The Problem With Abundance 686
GRW writes "Peter de Jager, "a speaker/writer/consultant on the issues relating to the Rational Assimilation of the Future", asks, 'What do traffic jams, obesity and spam have in common?' He answers that 'they are all problems caused by abundance in a world more attuned to scarcity. By achieving the goal of abundance, technology renders the natural checks and balances of scarcity obsolete.' His article is a thought provoking discussion of the unintended consequences of technological change."
scarcity (Score:5, Funny)
Re:scarcity (Score:2)
Re:scarcity (Score:4, Insightful)
It should also be mentioned that no resource is unlimited. Take spam for instance. There's a certain signal-to-noise ratio that needs to be maintained for email to be useful. Spam abuses the system in such a way that that ratio is thrown askew. There is a narrow, limited amount of noise that can enter the system before the system is crippled. Spam has passed that threshhold, and is now almost purely noise.
Many other problems of abundance stem from the fact that the prices we pay do not reflect the true cost. While you eat a cheeseburger for $0.99, hundreds of people that had a hand in that hamburger's production, from farmers to meatpackers to fast food workers all suffer to give you the cheapest possible meal. There's not an over-abundance of food...there's just an out-of-control industry that has reduced the forward-facing price so drastically that food seems limitless.
Abundance is a mirage. You can't make something from nothing.
Re:scarcity (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? All of those people have jobs that they voluntarily work at, and for which they are paid. Nobody is "suffering"; division of labor and productivity increases allow us to produce more for less.
Abundance is a mirage. You can't make something from nothing.
Sure you can. The economy is not a zero-sum game. Look at the history of CPUs; while their prices (which reflect the amount of resources used to create them) have remained fairly constant, their quality has increased drastically.
Re:scarcity (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, it's not zero-sum... it's negative sum.
Every major economy is driven at least in part by the destruction of pre-existing, irreplacable resources. Nobody creates wealth- they just shift it from place to place, with transactional inefficiency bleeding off 5% here and there.
What economists call "growth" is the same thing venture capitalists call "burn rate". Both can make a system appear vigorous and attractive, for a time. Reality will set back in sometime.
Old ecclesias never failed to get it wrong ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, it's not zero-sum... it's negative sum.
If you look just at the bad and not the good you'll always be losing.
This is a common failing of the barren critic, known as ecclesias.
Every major economy is driven at least in part by the destruction of pre-existing, irreplacable resources.
not driven by, burden with.
Nobody creates wealth- they just shift it from place to place, with transactional inefficiency bleeding off 5% here and there.
I think Newton, Gauss, Einstein and all scientists and engineers might
have begged to differ
What economists call "growth" is the same thing venture capitalists call "burn rate". Both can make a system appear vigorous and attractive, for a time. Reality will set back in sometime.
You know, old ecclesiases have been crying:
"there is nothing new under the sun"
every generation
bright youngsters of the following generation
Re:scarcity (Score:3, Insightful)
Methinks creating a life-sustaining pod capable of traveling between solar systems would be a hell of alot easier than creating something that
If you could get around that, perhaps it would be feasable...but it really does sound quite far fetched (no offense).
Besides, by the time we have to worry about the sun burn
Re:scarcity (Score:3, Insightful)
In America food is cheap but other things are expensive like housing and healthcare. There's a relative abundance of food here, and so you have the strange situation where it's more common to find poor people who are fat because rich people can afford health club memberships, personal trainers, and they're generally more aware of nutrition and health.
you know that of which you speak (Score:3, Interesting)
AB SO LUTELY! however it should be duly noted that one might make an argument that this strange twist in human history (the poorer folks growing fatter than
Re:scarcity (Score:4, Insightful)
From what I've seen, poor people eat a diet that is largely devoid of nutrition.
Draw a walking distance radius around most poor neighborhoods. You'll find loads of convenience stores selling food products rich in refined sugar, refined starch and saturated fat. Not to mention the fast food outlets. [Then there's the alcohol, tobacco, lottery outlets...]
Convenience, cost, shelf-life and the natural tendency of the human animal to crave high-calorie foods tend to drive poor people's decisions to a greater degree than wealthier people.
