Steven V Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Many years ago Bill Gates said that Third World people do not need > > computers, they need food and medical care. Gates is a great humanitarian > > philanthropist, and he knew a lot about Third World conditions, but he > was > > wrong about that. > > My sediments as well. One has to ask: after the third world is > healthy, what will they do with the rest of their healthy lives. > On that subject, I love this quote from Samuel Florman: . . . Our contemporary problem is distressingly obvious. We have too many people wanting too many things. This is not caused by technology; it is a consequence of the type of creature that man is . . . It is common knowledge that millions of underprivileged families want adequate food and housing. What is less commonly remarked is that after they have adequate food and housing they will want to be served at a fine restaurant and to have a weekend cottage by the sea. People want tickets to the Philharmonic and vacation trips abroad . . . The illiterate want to learn how to read. Then they want education, and then more education, and then they want their sons and daughters to become doctors and lawyers. It is frightening to see so many millions of people wanting so much. It is almost like being present at the Oklahoma land rush, except that millions are involved instead of hundreds, and instead of land, the prize is everything that life has to offer. - S. Florman, *The Existential Pleasures of Engineering* (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996), p. 76 I quoted this in chapter 21 of my book. Florman is great! I *love* the idea that some kid in India or Africa right now is using a laptop computer to download lesson plans from MIT and will go on to invent some wonderful thing and become a multimillionaire. Like William Kamkwamba, author of "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind" who learned basic physics and electrical engineering from a U.S.-government supported local library. This will be more competition for our children, but it is the kind of competition we want. In the 1950s and 60s, Japanese families caught up with U.S. families in living standards, education, health and most other metrics. I never got the sense that we are poorer because they got richer. Naturally there is some competition for scarce resources such as oil, but most resources nowadays are things like silicon (sand) or bandwidth, which are available in unlimited quantities. There seems to be quite a lot of space in Japan to grow more food, if they ever decide to grow their own food again instead of buying it from us. If they build food factories I am pretty sure their entire agricultural production system would fit in less space than Osaka. It would look a lot nicer than Osaka. - Jed
