All too often we talk about the "bad guys" in society. It is nice to note that altruism is alive and well in many places. Because there is no harm from their actions there is little press coverage and the chattering classes can continue to focus on the "predators" out there; which often leaves us with the impression that bad news is the order of the day.
arthur From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2010 7:30 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; Arthur Cordell Subject: RE: [Futurework] timesizing not downsizing Arthur, At 06:49 18/07/2010 -0400, you wrote: Just one correction. Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web. He deserves to be recognized as some sort great humanas he did this and seemed to have sought no monetary outcome such as trying to patent or copyright anything. True enough. However, it's to be wondered whether he had any idea of just how his innovation would be developed. Initially it was just a useful mode of communication for scientific results. Einstein's ideas about mass/energy conversion, and A. C. Clarke's ideas about geostationary satellites are similar ideas that led on to the most enormous consequences. But laurels are certainly due to scientists like Salk, who eschewed patenting his polio vaccine even though he had a shrewd idea of the billions he could have earned if it had been commercialized. Keith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee Arthur From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2010 3:16 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; Arthur Cordell Subject: Re: [Futurework] timesizing not downsizing Arthur, "Timesizing" is not the answer to job sharing because the higher the income, prestige, power, perks or intrinsic interest of a particular job or profession the more that its practitioners will control the entry of too many others and resist the knowledge-sharing that's required. This is why, in an age of increasing automation and specializations, a new globalized meta-class is building on the separation of the professional middle-classes of the last two centuries and gradually becoming a permanency. In an age when a steadily increasing proportion of young people face a lifetime of make-work or no-work, I cannot see what the answer may be, given the present institutional set-up -- educational, institutional, political. Unless, of course, the youngsters themselves start to produce the answer. The vast majority of innovations throughout history occur to young people (while their frontal lobes are still developing with millions of new neurons) and, what with their mobile phones, there never has been such a generation that is so well-connected with their peers as now, or as wary of the protective world of the adults. A simple idea of Alan Turing (conceived when he was 24) and subsequent work in parental garages by other youngsters has produced the personal computer. A simple idea of Tim Berners-Lee (conceived when he was 34) has produced the Internet. What with nucleic acids being able to be bought off the shelf, and a sufficiency of garages and youngsters, one never knows what wonderful new DNA sequences may be contrived in the years to come which will blow the present economy right off course -- and perhaps produce job-sharing and interesting pursuits for everybody this time. Keith . At 20:09 17/07/2010 -0400, you wrote: http://www.timesizing.com/2ts.htm The standard response to technological innovation today is downsizing, rationalized by the myth that "technology creates more jobs than it destroys." The myth is belied by companies' repeated success in getting taxbreaks by threatening to take their jobs elsewhere, by the huge increase in makework <http://www.timesizing.com/1mkwkegs.htm> in both public and private sectors, and by mounting numbers of people on welfare, disability <http://www.timesizing.com/3disab.htm> , homelessness <http://www.timesizing.com/1homless.htm> , prison <http://www.timesizing.com/2jailvu.htm> , forced retirement <http://www.timesizing.com/1retire.htm> and forced "self-employment" with no clients. Globally, downsizing has turned the goal of competitiveness into a race to the bottom and darkened the world's economic and ecological outlook. But the good news is that very few changes in approach can stop the downturn and get everything spiralling UPward again. Keith Hudson, Saltford, England Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