I make more money than average and know what kind of food is good for me and still it's enough of a struggle to take the time and energy to drive 15 miles to where I can find fresh fruits and vegetables (frequently, because of the low shelf life) that then requires a fair amount of preparation time (washing, cooking, chopping, cleanup, etc.) We're all faced with the same problem of eating good food; I'm just saying that it requires increasing effort to make the proper choices as your income level decreases. You may know a diet rich is fresh fish is good for you, but you're not going to be buying it.
As far as exercise is concerned, there's no comparison.
Manual labor is hard work, but it's a lot more likely to give you a bad back, sore feet and repetitive motion injuries than what you do in a health club.
And again, being a desk jockey, I have the energy to go to a health club, but have done enough hard labor to understand where going to the gym after a hard day's work is more difficult. (Nevertheless, I do know some construction workers that put in a few hours at the health club before work. More power to them.)
Scrubbing floors on your hands and knees or digging ditches will burn calories, but won't give the same benefits as a planned exercise program.
Re:scarcity (Score:3, Informative)
Re:scarcity (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually there just isn't that much oil left in North America. The US peaked oil production in about 1970, Alaska just managed to hold the curve flat to about 1985.
There aren't likely to be any new Prudhoe Bays or Permian Basins to be discovered.
The last area of the world to peak in pr
irony (Score:2)
I see his point now.
Some thing that will never be scarce (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Some thing that will never be scarce (Score:3, Insightful)
Theft isn't entirely about scarcity, it's about competition and jealousy and all sorts of other things.
just a different scarcity ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:just a different scarcity ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Bogus. If more people would get off their asses and onto a bicycle or even walk we would have far fewer traffic problems. Instead, we want large hulking SUV's to haul us back and forth from work and the store.
Try a little experiement. On your drive/ride/walk home, pay attention to the number of people in automobiles. You will find that the fast number of folks are purchasing large SUV's and large automobiles just to haul their lonesome ass arou
Re:just a different scarcity ? (Score:2, Insightful)
If next week 50% of the people driving started to bike, then there would be a bike jam on the roads and bikeways.
Likewise if more people started using the bus all of a sudden, there'd be problems there.
An alternative being used tomarrow doesn't mean the problems we have today will go away.
Re:just a different scarcity ? (Score:2)
I can fit at least five or six bikes in the roadspace required by an Chevy Suburban. I could park 10-20 bikes in the space required by an average automobile.
I assure you that if more people rode bikes instead of driving cars, we would have far lower road repair costs, lower dependance on foreign oil, lower incidence of diabetes and other weight related maladies, lower health care costs, lower
Re:just a different scarcity ? (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole smug approach of the bicycling advocates ignores the huge infrastructural change that increased bicycle use would require, as well as the staggering cost of it all. "Just ride your bike to work," ignores the fact that for most of the people working in your office building (wherever that off
Re:just a different scarcity ? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not even a matter of purchasing a vehicle for fuel efficiency, it's a matter of common sense. The folks who howl at the top of their lungs to try and defend their house-on-wheels purchase miss the point entirely or just don't want to admit (or just don't care) that what they did was incredibly, inexcusably stupid and suggests they have the IQ of a dead muskrat while on car lots.
If you don't NEED (or want) to go stomping through 3 feet of water, up 25 degree rocky inclines, and through 2 feet of snow on a regular basis, you don't NEED an SUV. Even the losers who whine about driving in 6 inches of snow with their SUV just don't get it. There's plenty of 4WD and AWD cars out there that are cheaper, faster, safer, easier to maintain, and handle light and moderate offroad and bad weather duty just fine. My one friend had a 4WD Tempo for about a year. It handled wet, grassy hills, snow, ice, and mud just fine.
If you NEED a vehicle for the family, a minivan is safer, cheaper, equally as versatile, and better on gas.
If you NEED to haul a boat or something similar every great once in awhile, borrow or rent a truck or SUV WHEN YOU NEED IT. There's no sense in driving a truck/SUV/van like a car for 90% of your mileage.
There are certainly the rare few who can justify an SUV/Van/Truck purchase - I know some. They have jobs that require the power of a Dodge Ram or the versatility and all-weather capability of a Suburban (actually, I know a guy who has a Durango solely because he lives in the boonies in a steep-sloping valley and doesn't usually get plowed out for days - he drives the Durango occasionally if it's the only vehicle available and to keep it from locking up in the summer, then drives it most of the winter).
