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All Aboard The Technological Revolution
fm6 writes "Our old friends at nytimes.com (click here to tell them how much traffic their silly registration system costs them) have a short but thought-provoking interview with economic historian John Gordon Steele. He compares the economic effect of the Internet to various other technological revolutions, especially the introduction of steam power in the early 19th century."
If anything, the Industrial revolution made people poorer. A few people got really rich, but the shift to a urban v. Rural lifestyle ruined the lives of generationsof people.
.com millionaire, but Old Money didn't have much of an advantage.
At least with the Net the wealth that's been distrubuted has been a bit more equitable. Granted, nobody went from living on the street to
- Dan I.
I would imagine that Mr. Steele's article might be a little premature in looking at the economic impact of the 'net. The Internet itself may have been around for a while, but the Web (which for all intents and purposes has been driving this economic 'boom') has only been around for slightly more than 10 years (slight being in the order of months).
It's the mode of the day for pundits to jump on the bandwagon and look at the economic impact of the net, but in terms of history, we're still looking at the birth of this industry. It's too early to truly gauge the real impact.
Despite the recent bubble burst, I think the golden days are still to come. Where we are now is at the dawn of a new age, akin to the very earliest decade of the Industrial Revolution. What happens next will change the world, beyond anything we could imagine.
Beware the Whyte Wolf.
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels...
You Said:
>If anything, the Industrial revolution made
>people poorer. A few people got really rich,
>but the shift to a urban v. Rural lifestyle
>ruined the lives of generationsof people.
Clearly you have had your history fed to you by spoon, or else by a Marxist. In actual fact the shift to the urban lifestyle broke the back of old aristocracy by giving people a freedom of choice they didn't have before. No longer must there choices consist of working a farm owned by a landlord or starve...
Read some books about the lifestyle of the average person in the middle ages and then compare that to the wage slaves of the Industrial Revoloution. Were they better off? You bet. Were they still exploited, treated like cattle and forced into lives of desperation. Damn right.
The point is that there was an incremental *increase* in the quality of living for the new urban working class. And the ensuing increase in literacy and the narrowing of class boundaries led to the reforms that truly made the working(man)'s life better and gave hope and upward mobility to (his) children.
The industrial revoloution was a *good thing* (tm). Don't let anyone tell you different. The fact that it also came with its own set of *bad things* (tm) is just the way things work. The pendulumn swings and over time things balance out.
Please don't post regurtitated historical pablum in the future. Do some reading and think for yourself!
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
at least I see a double meaning:
1) a revolution, like of the earth of a spinning top or whatever, comes back to the same position it started in
2) historically, many revolutions have just replaced one corrupt regime with another. even the US seems to have accomplished this, many years after 1776.
What's your problem with the NYTimes registration system? I registered back in 1996 and have never had any problems nor received any junk mail from them. It hasn't cost me a cent, nor given away any more information about myself than "person with cookie n has these browsing/reading habits."
They're a private company, providing a service, and earning their keep through advertising, which benefits from registration and tracking.
If registration and tracking of users and what articles they read helps them a. target appropriate banner ads to browsers and/or b. publish more successful content, they're certainly not going to get rid of registration, no matter how much you complain.
(note: at the 2001 MIT Image and Meaning conference, I think the Times Science editor said they didn't select topics and articles based on readership statistics gathered from the web, but I highly doubt they're not influenced in some way by how successful certain topics are.)
Gordon says: Old Andrew Carnegie's formula still applies. Whether you're making steel or software, you invest to be the low-cost producer.
Could there be any two products more different than steel and software? Could the costs of production be calculated any more differently?
In software economics, there are no economies of scale. There's no concept of a vertical monopoly like Carnegie had. Assets for software companies are all labour, not capital equipment. Cost of manufacturing software is trivial while for steel, cost of manufacturing is the name of the game. In the steel industry you can invest to cut cost; in software you invest to improve quality.
Steel is capital intensive. Software companies have been started for pocket change.
Successful software companies can meet any competitive threat through upgrades and innovation. Steel companies are nearly powerless to deal with competitive threats from cheaper and stronger materials like new plastics and alloys.
Carnegie is, in fact, better remembered today for his idealistic theories of philanthropy. I suspect that the 19th century industrialists probably don't have much of value to tell the information economy beyond the homilies of thrift and hardwork. Even those don't apply so much.
It took about a century, from 1600 to about 1700, to develop the components needed for a steam engine. Steam powered water pumps (no piston, just valves) were developed, and were useful enough to get a very modest boiler industry going.
Newcomen, in 1705, had the first useful steam engine, although it wasn't very good. Newcomen had it backwards; he let the steam into the cylinder at maximum displacement, then injected water to condense the steam within the cylinder, allowing atmospheric pressure to move the piston in compression. It took until 1768 before Watt fixed this and got it right.
Suddenly things speeded up. By 1781, Watt had all the components of the modern steam engine - valve gear, governor, flywheel, indicating devices, and double-acting piston. 1782 brought the steam hammer, the first power tool. This was a major step - steam engines providing the power to make more steam engines. 1784 brought the first model locomotive, although it was 1804 before the first full-sized one, and 1825 until one that was commercially useful.
Then things really speeded up. 30 MPH in 1829. Railroads went everywhere in the next 30 years. So did industry. The rest, of course, is history.
Now that was a technological singularity. The Internet looks minor compared to steam.