
The New Digital Underclass - markbnine
http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/09/technology-social-media-internet-opinions-columnists-trevor-butterworth.html?boxes=Homepagechannels
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garply
Yesterday, I was sending one of my workers to go pick something up at an
address she didn't recognize. I told her to look it up on Baidu Maps (better
version of Google Maps for China) and I found that she had never used a
computer in her life and didn't know how to. She's in her early 30s. I was
pretty shocked - I thought only people of my grandparents' age couldn't use
computers.

But, upon reflection, computer illiteracy is probably relatively common among
people without a strong educational background, especially in developing
countries. It's probably pretty hard for a taxi driver, for example, to
justify spending hundreds of dollars on a laptop when he only makes a few
hundred a month - plus, what would he really use it for? I wonder what the
statistics look like.

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jdminhbg
On this:

"Once upon a time, literacy and numeracy were the paths to social mobility in
its broadest sense; now, technology appears to have raised rather than lowered
the barrier."

Where is the evidence that the barrier has been "raised," as opposed to just
still existing? Why is the inability to use the internet different than the
inability to use a slide rule or to understand references to Shakespeare? The
evidence presented just shows that people at the bottom of the socio-economic
ladder are also at the bottom of the technological ladder. This isn't
surprising, and it doesn't seem to me to be a novel state of affairs.

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allenp
So this article really touches on a hundred different topics but I wanted to
point this out:

"If your job can be replaced by a computer program, chances are, it will. In
fact, Goldin and Katz suggest that prosperity and equality in the U.S. will
need a workforce that has more of the mental agility of a Leibniz or a Kircher
in order to adapt to rapid technological change."

I really think this is key to understanding this "underclass." It is like a
surfer riding a wave, as long as you're up front everything is ok but once you
get behind (and fall off the board) it gets harder and harder to get back on.
It sounds a little singularity-ish, but we really are seeing an acceleration
in the rate of change of technology and culture (or cultural norms like the
acceptance of technological interruption at any point).

So I think the question that comes from this is what responsibility do we as a
society have to help those that can't keep up with this change? We were just
talking about internet access as a human right the other day, so where does
this play in?

Is there some sort of digital welfare that we need to set up? Is the fact that
non-agile workers can always fall back on retail jobs good enough?

~~~
pw0ncakes
_Is there some sort of digital welfare that we need to set up? Is the fact
that non-agile workers can always fall back on retail jobs good enough?_

First step, since we'll need to go there anyway: half of all economic growth
goes into a basic income fund that _everyone_ gets; no strings, no questions,
given to rich and poor alike. Asymptotically, this means that no one will have
less than a 1/2 _N share. Eventually, we'll be able to get rid of other
entitlement programs once this basic income fund is sufficient to eliminate
poverty.

We're destined for sub-20% _employment* in 50-200 years. The best we'll be
able to achieve is a state where most of those who are unemployed are studying
up for their next career. This eliminates the "fall behind" problem. People
fall behind today because they still have to work when they do, often in more
taxing jobs than we work (retail sucks). So they have no energy to push
forward.

Second, we'll need to improve human intelligence either through "transhuman"
advancement or eugenics ^. Not to sound like a dick, but a lot of people are
"falling behind" on technology because they aren't smart enough. It's not that
they are lazy or disadvantaged, but that the skills required to master
advanced technology weren't necessary throughout most of our evolutionary
history and are therefore uncommon.

^ On "eugenics", please understand that I'm not excusing the horrors that have
been given that name (a misapplication thereof) in the past. I'm not
advocating harming anyone, but I think there should be strong incentives (e.g.
free education) for smart people to reproduce.

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anamax
> Eventually, we'll be able to get rid of other entitlement programs once this
> basic income fund is sufficient to eliminate poverty.

Not at all. Many entitlement programs are based on differences which an equal
share simply doesn't address.

Also, as the "share" increases (in absolute terms), the number of people who
say "hey, I can live on that - why work?" also goes up, which reduces the size
of the pool.

I am curious - why do you think that "half of economic growth" is the right
number? (And, don't you really mean "half of economic output", or rather
"profit"?)

~~~
pw0ncakes
I mean half of (real) economic growth because no one gets poorer that way. If
we redistributed 50% of all current income, a lot of people would get much
poorer. Whereas here, if the current pool (GDP) is $100 and grows by $4 in a
year, there will be $102 non-redistributed and $2 distributed evenly. If it
grows by 4% ($4.16) the next year to $108.16, then $104.08 is non-
redistributed and $4.08 is redistributed.

