My thanks to Eva Durant, Victor Milne, and Steve Kurtz for your
comments on my long message about combinatorial optimization and
employment.
Unfortunately your comments make it clear to me that once again I've
failed to convey my message. I seem to be talking to an almost
non-existant
Re-posting this as it seems not to have got through our 'fire-wall'.
--
--
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Views on Rifkin's theory?
Date: Thursday, November 19, 1998 2:59PM
Arthur Cordell wrote,
Technology is also labour empowering or enhancing.
From: Douglas P. Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Oh, well, I'll try again. Here goes: -- The first line on my home
page says "Imagine a future world in which it is easy to find a good
job." Perhaps it would have captured my intentions better if it had
said "Imagine a future world in which it is
At 09:39 PM 11/19/98 -0800,[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Walker) wrote:
Pete Vincent
I think it could hardly be called _Rifkin's_ theory, as it has been
around an awfully long time, being discussed explicitly, for example,
in Robert Theobald's 1964(?) book.
I'd give it a much older pedigree than that.
Dear futurework and others,
I am delighted that we (on the futurework list) are getting onto the
issue of work, and welcome all of the thoughtful posts people have made
on that subject. Also with the recognition that Theobald was writing
about the issue 30 years before Rifkin, although the
Thank you for this. I've never seen it before, and it sure goes to the
heart of things. By the same token, farm labourers would work about ten
minutes a day and factory workers about the same amount of time. That
being the case, it would be simpler for everyone just to pay them not
to work, as
My interest was not so much in the provenance of "Rifkin's theory"--though
the quotation from Bertrand Russell was fascinating and instructive. I doubt
that Rifkin would claim to be the first to argue that the net effect of
technological innovation is a reduction in the number of available jobs.
At 04:56 PM 11/20/98 -1000, Jay Hanson wrote:
- Original Message -
From: Caspar Davis [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The other question is whether the upswing in energy around Y2K and
funddamental change will lead to attempts of various
people/organizations to centralize energy flows or whether we