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In The Shrinking of A Pie
In The Shrinking of A Pie
And that leads me to the third article, which ties into the overall effects of these
technological "advances" on education—the inevitable negative feedback loop.
That’s not the point raised in the article, but the inference is hard to ignore. I
would have titled this piece, "Preparing A Nation for Walmart," but Bob Hebert
opted for:
Colleges deliver the education that students’ demand and, absent a vision for
their own futures (the essential 'spark' that ignites a student’s ambition), that’s not
saying much. Students opt for fun. Colleges, competing for seats in seats, are
all too willing to oblige. The inevitable result is that academic standards have
eroded and most students who graduate lack, as Bob Hebert says, “critical
thinking, complex reasoning and writing” skills. The trend is clear; fun for all, no
heavy lifting please, and college degrees to nowhere.
Paul Krugman rightly points out that the “idea that modern technology eliminates
only menial jobs, that well-educated workers are clear winners, may dominate
popular discussion, but it’s actually decades out of date.”
Well, it turns out our worries were justified; we just had the timeframe wrong.
The efficiencies promised by technology took a lot longer to take root and, not
until the recessions of the past decade enabled companies to layoff workers did it
What has happened, in fact, is that computers, whose effects have been
accelerated by high-speed communications, perform higher-level tasks formerly
thought to be beyond their capabilities. The result is fewer and fewer jobs, even
for those with advanced degrees. Call it the ‘Watson Effect.’
Think about this: In 1997, an IBM computer called ‘Deep Blue’ beat the world
chess champion, Garry Kasparov. In the finite world of a two dimensional
chessboard, this was relatively easy. Fourteen years later, an IBM computer
called ‘Watson’ achieved a far more ambitious task by beating, to an
overwhelming degree, the two most successful ‘Jeopardy’ players ever.
‘Watson’ consists of 2500 ‘cores’ and fills a small room, but don’t let size fool
you. How long will it take for something that powerful to fit on a desktop? If
‘Moore’s Law’ applies, the answer is about ten or fifteen years. If you add the
collaborative, parallel processing1 potential of the Internet, the timeframe may be
even shorter. “Yes,” you say, “but that was just a parlor trick—a quiz show.” No,
it was powerful demonstration of the ability of computers to understand language
and interpret complex, tricky questions. For those of you who missed it, here’s a
typical question2:
1
That is, where many processors are working on the same problem and information at the same time. They
could be arrayed in a rack in a signal room, or spread out of the Internet.
2
For more examples, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12rNbGf2Wwo
No, what the ‘worker productivity index’ really measures is the degree to which
technology has supplanted people. Or, as Paul Krugman puts it, “technological
progress is actually reducing the
demand for highly educated
workers.” It’s hollowing out job
opportunities for the majority of
the middleclass.
3
And if you want to see the future, check this out: http://www.flixxy.com/high-tech-car-factory.htm
4
Loans you may never be able to pay back… but that’s another story.
Students may not be sophisticated, but they can’t miss obvious signs of a
declining job market. They are swimming against the tide of demotivation,
spinning in the vortex of “No Help Wanted” signs. They see unemployed parents
and neighbors; they see the underemployed now working part-time for $10 an
hour, displaced from jobs that paid three or four times that much a decade ago.
They see jobs going offshore or disappearing into thin air.
Really good students (like you) will do just fine, but the fat of the bell-curve will
have a hard time visualizing a rosy future for themselves. You’ll opt for the gut
courses, just to get that degree.
Why is it that today only 75% of high school students graduate from high school?
Why do more girls graduate from college than boys? Sloth, you say? Grand
Theft Auto? Drugs and alcohol? Yes, they contribute. But stop. What are the
best motivators? Is it the prospect of a rich and rewarding life, and a belief that it
is attainable if you work hard? That’s when distractions hold less sway. An
imagined life, one that marries aptitude, opportunity and prestige, is what makes
the difference between being easily distracted or motivated to learning. Without
such a vision, you have today’s high college dropout rates. Less than 50% of
male college freshman graduate.
Could a factor be that jobs that were traditionally dominated by men, like in
manufacturing, have disappeared? Gender is less a determinant of success for
today’s jobs. Women and men are equally adept at most jobs. In fact, I can
think of many reasons why men may not perform as well, like stereotype-
conflicted self-esteem, masculine expectations and testosterone (born out by my
So, here you are; your male mentors are shuffling around complaining life is
unfair and it’s all those Republicans’… Democrats’… Bankers’ … Socialists’ …
Corporate elites’ fault, but, at the same time, your parents expect you to ignite
that spark of ambition that will launch you into a really high-paying career.
“Doing what?” you ask. “Well, something will come along… some exciting new
technology like the Internet or renewable energy will light your fire.” Trouble is,
on a macroeconomic level, those new technologies are likely to hollow out more
of the middle class by elbowing aside more workers. Think about the effects of
the Internet on retail, where a website can eliminate the need for retail outlets
and the function of bricks and mortar is reduced to marketing, useful for driving
people to a website. Don’t think Apple builds stores to sell computers. They
build them to sell image. Most people buy technology on the web.
While I agree with Paul Krugman's analysis, I’m not ready to accept his solutions.
I think expanding education opportunity; collective bargaining and tax reform
(where the rich pay a greater share) will only take you so far. They’re stopgaps,
necessary, perhaps, but not farsighted and, in today’s political climate, not very
realistic. Looking further into the future, it's hard to imagine how 7-9 billion
people will be productively employed.
In the 50s, the question about where the explosion of computer technology might
lead was academic; today it’s anything but. Is the workforce doomed to be
unemployed or underemployed? If you look at the trends of the last 60 years,
and in particular, the last decade, it’s hard to conclude otherwise. We read about
Americans loosing high-paying jobs who are now either unemployed or working
for $10 an hour, without benefits. The underemployment 5 rate in the US is about
18%6. We read that real wages of middleclass workers (adjusted for inflation)
have been stagnant for the past 10 years. Is work becoming obsolete? More
5
The unemployed, those who have given up looking and those who have taken part-time jobs just to make
ends meet.
6
The official unemployment rate includes only those people who have been actively looking for a job in
the past four weeks.
Great Ride, but where are we headed, anyway? just doing what people do. This is
an attempt to understand the
factors at work: to understand trends over a span of decades and what they tell
us about the future. I don’t blame those who have been successful and find
themselves on the winning side. I’ve been more fortunate than I could have ever
imagined. It’s just that the long-term consequences are likely to be very ugly if
we don’t figure out where we’re headed.
The stark reality is this: If you are not in a position to control the production of
wealth, you will be out of a job or minimally employed to the degree that you
make just enough to consume what’s necessary to keep the engine running—for
most of the middleclass, that means running on idle.