, it's a house of cards. A related trend, again a feature of both strength and weakness, is glo
Re: Marx required angelic robots
> > >for this deformity, and why do you think we would > >willingly repeat the same mistakes? > > Why do you think we won't repeat the same mistakes? I am afraid that > history is on my side Eva. > actually, after a while there is enough experience to do it better, that is what human progress is about. We are able to learn eventually. If you don't think so, you are really well placed at dieoff... Eva > Jay > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FWD: Re: Marx required angelic robots
Well, I actually lived there. I don't apologise for the system as if you read carefully, it is not what I am proposing for the future. However, the "Big brother" scene was greately exagurated, it existed in the "personnal cult" era of Stalin and some leftovers such as the romanian chap. From the 70s for most places there was open contempt and semi-open critique. But too little, too late. It had insufficient starting conditions; democracy had no chance to develop in a semi-feudal, illiterate, never ever even experiencing any bougois democracy and the afternath of devastating wars, it would have been extraordinary if it succeeded. Which is not an argument against a future democratic socialism, developing from totally different starting conditions. nobody ever gives me a decent argument to these points. bloody frustrating. Eva > > Eva > > Don't forget that the totalitaria-command and control society ran > so smoothly that the only crime was NOT TO LOVE BIG BROTHER > > Not loving big brother meant the social conditioning system had > failed and therefore the unfortunate individual had to be > continuously reeducated util they truly learned to LOVE BIG BROTHER > > Bob > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: wholesystem (chaos?)economics
Durant wrote:
>
> I know of a non-standard interpretation of economics
> and it predicted the chaotic nature of capitalism some times
> in the past...
> What help would it be even if we were able to completely
> map the capitalist economy to a mathematics formulae?
>
> Eva
please see: http://order.ph.utexas.edu/chaos/
Since prediction of open global systems is not possible to any meaningful
degree of accuracy, the "non-standard" prediction(if one agrees that it was
made)was nothing but a guess, without evidenced causal explanation.
Definitions are the bane of this list, in my opinion ("chaotic nature" of
an "ism").
The 'mapping' you suggest is also impossible for the same reason, so the
question of helpfulness is academic.
Steve
Judge for Thyself Who is Right
From: Durant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >actually, after a while there is enough experience to do it better, >that is what human progress is about. We are able to learn Human "progress" is an illusion. Judge for Thyself Who is Right by Jay Hanson Dostoevsky's parable is set in sixteenth-century Sevilleat the height of the Inquisition. On the day after a magnificent bonfire, in which nearly one hundred heretics were burned alive, Jesus descends and is immediately recognized. The cardinalthe Grand Inquisitorhas Him promptly arrested and thrown in prison. That evening, the door of Jesus' cell opens and the old, ascetic Inquisitor enters to confront Him. For a few minutes there is silence, then the Inquisitor delivers the most profound and terrible attack against Christianity. The Inquisitor charges Jesus with betrayal of mankind, for deliberately rejecting the only ways in which men might have been happy. This singular moment occurred when "the wise and dread spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-existence," tempted Jesus in the wilderness by asking Him three questions. First, the spirit asked Jesus to turn stones into bread. Jesus refused because He wanted mankind free, and what would obedience be worth if it were bought with bread? Thus, He denied men their deepest cravingto find someone who would take away the awesome burden of freedom. Then, the spirit asked Jesus to throw Himself from the pinnacle of the temple, "for it is written: the angels shall hold Him up lest he fall". Again Jesus refused, rejecting miracles because He wanted faith given freely. But the Inquisitor explains that man cannot live without miracles, for if he is deprived of them, he immediately creates new ones. Man is weaker and baser by nature than Jesus thought. "By showing him so much respect, Thou didst ... cease to feel for him " Jesus' last temptation was to rule the world, to unite all mankind "in one unanimous and harmonious ant-heap, for the craving for universal unity is the third and last anguish of men" He refused once again, and thereby rejected the only ways in which men might have been made happy. The Inquisitor explains "We are not working with Thee but with him [the spirit] We have taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee and followed him. Oh, ages are yet to come of the confusion of free thought, of their science and cannibalism [But] we have corrected Thy work and have founded it upon miracle, mystery and authority. And men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift that had brought them such suffering, was, at last, lifted from their hearts And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death." "And we alone shall feed them" the Inquisitor continues, "Oh, never, never can they feed themselves without us! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'" Jay