Face it SUV-owners: most of you are fad following losers with no imagination or individuality. I recall a mere decade ago when SUVs were the prime requisite of mud-stomping hicks and were frowned upon by the "new elite businessperson" in favor of Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes sedans. They're a fad - I've yet to question one person who could successfully justify his/her SUV purchase. Stupid. And I will (and occasionally do) maintain that in the face of anyone who can't give me a good reason for their decision.
Oh... and I'm not against them so much for their gas-wasting ways, though that's definitely one reason I don't like them. I'm against them because the people who are dumb enough to buy them without cause aren't smart enough to drive them safely. Bigger vehicle = more responsibility. But, they mostly drive just as recklessly as everyone else anyway. In fact, I kept track for awhile, and I saw nearly twice as many people in SUVs driving recklessly (significantly over the speed limit, rapid lane changes, pulling out in front of people, etc.) as in cars. Although that could certainly be regionalized, I doubt it.
Re:just a different scarcity ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ridiculous...you must not know too many people that have SUVs.
Soooo... my argument is ridiculous because you are one of the few people - who I mentioned - who actually uses the capabilities provided by the vehicle?
Uh.. yea... that makes... umm... ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE AT ALL!
I live within visible distance of 6 households who own truck-like vehicles over 4000 pounds. I have NEVER seen any ONE of those vehicles:
- In the snow.
- Dirty.
- Towing anything.
- Moving more than 4 people at once.
- Offroad.
And I'm reeeeaaalllll sorry... but if you buy a vehicle like that only to go grocery shopping, you're not even smart enough to HAVE a drivers license, much less make an intelligent car-buying decision.I'm real happy for you that you actually are one of the rare SUV owners (who happens to actually own a REAL SUV unlike most of these other idiots... Cayenne? Give me fucking break...) who uses the vehicle, but that doesn't satiate my hatred for the overwhelming majority who purchased them to keep up with the Jonses in the least.
And, if that's not true, I pose this question: vehicles with those sorts of capabilities have been around for nearly half a century for public consumption. Am I supposed to believe that in the last 5-6 years huge numbers of upper-middle and upper class people just magically needed these capabilities all of a sudden? I think not.
Re:just a different scarcity ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Subjectively I think I am more likely to be involved in a collision with a car when I'm on my bike then when I'm driving. And I'm pretty sure I'm more likely to be seriously damaged when on the bike.
So lack of bike routes, combined with the fact that most people live too far away from their jobs to make biking practicable (again a subjective observation based on experience in DC, Baltimore and Memphis), means that you won't be seeing a massive shift to bikes any time soon. Plus people are lazy.
In economic terms, shortage (Score:4, Insightful)
That means some sort of usage fee -- tolls. The problem with old-style tolls is that the transaction costs were too high (i.e. there's always a backup at the tollbooth). What we need is anonymous, electronic cash-based tolls.
Electronic tolls also make it easy to charge an arm and a leg during peak times and "bargain rates" at other times.
There is a problem. How do you deal with people who are out of electronic cash? Don't really know because it has to be anonymous.
Re:just a different scarcity ? (Score:2)
There is an abundance of people. Which, oddly enough, creates scarcity.
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.
KFG
It's the Star Trek problem... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's the Star Trek problem... (Score:2)
So... why do some people in the Star Trek universe have bad jobs? Why would anyone pick that
Vocational aptitude testing, of course!
Social responsibility- Personal fufilment (Score:2)
Re:Social responsibility- Personal fufilment (Score:2)
Anyway, the guy's right. There are some jobs out there that need to be done, but nobody in their right mind would do if they didn't need the cash. Assuming you don't have robots to do it for you...why would anybody do it?
Re:Social responsibility- Personal fufilment (Score:2)
Re:It's the Star Trek problem... (Score:2, Funny)
Just my thought.
IMa
Re:It's the Star Trek problem... (Score:2)
Re:It's the Star Trek problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why don't they talk about the Federation economy much? Because it's socialist. There's simply no other conclusion that can be drawn based on the information we have. Once you eliminate virtually all material scarcity, and population is clearly far greater than the available jobs, it's pretty much the only viable model left. And most of the "jobs" that
The problems with Scarcity (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The problems with Scarcity (Score:4, Insightful)
So all those wars in our history books (such as the warlords in Africa, Napolean, Japan invading China) were wars over necessities? I guess all wars before a Bush was president were justified.
