News — At The Edge — 7/20
Inequality will continue growing — Lost jobs, Wall St. & Politics, Elites, missing info — because civilization is lost.
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Will Your Job Still Exist In 2030? —
“[Study] finds automation widening the gap between urban and rural areas and dramatically affecting people who didn’t go to college or didn’t finish high school….
‘All of our jobs are going to change…[and] 40% of U.S. jobs are in occupations that are likely to shrink [by 2030]… [with] 21 million Americans, office support is…most at risk of losing jobs…. Food service is another…as hotel, fast-food and other kitchens automate the work of cooks, dishwashers and others’….
[But] software developers and information security specialists…solar panel installers and wind turbine technician. Health care jobs, including hearing aid specialists and home health aides, will stay in high demand for the next decade…[as will] personal services for the wealthy, like interior designers, psychologists, massage therapists, dietitians and landscape architects….
900,000 bookkeepers, accountants and auditing clerks nationwide might see their jobs phased out….
By 2030, the majority of job growth may be concentrated in just 25 megacities and their peripheries, while large swaths of the country see slower job creation and even lose jobs….The portion of Americans who moved to a different state dropped by half between 1990 and 2017…[and] when people do move, they move to an area with a very similar profile, meaning similar job [opportunities]….
[The] workers who didn’t go to college or didn’t finish high school are four times as likely to lose jobs because of automation…[widening] income, and wealth disparities…[with] one-quarter of Hispanic workers…jobs that could be automated….
[Women’s jobs] predicted to grow, like registered nurses and personal care aides…accounting for 58% of net job growth by 2030.” https://www.npr.org/2019/07/11/740219271/will-your-job-still-exist-in-2030
Don’t blame flawed Silicon Valley for the rot of Wall Street and Washington —
“[Much] objectively blameworthy behavior there…[and] media treatment of Facebook and Google has grown much harsher….
People are especially angry at the tech industry because they view it as the last engine of power which actually might change….
[Most] no longer believe…there is any hope of meaningfully changing…in Wall Street or Washington. A learned helplessness has set in…[because] the system which is meant to control them has been corrupted, by regulatory capture, gerrymandering, court-packing, and so forth….
[As] the tech industry has become more powerful, it has also grown…more conservative…[with] people who in another era would have gone to Wall Street or Washington…[and] take on the mantle of subversion… but don’t actually intend any….(This is why I like the blockchain / cryptocurrency world; it’s full of people who want to change the established system…[and] compared to the sclerotic mainstream, their approach is hugely appealing)….
[Raging] at Silicon Valley…[for] outcomes that only Wall Street and Washington can bring is pretty counterproductive. Better to remember that often the fault lies…in our elected representatives.” https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/14/dont-blame-flawed-silicon-valley-for-the-rot-of-wall-street-and-washington/
The FTC’s $5 billion fine for Facebook is so meaningless, it will likely leave Zuckerberg wondering what he can’t get away with —
“If, after all the privacy and security fiascos Facebook admitted to…[including] Cambridge Analytica scandal…such a small penalty…[for] data Facebook collected from its users and what it did with that information.
When controversies arose…the company simply took a step back only to quietly push forward again soon thereafter….
[A] previous FTC investigation…resulted in no fine…[but] was supposed to restrict some of Facebook’s activities and protect users’ privacy…turned out to do very little of either…[and] FTC didn’t take any enforcement actions.” https://news.yahoo.com/ftcs-5-billion-fine-facebook-233547436.html
Intellectual Dark Matter —
“In analyzing the functional institutions…we are not able to see for ourselves most of the knowledge that created them…[like] trade secrets, tacit technical knowledge…persuasive skill, cooperation and collusion among founders and their allies, and founders’ long-term plans for their institutions…[and] must understand it if we hope to understand society….
[The] intellectual dark matter: knowledge we cannot see publicly, but whose existence we can infer…at the foundations of our society, dwarfing…visible knowledge on which we normally focus…[especially] lost, proprietary, and tacit knowledge….
- A body of understanding becomes lost knowledge when the tradition of knowledge maintaining it ceases to exist….[In] the Renaissance, there was a clear understanding of the importance and scope of lost knowledge…[that] led to an ambitious [efforts]…[to] unearth and…understand ancient wisdom…underpinning of many Western political systems…[and] scientific revolution…. If a dark age is an age that has forgotten most of what was learned, we are still living in one….
- [Next] proprietary knowledge…is restricted by an institution guarding its monopoly. Companies use…non-disclosure agreements and information security practices…[against] espionage and secure economic advantage….Deeply networked professions can also…[limit] access to and…rights to use information. The purest form of such professional cultures are the guilds of medieval Europe…[with] clout in our social and economic landscape…to punish transgressions, be it through legal, economic, or reputational attacks…[and] through formalized training and apprenticeship…. The pretense of intellectual rigor…overstates proprietary knowledge…[increasing] authority or extend it to domains beyond [expertise]….[Law’s] a field where such guilds thrive in practice….
- Tacit knowledge is…not transmitted in written form…[because] far too complicated and cumbersome to describe even moderately difficult tasks….Many professions…require large bodies of tacit knowledge to perform well…and protect…[what] provides an adversarial advantage….
Institutions dependent on lost knowledge are running on autopilot and will fail to adapt or renew themselves…[especially] considering how pervasive inflexible bureaucratic institutions are in our society….
We cannot predict and guide the trajectory of our society if we do not understand the importance of intellectual dark matter and so fail to locate and…assemble it into a coherent understanding…[for] a chance of dramatically changing the world’s course for the better.” https://medium.com/the-long-now-foundation/intellectual-dark-matter-2e5890aa8d8f
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Doc Huston