At 4%, you'll double every 18 years. So after 90 years, the pool is $3200 of
which $1650 is not redistributed and $1550 is.

What this gives you is: 1. the nonredistributed pool is growing, so you don't
have anyone complaining about income loss. 2. Asymptotically, you get to a
society where everyone has at least a 1/2N share of the pie.

 _Also, as the "share" increases (in absolute terms), the number of people who
say "hey, I can live on that - why work?" also goes up, which reduces the size
of the pool._

If GDP declines, the basic income would decline and people would have to work
again, but I don't think this style of economy would be any more recession-
prone than the one we have now.

Honestly, I think the danger of this (people not working) is overstated. Most
people would rather work than not work; the reason people hate retail jobs is
not that they want to be unproductive, but because everyone treats them like
shit at such jobs (because they can, and they can because the people in those
jobs are stuck there). If we liberated humanity from the _necessity_ of work,
people still would work, but they'd be a lot more creative and self-directed
in how they go about it. This would be good for everyone. As for those, who
would laze about and not work, they're most likely people who are not very
productive anyway.

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anamax
> Most people would rather work than not work;

I was unclear. I might "work" but I wouldn't care about being paid so my work
wouldn't result in anything redistributable. And, I'd be much less concerned
about whether someone else valued what I was doing.

Yes, you can argue that the recipients of my work would be better off. And we
might start exchanging favors. You'd probably call that tax avoidance.

And yes, I'd work a lot less and I'd dive a lot more.

~~~
pw0ncakes
Ok, but most people want more than a 1/2N share of the economic "pie".

~~~
anamax
> Ok, but most people want more than a 1/2N share of the economic "pie".

That depends on how much that share actually is. Remember - we have folks
living on welfare now.

And, it might well cause people to retire earlier. Or to delay entering the
work force.

Krugman's "Macroeconomics" says that it is well established that the higher
the unemployment compensation, the more that people try to live on it or
extend their stays. This is the same thing only moreso.

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RyanMcGreal
>There is a sense that devoting oneself to reading a book over 200 pages has
become a major and possibly insuperable commitment in a way that it possibly
wasn't 10 or 20 years ago

Sigh. The worst form of anxiety is anecdotal anxiety.

~~~
yungchin
Yes. And indeed, in the rest of the article, the author points out that your
quote above is a rather "parochial concern", and that "there will always be a
higly literate future for the highly literate".

(I think the author would have done better skipping the bombastic "digital
underclass" title; the subtitle "How technology has become a barrier to social
mobility" would help swift readers to not miss his point...)

~~~
timthorn
Not usually one to call out typos - but I do love the phrase "higly
literate"... :)

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robryan
I don't think were at the point where you must know technology well to live a
good standard of life. We are heading that way but at the moment it seems you
can still do everything you need to get by the old way, you can still write a
check out or pay a bill at the post office, you can still get a printed
version of things like the yellow pages.

I think in the future when the only way possible to do a lot of the basics is
through the internet then the people left behind will really have problems.

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bsaunder
_"Academic research in these areas is almost redundant by the time it is
published given the pace of technological change ... "_

This seems indicative of the rapidly increasing rate of technological change.
I think we are just starting to see the effects of millions of independent
blogs and the rapid, community bubbling up, of posts with interesting insight.

For me, it's hard to ignore the premise of the singularity proponents.

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whatwhatwhat
I guess he's talking about kids in developing countries...

The point he is making is clear, however, it doesn't take THAT long to develop
some fundamental computer-related skills. I feel worse for old people.

TB

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jakemcgraw
Not so much the developing world, just take a look at the majority of students
in the majority of schools across the US. Anti-intellectualism, previously
relegated to a small percentage of trouble makers in each class, has
blossomed, and is now the modus operandi for most non-honors students in the
American school system. The days of Idiocracy are upon us!

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starkfist
Anti Intellectualism has never been "relegated to a small percentage of
trouble makers." It's always been a popular ideology in American culture.

[http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-
Ric...](http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-
Hofstadter/dp/0394703170)

If you went to a public school in the USA where anti-intellectualism was NOT
the dominant meme, consider yourself lucky...

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jakemcgraw
Indeed, you're right, I suppose what I'm speaking about is an adversity to all
forms of productive behavior (which I incorrectly labeled intellectualism)
that I witnessed while in primary and secondary school. I just assumed that
previous generations (I'm a member of the "millennials") must have had a
higher percentage of productive members.

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GHFigs
tl;dr commas good, technology bad, Enlightnment thinkers good, poor people bad

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jdietrich
News just in: people who haven't learned how to do something can't do that
thing. Film at eleven.