Hate to break this to you, but war has a long history of only being about the people in power.
The problem with abundance... (Score:2, Funny)
Interesting, but (Score:2)
Re:Interesting, but (Score:4, Interesting)
Economics IS [thereference.com] the study of scarcity. Or more accurately, how humans develop social systems to cope with or mitigate scarcity. (When you boil it down, trade and money are just tools of controlling resource allocation or power over resources.)
He seems to know what he's talking about (Score:5, Funny)
Given Peter de Jager's mugshot [theglobeandmail.com] I think he has some authority on the matter.
Peter de Jager (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess he can't find another "crisis" so he's decided we have too much stuff.
Re:Peter de Jager (Score:2)
Re:Peter de Jager (Score:2, Funny)
Or if you like Dilbertiana, from Scott Adams' "The Dilbert Principle"'s chapter on machiavellic methods: "Always predict disaster. No project is so succesful that you can't point out a few examples of what you 'were afraid that could happen'".
It's a whole industry. I'm reminded of Alvin Toffler.
Re:Peter de Jager -- not exactly (Score:5, Informative)
Ecology (Score:2, Interesting)
Microeconomics 101 (Score:2, Informative)
For those calculus-savy, d*u^2/d^2*q That's been incorporated in the whole body of theory, to explain everything - from demand response to lower interest rates to risk management in capital asset portfolios.
heh (Score:4, Funny)
Simple. Stupid fat f**ks read spam on their cell phones while driving and cause traffic jam.
Ready . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Karl Marx
The Communist Manifesto
The problem isn't an abundance of scarcity ... (Score:2)
From what I gather from the article, our woes are due to our success. The author claims that we were designed for scarcity
What, he would have us living in the dirt like we did back in the 7th century? Hmmm
The problem here isn't an abundance of scarcity, it is a scarcity of ethics.
With added abundance comes added responsibility, both personally and socially.
And that goes both ways, both for th
Newsflash (Score:5, Insightful)
What was the point of this article? (Score:3, Funny)
Y2K de Jager (Score:2, Informative)
let's turn that around (Score:2)
High school essay (Score:3)
What do traffic jams, obesity and spam have in common?
Development:
What does it mean for "family time" when every room has a TV?
What does it mean for my company when everyone has instant messaging?
What does it mean for newspapers when everyone has access to digital paper?
What does it mean for the telecom industry when everyone has a wireless network?
Conclusion:
Any technology which creates abundance poses problems for any process which existed to benefit from scarcity.
Hmmm, duh
Thanks Peter for your great insight. I'll check if I can find more of your great articles here [cyberessays.com].
Truisms piss me off, especially when they're false (Score:2)
It's been demonstrated, time and again, that there are many causes for the drop in record company profits. It's never, to my knowledge, been demonstrated through any honest research that the record companies ha
Re:Truisms piss me off, especially when they're fa (Score:2)
Re:Truisms piss me off, especially when they're fa (Score:2)
You can assume all day lon
Re:Truisms piss me off, especially when they're fa (Score:2)
I hit the local used CD store now and again, but for the post part I am ripping and burning.
Of course, I am just one person.... and it is amazing how my toilet generates millions of gallons of sewage.
How about overpopulation? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about overpopulation?
Sounds cruel, but medical technology is largely to blame for overpopulation, boosting the birth rate, raising the average life expectancy...
Plauges, STDs are all, to some extent, 'reactions' by 'mother nature' to bring us under control. Want to see a clearer-cut example? Forest fire fighting. Forests have been around for quite some time without us meddling with their natural processes. We step in, start fighting the small fires which thinned the forests out- and boom, all of the sudden, nobody can figure out why we've MASSIVE fires.
The problem is not so much technology itself as the misappropriation of it by people egged on by thel "won't someone think of the children" types. Won't someone think of the tree owls who are homeless after that last fire? We'd better meddle!
Re:How about overpopulation? (Score:2)
Or similarly, should you "meddle" in population control?
Re:How about overpopulation? (Score:2)
Medical technology also usurps natural selection.
As for over population, I think part of the problem is that suburbia gives an illusion of overpopulation due to terribly inefficient transportation and land allocation methods. I prefer the rural country, where issues of scaling haven't materialized, but in medium-sized cities, people are just screwing it all up.
