Re: 2. Re: FW: The structure of future work and its consequences

["Cordell, Arthur: #ECOM - COMÉ"]

To this interesting discussion I would only add that access to the
technological infrastructure (based on income and social cultureal
conditions of the family and country/region) that ensures quality food ,
medicines, clean water, maternity care, vitamins, childhood stimulation,
etc., are all conditions (and, yes, technologies) that will continue to
ensure the possibility of a growing divide.

arthur cordell
 ----------
From: Keith Hudson
To: Ed Weick
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: 2. Re: FW: The structure of future work and its consequences
Date: Monday, January 17, 2000 4:47PM

A few comments on Ed Weick's observations:

At 11:11 17/01/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Keith Hudson has written a provocative piece suggesting that the human
>species will split on the basis of intelligence.  It will, Keith theorizes,
>do so on the basis of the extent to which it is able to intellectually cope
>with, and utilize, advanced technology based on the microchip.  He suggests
>that this process will be augmented by genetic engineering, with those
>(presumably the highest of the techies) able to afford it testing their
>mates for intelligence and ensuring that their offspring are endowed with
>the proper genetic material.

I don't actually mean that the techies will positively select their mates
by any sort of genetic test. It is just that like tends to marry like and
those in the better, well-paid jobs will also marry intelligent people. The
big difference will be that the average skill/intelligence threshold of
standard well-paid jobs will now act as a selection barrier in a way that
has never happened before because unemployment will start to occur
increasingly among those with average skills and deprive their children
(particularly the potentially bright children) of the right sort of early
environment.

I think we've already seen the beginnings of this effect in the UK. After
WWII, the Education Act of 1944 unleashed a surge of working class children
(of my generation) into the grammar schools and universities. This effect
didn't last for more than about ten years or so.  After then, the
proportion of working class children in the older, high quality
universities that then existed began dropping steadily, until today, it is
now far lower than it was then. This effect is visible only by examining
the entry records within each of the older universities because the
national effect has been totally obscured by governmental policy of  the
last 30-40 years of rapidly expanding the number of universities and, as
you might imagine, steadily reducing the entry qualifications. So, although
the proportion of working class children at universities generally is
higher than ever before, the general standard of degrees has dropped
precipitately.  The better quality universities are catering for
overwhelmingly middle class children. They would only be too happy to
receive more working class children but the supply isn't there at the
standard they require. So I think this shows that the separation effect is
already occurring.


>This is an interesting idea, but it raises the question of what drives
>intelligence.  I would suggest that if there is such a thing as natural
>selection in relation to intelligence (there probably is), it is highly
>circumstantial in nature, and not driven by a single variable such as
>technology.  Whatever broad occupational group people find themselves in,
>the more intelligent stand a much better chance of survival than the less
>intelligent.

Yes, indeed. Genetic specialists admit that they have little idea of how
many genes are involved in intelligence (whatever that they be) but they
usually talk in terms of hundreds, or even thousands, of genes being
involved.


>The survival of a hunting-gathering family depended on the
>accumulation of a tremendous amount of knowledge about the environment and
>its harvestable flora and fauna, and a very keen sense of observation about
>what was changing in that environment.  Many hunter-gatherer families
simply
>couldn't hack it and didn't survive.  I would suggest that, in the
>development of human intelligence to date, we probably owe far more to
early
>hunter-gatherers than we ever will to the microchip.

I agree completely here. Millions of years of hunter-gathering evolution,
as primates, long before we became man, have gone into our genetic make-up.


>I have a fourteen year old daughter who is very familiar with the computer.
>It's certain that this marvelous tool has an impact on what she thinks
about
>and how she solves problems.  Yet I'm at a loss about how I would compare
>her intellectual development with that of some of the slum or street kids
>I've seen in Sao Paulo, Delhi or Moscow.  Many of those kids need to think
>about their day to day continuity, and I very much doubt that they would
>apply any less intelligence to this than my daughter does to her computer.
>We should not overlook that about ninety percent of the world's population
>is like those street kids, in a continuous strategic mode around personal
>security and survival.  If I were looking for a significant, next-species,
>advancement in human intelligence, I would be inclined to search for it
>among these people, and not among California techies.

I disagree here. If you were selecting for resourcefulness alone, yes. But
the basic elements of a techno-culture, like all culture, is laid down so
early in a child's life, that street kids wouldn't have a chance of
establishing a toehold in a high-tech society. However, if our increasingly
high-tech society collapses -- and that's always a possibility to bear in
mind -- then the 'other' population of highly resourceful people (if it
then existed) would certainly have a better chance of surviving.

Keith Hudson