The New Digital Underclass
forbes.com
forbes.com
But, upon reflection, computer illiteracy is probably relatively common among people without a strong educational background, especially in developing countries. It's probably pretty hard for a taxi driver, for example, to justify spending hundreds of dollars on a laptop when he only makes a few hundred a month - plus, what would he really use it for? I wonder what the statistics look like.
"Once upon a time, literacy and numeracy were the paths to social mobility in its broadest sense; now, technology appears to have raised rather than lowered the barrier."
Where is the evidence that the barrier has been "raised," as opposed to just still existing? Why is the inability to use the internet different than the inability to use a slide rule or to understand references to Shakespeare? The evidence presented just shows that people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder are also at the bottom of the technological ladder. This isn't surprising, and it doesn't seem to me to be a novel state of affairs.
"If your job can be replaced by a computer program, chances are, it will. In fact, Goldin and Katz suggest that prosperity and equality in the U.S. will need a workforce that has more of the mental agility of a Leibniz or a Kircher in order to adapt to rapid technological change."
I really think this is key to understanding this "underclass." It is like a surfer riding a wave, as long as you're up front everything is ok but once you get behind (and fall off the board) it gets harder and harder to get back on. It sounds a little singularity-ish, but we really are seeing an acceleration in the rate of change of technology and culture (or cultural norms like the acceptance of technological interruption at any point).
So I think the question that comes from this is what responsibility do we as a society have to help those that can't keep up with this change? We were just talking about internet access as a human right the other day, so where does this play in?
Is there some sort of digital welfare that we need to set up? Is the fact that non-agile workers can always fall back on retail jobs good enough?
First step, since we'll need to go there anyway: half of all economic growth goes into a basic income fund that everyone gets; no strings, no questions, given to rich and poor alike. Asymptotically, this means that no one will have less than a 1/2N share. Eventually, we'll be able to get rid of other entitlement programs once this basic income fund is sufficient to eliminate poverty.
We're destined for sub-20% employment* in 50-200 years. The best we'll be able to achieve is a state where most of those who are unemployed are studying up for their next career. This eliminates the "fall behind" problem. People fall behind today because they still have to work when they do, often in more taxing jobs than we work (retail sucks). So they have no energy to push forward.
Second, we'll need to improve human intelligence either through "transhuman" advancement or eugenics ^. Not to sound like a dick, but a lot of people are "falling behind" on technology because they aren't smart enough. It's not that they are lazy or disadvantaged, but that the skills required to master advanced technology weren't necessary throughout most of our evolutionary history and are therefore uncommon.
^ On "eugenics", please understand that I'm not excusing the horrors that have been given that name (a misapplication thereof) in the past. I'm not advocating harming anyone, but I think there should be strong incentives (e.g. free education) for smart people to reproduce.
Regardless of whether the effect is cultural or genetic, smart people have smart kids. Although I'd like it to be cultural, I tend to think the latter. In either case, we want to encourage smart people to reproduce.
Not at all. Many entitlement programs are based on differences which an equal share simply doesn't address.
Also, as the "share" increases (in absolute terms), the number of people who say "hey, I can live on that - why work?" also goes up, which reduces the size of the pool.
I am curious - why do you think that "half of economic growth" is the right number? (And, don't you really mean "half of economic output", or rather "profit"?)
At 4%, you'll double every 18 years. So after 90 years, the pool is $3200 of which $1650 is not redistributed and $1550 is.
What this gives you is: 1. the nonredistributed pool is growing, so you don't have anyone complaining about income loss. 2. Asymptotically, you get to a society where everyone has at least a 1/2N share of the pie.
Also, as the "share" increases (in absolute terms), the number of people who say "hey, I can live on that - why work?" also goes up, which reduces the size of the pool.
If GDP declines, the basic income would decline and people would have to work again, but I don't think this style of economy would be any more recession-prone than the one we have now.
Honestly, I think the danger of this (people not working) is overstated. Most people would rather work than not work; the reason people hate retail jobs is not that they want to be unproductive, but because everyone treats them like shit at such jobs (because they can, and they can because the people in those jobs are stuck there). If we liberated humanity from the necessity of work, people still would work, but they'd be a lot more creative and self-directed in how they go about it. This would be good for everyone. As for those, who would laze about and not work, they're most likely people who are not very productive anyway.
I was unclear. I might "work" but I wouldn't care about being paid so my work wouldn't result in anything redistributable. And, I'd be much less concerned about whether someone else valued what I was doing.
Yes, you can argue that the recipients of my work would be better off. And we might start exchanging favors. You'd probably call that tax avoidance.
And yes, I'd work a lot less and I'd dive a lot more.
That depends on how much that share actually is. Remember - we have folks living on welfare now.
And, it might well cause people to retire earlier. Or to delay entering the work force.
Krugman's "Macroeconomics" says that it is well established that the higher the unemployment compensation, the more that people try to live on it or extend their stays. This is the same thing only moreso.
Sigh. The worst form of anxiety is anecdotal anxiety.
(I think the author would have done better skipping the bombastic "digital underclass" title; the subtitle "How technology has become a barrier to social mobility" would help swift readers to not miss his point...)
I think in the future when the only way possible to do a lot of the basics is through the internet then the people left behind will really have problems.
This seems indicative of the rapidly increasing rate of technological change. I think we are just starting to see the effects of millions of independent blogs and the rapid, community bubbling up, of posts with interesting insight.
For me, it's hard to ignore the premise of the singularity proponents.
The point he is making is clear, however, it doesn't take THAT long to develop some fundamental computer-related skills. I feel worse for old people.
TB
http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Ric...
If you went to a public school in the USA where anti-intellectualism was NOT the dominant meme, consider yourself lucky...
I've never dealt with students who "didn't grasp the concept of keyboard shortcuts", and so I'm inclined to think the situation has been dramatised for the sake of hitting the message home. But other than that, I really do share his worries: I believe you need quite a bit more than a basic grasp of technology, if you don't want to be made redundant by a computer very soon.