What about overpopulation? (Score:3, Interesting)
The most overpopulated parts of the world happen to have the lowest technology levels, I do believe.
Try again (Score:5, Insightful)
In first world countries with the medical technology you are blaming, the birthrate is currently less than what is nessicary to maintain population levels. Several countries in Europe are losing population before imigration because the natives are not having kids fast enough to replace those that die, despite people living longer.
In truth medical technology lowers the birth rate. When you don't have good medical care you are best off having a lot of kids, but not caring if they don't survive (because many will not, and caring leads to psycological problems if they don't survive). When you have good medical care you are better off having a few kids that you put lots of effort into ensuring the survival of, they live, and get the attention needed to do well. Medical technology also provides birth control that works.
Unintended consequences ... (Score:5, Interesting)
While a reduction in scarcity may be unintended, I find it hard to consider it automatically undesirable. Scarcity in terms of food is bad, by and large. Even though an abundance has its own issues, obesity is arguably less of a problem than starvation (though obviously, the middle ground is probably to be preferred).
(Now, if there were a scarcity of lawyers and politicians, that could be a good thing
It doesn't appear that the author is railing against technology, but there are people who will read it that way. "Technology is bad!", they will say, and point to any number of unintended problems that have arisen. What these people seem to miss is that the solution to those problems is further progress (and technology), not stopping in one place and burying our heads in the sand (or clamoring for a idyllic past that never existed).
Given that, for the most part, the problems caused by these unintended consequences are often less harmful than the problems that the technology addresses, I'm willing to accept the consequences, assuming that a goal is further advancement to address those problems, and so on.
Re:Unintended consequences ... (Score:2)
So if I understand... (Score:2)
Re:So if I understand... (Score:2)
Tough times. If this keeps going on, we'll have to exploit the third world.
hypnotized (Score:3, Interesting)
dr jeckyll/ mr hyde (Score:2)
should we really worry about the fate of outdated institutions that will succumb to technological abundance?? no! let them. that mind share, talent pool or whatever you call it forms the basis for the next wave of innovations. sure, its cruel. but that is true schumpertarian "creative destruction".
the o
Environmental damage is a perfect example (Score:2)
Seems to me (Score:2)
he doesn't seem to grasp the concepts of 'self control' and moderation.
Just because there's a plate of food in me doesn't mean I have to eat it, nor does it mean that if the TV's there, I have to turn it on and watch it.
Re:Seems to me (Score:2)
Neither does 95% of the worlds population.
Re:Seems to me (Score:2, Funny)
If its already in you, then you ate it.
He's wrong. (Score:2)
If Spam is truly caused by "abundance", then it wouldn't have existed without it, right?
If that's so, why did fax spam cause enough of an uproar that congress passed a law banning it?
Spam is caused by sociopaths that want something for nothing, and don't care who they harrass/steal from to get it.
For further proof that he knows as much about spam as he does about Y2K, here's this littl gem:
The ability to send sales pitches via e-mail at a negligible cost means it is ec
Too cheap to meter (Score:4, Insightful)
This guy probably impresses PHBs (Score:2)
PHBs may contact him at www.technobility.com to have him spout his truisms at the next company event that requires a keynote speaker (he's a keynote speaker, according to his short bio in the article, so don't contact him for any other kind of speaking engagement)
Not obsolete, but... (Score:3)
Abundance simply ignores the fact that resources are limited. Resources are finite, whether they be one's health, or the raw materials used for one's sustenance. You engage too much of one, you pay with the other. It all evens out in the end.
Nothing New Here (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe on a sociological scale they're impossible to control, but on an individual basis it's easy to control. My wife and I deliberately limit ourselves so that we're not running after things that don't matter.
I think the _real_ problem isn't that there's too much, but rather people want more. The fact that 3% of the world's population (North American) controls 60% of the world's wealth is a problem with our society's refusal to want less. Although I don't think much will change in the future, the individual can choose to give his/her excess to others who don't have.
And no, I'm not going to give you my excess spam...
True for MP3's. (Score:3)
This has seriously reduced the enjoyment of music. A person's A+ list becomes pretty small. Probably about the same size as one's vinyl collection as a kid. (YAMV - Your age may vary)
The guy is a nut case.... (Score:3, Funny)
tell that to groups like Christians Childrens Fund.
