Here's an old article by respected author Orson Scott Card. It still applies. Worth thinking about....
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Windows Made Me This Way
by Orson Scott Card
The Triumph of the Parasites
We so-called knowledge workers may work hard...but so does every bloodsucking mosquito on the planet.
The "information age." The "knowledge society." The "information superhighway." There are days when these all seem to me like fancy titles to allow a parasitic elite to justify its leisurely existence.
I say this knowing that if the infomeisters are parasites, I'm one of them. When l'm not parasitically playing computer games (Sid Meier's Colonization this week), I'm writing things that are read in a few hours and discarded like Kleenex.
And here you are, reading along on the frothy back page of a computer magazine, which might suggest that you're a parasite, too.
There's no such thing as an "information age." No such thing as a "service economy." We're still in the age of photosynthesis, and every economy that isn't in free fall depends on having somebody to grow the food, produce the fibers, gather the fuel, build the houses.
The whole idea of civilization is that we can trade skills. The one who's good at making shoes and the one who's good at building tables will trade shoes for tables. We specialize, so the work is done by those who do it most efficiently.
What makes that specialization work, however, is surplus. Farmers make surplus food or fiber, which they share with doctors and engineers. Oil drillers bring in more oil than their families will ever need, and in return, they drive cars that some body else built.
Production Is the Key
The technologies that thrive are those that increase the surpluses. The industrial revolution worked because it vastly increased the surplus of goods. With machines, unskilled workers produced far more than skilled workers ever did. More-efficient transportation allowed us to trade surpluses with faraway strangers. Before the industrial revolution, most people were farmers or servants. Nowadays, most Westerners don't even know a farmer, and domestic servants are in business for themselves, running maid services and day-care centers. Most of what the old-time servants did is done with dish washers, washers and dryers, vacuum cleaners, microwaves, indoor plumbing, and central heating.
Computers can be seen as just another step along that road. I don't mark up my first draft and give it to a secretary to retype, I simply enter the changes directly into the virtual document and print out a new hard copy when I feel the urge. The much-touted infobahn is simply another improvement in transportation, allowing more people from farther away to take part in the conversation.
People Don't Know Any More Than They Ever Did
Do you know how to make ink? Can you find good potting clay on a riverbank and shape, fire, and glaze a jar? Can you make soap from urine and ashes? Do you know how to turn milk into cheese?
Come on, you don't even know how to install a CD ROM drive so it will coexist with Stacker and a network. We have a lot more information at hand and no way to sort through it. We converse with a lot more people via the Internet, only to discover that most of them are talkative idiots, just like at the office. We specialize so that we know almost everything about almost nothing at all.
A few computers affect the real, surplus-producing economy: Weather reports. lnventory control. Precise manipulation and design.
But most so-called knowledge workers, myself included, are really just getting paid for highly organized, non-productive leisure. Managers managing managers. Writers writing for writers. Salesmen selling to salesmen. It's not even trickling down. We add as much to society as the remora adds to the shark
And as we skim billions off the real economy (half to Bill Gates, half to the rest of us), we tell each other that we are the wave of the future.
Better if we humbly keep in mind the ultimate fate of all clean-hands aristocracies. Eventually they get brushed off like dandruff: And nobody misses them much.
Orson Scott Card is the Hugo- and Nebula-award winning author of Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Lost Boys, the Alvin Maker series, and many other novels
From: Windows Sources: The Magazine for Windows Experts, ISSN #1065-9641, February, 1995
============================================
Windows Made Me This Way
by Orson Scott Card
The Triumph of the Parasites
We so-called knowledge workers may work hard...but so does every bloodsucking mosquito on the planet.
The "information age." The "knowledge society." The "information superhighway." There are days when these all seem to me like fancy titles to allow a parasitic elite to justify its leisurely existence.
I say this knowing that if the infomeisters are parasites, I'm one of them. When l'm not parasitically playing computer games (Sid Meier's Colonization this week), I'm writing things that are read in a few hours and discarded like Kleenex.
And here you are, reading along on the frothy back page of a computer magazine, which might suggest that you're a parasite, too.
There's no such thing as an "information age." No such thing as a "service economy." We're still in the age of photosynthesis, and every economy that isn't in free fall depends on having somebody to grow the food, produce the fibers, gather the fuel, build the houses.
The whole idea of civilization is that we can trade skills. The one who's good at making shoes and the one who's good at building tables will trade shoes for tables. We specialize, so the work is done by those who do it most efficiently.
What makes that specialization work, however, is surplus. Farmers make surplus food or fiber, which they share with doctors and engineers. Oil drillers bring in more oil than their families will ever need, and in return, they drive cars that some body else built.
Production Is the Key
The technologies that thrive are those that increase the surpluses. The industrial revolution worked because it vastly increased the surplus of goods. With machines, unskilled workers produced far more than skilled workers ever did. More-efficient transportation allowed us to trade surpluses with faraway strangers. Before the industrial revolution, most people were farmers or servants. Nowadays, most Westerners don't even know a farmer, and domestic servants are in business for themselves, running maid services and day-care centers. Most of what the old-time servants did is done with dish washers, washers and dryers, vacuum cleaners, microwaves, indoor plumbing, and central heating.
Computers can be seen as just another step along that road. I don't mark up my first draft and give it to a secretary to retype, I simply enter the changes directly into the virtual document and print out a new hard copy when I feel the urge. The much-touted infobahn is simply another improvement in transportation, allowing more people from farther away to take part in the conversation.
People Don't Know Any More Than They Ever Did
Do you know how to make ink? Can you find good potting clay on a riverbank and shape, fire, and glaze a jar? Can you make soap from urine and ashes? Do you know how to turn milk into cheese?
Come on, you don't even know how to install a CD ROM drive so it will coexist with Stacker and a network. We have a lot more information at hand and no way to sort through it. We converse with a lot more people via the Internet, only to discover that most of them are talkative idiots, just like at the office. We specialize so that we know almost everything about almost nothing at all.
A few computers affect the real, surplus-producing economy: Weather reports. lnventory control. Precise manipulation and design.
But most so-called knowledge workers, myself included, are really just getting paid for highly organized, non-productive leisure. Managers managing managers. Writers writing for writers. Salesmen selling to salesmen. It's not even trickling down. We add as much to society as the remora adds to the shark
And as we skim billions off the real economy (half to Bill Gates, half to the rest of us), we tell each other that we are the wave of the future.
Better if we humbly keep in mind the ultimate fate of all clean-hands aristocracies. Eventually they get brushed off like dandruff: And nobody misses them much.
Orson Scott Card is the Hugo- and Nebula-award winning author of Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Lost Boys, the Alvin Maker series, and many other novels
From: Windows Sources: The Magazine for Windows Experts, ISSN #1065-9641, February, 1995
