Newmedia on Tue, 29 Jan 2013 02:51:15 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy... |
Brian: > But when you follow the technology, Mark, it leads to the > questions of social reproduction and of government. Exactly! It's really a pleasure to discuss this with someone who does their homework! <g> > According to Perez, it's only after the successful resolution > of the institutional questions - concerning wages and livelihood, > money and credit, government regulation and intervention, > international trade regimes, etc - that a "techno-economic > paradigm" can reach its mature phase and deploy all its > potentials. Precisely! So, what does Perez say about the "potentials" for the current TEP and the progress by the "institutions" to deal with the changes driven by the technology? What sort of economic growth does "informationalism" (or what many have long called "The Information Age" and what was originally called "Post-industrialism") offer for those economies that no longer have industrialization (i.e. the earlier 4x "surges" described in her work) to drive living standards -- like North America, Europe and Japan? Silence? I have been discussing this with her for nearly 10 years and have helped with some of her papers on the topic. You will notice that there are NO numbers in her work! (And, as we've discussed, providing those numbers is likely to become my job.) The fact is that the "institutions" in the *developed* economies have failed to deal with these problems for 50+ years (i.e. since it became clear in the early 60s where this was all heading) and show no indication of picking up the ball today. The EU's "Internet of Things" (i.e. sensors everywhere or what IBM calls "Smarter Planet") is the closest they've come and, once again, it has no numbers attached and no growth forecasts are implied. It simply won't help reverse the larger trends. Meanwhile, we in a "race against the machines." As detailed in their book with the same title, the group at MIT's Center for Digital Business simply *cannot* find the new jobs that have long been expected. Nothing will be spared. Robots will flip burgers, fight wars, take care of the elderly, conduct science experiments and paint pictures. What are the POTENTIALS with all of this? The Singularity? Labeling all this "neo-liberal" is a cop-out and completely misses what has gone on! The technology doesn't care who is elected President or Prime Minister or who controls the legislature (or what we say on nettime). The typical left vs. right bickering is the modern version of fiddling (and dancing) while Rome burns. Complete ignorance -- on both "sides" -- about the fundamental changes that have *already* happened as a result of technology dominates the *ideological* debates! If Carlota could find a "socialist" to pay attention to her work, she'd be very happy. ANY "leftist" with institutional clout at all would be great. NONE have stepped forward -- not even in Estonia where she teaches classes for the EU! Paul Krugman's "Keynesianism" only works if his "stimulus" kickstarts the economy and it rebounds decisively. But under "informationalism" that cannot happen (as Krugman suspects but is afraid to admit)! At the same time, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has published their *strategic* roadmap for science and technology (in English), complete with projections of what this will mean for "ubiquitous" Chinese society -- unlike anything ever done in the West. Is this something they accomplished because of their "Marxist" ideology or is it really the reflection of a much more deliberate and responsible collections of "institutions," which are able to operate *without* concerns about "ideological" distractions (i.e. the *lack* of ideological "struggle")? LEFT vs. RIGHT is a hoax. As shown over the past 50+ years of back-and-forth in US politics, it doesn't matter which "side" wins -- because, of course, they aren't really different at all on what really matters. They are just two sides of the same TECHNOLOGICALLY *ignorant* coin. Taking responsibility for POST-INDUSTRIAL economic development will require abandoning the typically superficial arguments based on "ideology" -- which only gets in the way of our ability to understand what has happened and where we are heading. Throw it all out! You can run your "ideology" up the flag-pole everyday and hope that someone will salute it (no doubt getting some personal satisfaction at the audiences attending your lectures) and hope that someone will incorporate your ideas into their "institution" but that has already been tried and FAILED. >From 1964-66 a US Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress met almost daily to discuss these issues. It had top labor leaders (Reuther etc), social scientists (Bell, Sokow etc) and industrialists (Watson, Land etc) and it produced a complete set of recommendations along with 6-volumes of backup materials/testimony. (I'll be glad to send a PDF copy to anyone interested.) Then it was completely ignored and LBJ gave us the "Great Society" -- which has led directly to the highest level of per-capita incarceration in the world and as US median wages *permanently* stagnated in the early 1970s! How's that for *potentials*? Instead the US labor leaders got their pensions and the Japanese developed "worker collaboration" (with the help of the social psychologists), which has now spread to the automobile industry worldwide. Nothing to worry about. Game over. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go -- do not collect $200. The "left" has *ignored* the technology (as reflected in the absence of any sustained discussion on this list for the past 15 years) and, as a result, has only dug a deeper hole for everyone, since, in conventional terms, it is their responsibility to consider the broader social implications. Net ART won't feed the children. Shame on the LEFT for being so friggin' *stupid*!! More "ideology" won't fix any of this -- less might. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org