A matter of perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
It's all a matter of perspective.
Insights, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article's advice that people should think about the consequences of new technology is sort of worthless, for the same reason mentioned that you can't replace abundance with scarcity because people wouldn't stand for it. If it were normal for people to think ahead about consequences, they wouldn't mind a healthy dose of scarcity that promised them better health, lower stress and greater security.
In the real world, people who stand to profit from something rarely let the impact on others get in their way. At most, they consider their legal liability. When the damage starts to become obvious, all responsibility is placed on the customers who "demanded" the product. Demand, whether real or advertising-generated, is blamed for all the long-term consequences. The fast food industry doesn't accept the blame for creating a nation of lard-asses with heart disease. They just fulfilled the demand and raked up the profits. Those lazy customers did the damage to themselves. And of course, people should eat sensibly.
On the other hand, if you leave a big pile of concrete rubble in your front yard, and some curious kids climb on it and get hurt, you're going to be held liable for their injuries. An unfenced hazard like that is what's called an "attractive nuisance." You don't have to spend billions on advertising to get those kids to wander over and check it out. Merely making it easy to get to is enough to make you responsible for it.
So why aren't people who operate on a much larger scale equally responsible for "attractive nuisances" -- especially when they're handing out billions of toys in Happy Meals? I'm not talking about frivolous lawsuits for spilled hot coffee, I'm talking about people who learn to love products as kids, use them as directed for years and then drop dead at age 50 from the health effects. Apparently the loophole is the fact that almost anything is okay in moderation, and companies don't actually suggest in their advertising that anybody should consume TOO MUCH of their products. But then, the person with the pile of rubble likewise isn't asking anybody to climb on it. The pile is perfectly safe if you merely look at it and imagine the fun you could have climbing on it. So where's the consistency in the law?
I think we're between a rock and a hard place. Liability for future consequences could cripple innovation, or limit it to large companies with litigation war chests. Which is the same thing. Making people responsible for whatever happens to them requires that they have an unrealistic level of expertise and caution. We want a safe world. We want a changing, progressive world. What a can of worms.
Re:Insights, anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's mostly the USA that has these insane liability lawsuits. Here in Holland we enjoy a saner system: You can o
the converse (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, like these guys [wired.com].
For as DeBeers well knows, the converse is, "Any marketing process that creates scarcity steals benefits from any persons who are ignorant of abundance."
Simple, really (Score:3, Insightful)
When something is abundant, it's free. Witness the Internet. Once software/movies/music gets out, it's available gratis. Anything that can be digitized (i.e. any information) can be made available for zero price. That scares the hell out of the Entrenched Capitalist, as well it should.
As far as information goes, creativity isn't a team sport. Ever hear of a fiction novel written by 12 people? Didn't think so. It may be true that developing ideas may require resources and manpower, but inspiration strikes individuals.
Maybe the legacy of the Information Age will be that eventually, only tangible goods and artificially scare information will carry a price tag. This is a Good Thing. It means everyone benefits from the collective thought of the creative, but you still have to work building things to make a living. We could have that utopia, or just sell information through Absolute DRM, which we're well on the way to having. It's obvious that The Powers That Be know this future, and are actively lobbying for it. It's long past time we sent our own legions of Smart People up to Capitol Hill to sell our vision of the future, too.
Howard Rheingold predicted this nine years ago. (Score:5, Informative)
Check out his article, "The Tragedy of the Electronic Commons," [well.com] on his old web site on the Well [well.com] .
As Solomon (or somebody) commented a few thousand years ago, there is nothing new under the sun.
The Midas Effect (Score:3, Informative)
I've been thinking about this story for a while now. Scarily enough, it's becoming true for certain things. A huge house at the outskirts of your metropolitan area is cheap. What's expensive is a small apartment in the city (depending on your city, of course). Huge washer and dryers? Cheap. Small washer/dryer combo? Expensive.
Things are definitely becoming stranger and stranger...
Re:Abudance (Score:5, Insightful)
Those are states, not measurable quantities.
I love my wife more than anything else. My friend Em loves his wife, AFAIK more than anything else. How do you tell which one of us has "more" love?
Re:Abudance (Score:2)
How do you tell which one of us has "more" love?
Interesting question! But there are empirical studies one can perform. Give me an uninterrupted 60 minutes alone with each of your wives and I'll give you a pretty good ballpark guestimate. :)
Simpsons (Score:2)
Marge: Great news, Homer. We're about to have twice as much love in this house.
Homer: We're going to start doing it in the mornings too?
Re:Abudance (Score:3, Funny)
I believe this is one of the rare disputes that can only be settled by a fight to the death.
Unintended Consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, the first things a new technology does is have its intended consequences. After that however, if the "cost" to do something is dramatically reduced unintended consequences occur.
I don't know if the guy is a luddite or not, but his point valid. If you introduce a technology that dramatically reduces the cost to do something, it's probably guaranteed that additional consequences will occur besides the original reason why you invented the technology in the first place.
It may be wise to try to think through what those consequences might be. Once you've done that, you've got several options:
1) Don't release the technology (Boring)
2) Control the release, so society has time to adjust.
3) Introduce something that acts a counter balance, so the undesired consequences don't occur or are minimized.
4) Screw it, and just roll out the new thing already!
#1 - There so many reasons this is wrong, I won't go into it.
#2 - This almost never happens, maybe it should? I don't know
#3 - If strategy #3 was rolled out with a technology in the first place, things would probably go smoother.
#4 - This is what happens today, until eventually we go ooops (or somebody like the RIAA applies a lot of self-interested political pressure), and then we try to do #3 after the fact. This sometimes gets ugly.
But when all is said and done. #4 just pushes societal evolution. A disturbance enters or society; we struggle with it for 10-100 years; finally equilibrium is established around that new technology; rinse repeat.
#4 has actually worked great up until the industrial revolution. Since then the pace of innovation has been so great, that we don't have time to finish adjusting to the last change before we have to start adjusting to a new one.
That in itself is applying pressure on society to change. It is applying a pressure for society to become quickly adaptable.
So here's a piece for you to nibble on. What's more quickly adaptable? A democratic society or a totalitarian? I certainly prefer my good ol' democracy, but P.R.China has a government structure more like a corporation than Western countries. It can force painful societal adaptiations to occur quickly. Totalitarian governments can fail by being to rigid, too. But if they find the right mix of control, combined with encouraging a free market, they make a formidable force.
Might it be that democracy will fail, because it can't adapt to technological change fast enough? Time will tell.
But... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Aren't obesity and traffic self-limiting? (Score:2, Interesting)
They're sort of self limiting. For example, in theory, being stupid is self limiting. Someone is too stupid, they do something stupid, and die, however there are just too many variables to be taken into account. Some very clever people die young, just like some fat people who drive way too fast live to see 100 (albeit a smaller amount of the population than those who look after themsleves and drive carefully).
Re:Aren't obesity and traffic self-limiting? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Aren't obesity and traffic self-limiting? (Score:4, Funny)
And does one person becoming so obese that they die going to prevent another person from doing it? Experience shows us that it does not. So no, obesity is not self-limiting.
As for driving "too fast", that is also solved by technology, and not at the cost of speed. In my grandfather's day, any fool who traveled 75mph for a period of 6 straight hours was a fool. His tires wouldn't hold up under the strain, nor would the fuel supply hold out. Today, I routinely visit my mother 9 hours away on a single fueling stop and often exceed 75mph on the freeway, and barely blink. Steering is no problem either, unlike for my grandfather, who had to contend with a car with the aerodynamics of a rounded brick and a steering system unassisted by any power.
Re:Aren't obesity and traffic self-limiting? (Score:2)
Yeah, but (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Aren't obesity and traffic self-limiting? (Score:2)
Maybe one hundred years ago. Today you can get really fat, have a massive heart attack, and your chances of survival are still good thanks to technology.
The ambulance will come pick you up, start treating you with drugs, then your transported to a state of the art facility where they'll rotor router you so you can go out and eat more Wendy's burgers and shakes and still sit on your fat ass while pos... exuse me for a sec, got ke
Re:Digital Information (Score:2)
Admittedly, the media by which the information is sent and received is still a commons in the old sense of the word, but the information itself represents a limitless resource. In the not-too-distant future, even the transmission medium could become essentially limitless. The mind truly boggles.
The information economy is dead. Long live the information economy!