"There was no suggestion of anyone blaming YouTube in the summary or in the article. WTF?"
Yet.
There may never be one, because it's in Finland, and their "ZOMG THINK OF TEH CHILDRENS" reflex is not as annoying as the one in the states.
If it had happened in the states, there would be calls to ban guns, youtube, games, certain types of music (KMFDM again), and calls to arm principles, put armed guards in schools, arm teachers, arm other students...etc.
It's a huge waste of time and energy. This stuff happens. We all wish it didn't but it does. It's always some quiet kid, who no one thinks twice about, until wham, he's gunning down people in the halls, and then everyone in the world should have seen it coming, and it's all because of whatever pet peeve people have about society.
Oh sure, that wasn't meant to be a real number, just a piece of hyperbole. Truth of it is, school shootings are absurdly rare...They seem a lot less rare because the media makes so much of them.
For the number of people who dream of getting a gun and mowing down their high school (myself included on several occasions, and I was in college when Columbine happened), the number of people who actually do it is as low as can be.
I certainly think parents are the first line of defense. Teacher's can't be expected to "sense" when a kid is about to snap and start killing people, but a parent should notice that sort of nihilism, and at least get them to therapy, where a professional would have a chance of doing a real evaluation. Not to say that I'm a big fan of psychotherapy, but still.
People always do those types of recriminations afterward; "Oh why did we not heed all these warning signs which are now obvious."
The truth of it is, those warning signs are almost never obvious beforehand, because if they were, someone would have locked the guy up. A lot of the behaviour which is "obvious evidence of psychosis" could have a lot of interpretations if the person never kills anyone.
I hope people are more sane in Finland than over here in the states, because something like that happening here would provoke nothing but unproductive attempts to restrict freedoms, hours and hours of meaningless television commentary, and a host of lawsuits.
The eternal question: Is he just messed up, or is he scary messed up?
People always telegraph their intentions beforehand, but seeing it is almost always reserved for after the fact. Most attempts to predict this sort of behaviour run aground on the fact that it doesn't sound all that different from regular messed up behaviour. Of course a lot of people would like to stomp that out, but a lot of antisocial people still don't go to the point of mass murder...or even solo murder, or self-murder.
I look at things like this, and my first response is never: "Oh gosh, we should have seen it coming!" For every real nutjob, there are a hundred others who are just being young, alienated, and angry. Every quasi-normal action is held up as a "warning sign" and every admittedly abnormal action is magnified, and then used to villify people who "should have seen it coming."
I don't know. Just my experience that, every time something like this happens, it's used as an excuse to harass people who don't fit the "normal" mold, whatever the hell that is, and when, in reality, 99% of the people you're harassing have done nothing wrong, and will do nothing wrong.
That's only true for the tracks they think you'll play on the radio. Very seldom do studios release an entire album that has been sanitized; if some song gets big that was unexpected, the radio station will censor it themselves using whatever editing tools they have on hand.
Why boot up a bloated OS just to check your mail or run instant messenger? Sandbox every application that boots this way, and you increase your security, raise your battery life, whiten your teeth, etc.
People always say, "Well all this person does is check email! Why do they need a fancy computer/operating system/office suite." The real question should be, why do they need an OS at all?
I love my desktop, and I'll probably keep one until they get something that I can wear that does all the same stuff, but I'm fricking sick to death of dealing with people's computer issues, when they only really need a web browser. Handing out knoppix disks works well enough, as a stopgap, but reducing things to a more simple state is highly desirable.
You want to give a website the ability to run client side perl?
Considering the amount of havok that is caused using javascript, a language that can't even actually write to a file, I can't even imagine the chaos that would be caused by perl, with all of it's methods for reading system states, and manipulating files and output devices.
Javascript is intentionally designed to be less functional than any of the languages you've mentioned, and with good reason...A client side language with the sort of feature set that perl or ruby or python has would be death on a plate in the context of a modern web browser; you'd go to a webpage and it wouldn't just slip you a trojan--it'd reinstall your OS.
Client side languages need to be concerned purely with the cosmetics of the interface. Any single step beyond that opens up some extremely scary security concerns.
The thing that turns me off is the gear grind. I can play hardcore until I hit the level cap, but then to have to turn around and hunt individual pieces of gear to progress, just strikes me as worthless. "Oh boy, if I run this bg 150 more times, I can get new pants."
The question is, "Is the method they use to pick the numbers truly random?"
Just because a pattern is not apparent to a casual glance, or because you think that the ball machine is a good random generator, doesn't mean that the results aren't skewed by a small, yet significant amount. A broad analysis of the numbers can give surprising insight.
If you can extract information from their randomizer, you can gamble, without leaving so much to random chance.
The problem is training. People in the States are told to sit tight and wait for help, and not to rush and overwhelm an attacker with numbers. Casualties are almost always going to be less if you mob the gunman rather than just wait to be shot...Their aim will be off, they won't be able to reload, etc etc. During both Columbine and V-Tech, the gunmen were given time to reload, and that cost a lot of people lives.
Though, in terms of air hijacking, I think 9/11 made it absolutely clear that to be passive is to be dead. I just wish those lessons would sink in for the rest of society.
It's all about "comparative advantage." Comparative advantage is an economic principle...In a nutshell, if someone can do it cheaper, for god's sake don't try to compete with them, and "cheaper" in this context is complex. Even if the foreign product is more expensive than what you could do, if your people could make a more profitable product with their labor, instead of the product you could import, it still makes more sense to import. It's called an opportunity cost...Basically, what will you give up in order to produce this product internally?
Food is a good example. Developing country A opens its borders to food trade, and it turns out that local food is a hell of a lot more expensive to produce than foreign food, and all the local farmers go out of business. Good thing or bad thing?
Good thing. Local farmers were wasting their time, and the people living in their country's money with their expensive food. Farmers suffer, but the non-farmers can suddenly buy much more food, and they're happy.
Now the farmers are sitting around, kicking the dirt, wondering how the hell they're going to feed their kids, when a neighbor walks by from the market (with a big bag of foreign food) and says, "Wow, this cheap food is great, but we can't get Agricultural Product A for love or money!" The farmer is perplexed...He's grown product A for years, but product B was always more in demand.
Lightbulb goes off over the farmers head. He runs down to the market, finds out it's true, gets together with some of his farmer neighbors, snags a (hopefully) government subsidized loan to switch over his farm to the scarce crop, and two years later is making twice as much money as he was before the tariffs were dropped. Other people see this, say "There's gold in them thar Product A's!" and a new industry is born, as people move to supply the new demand.
Or he gets a job in some industry that's expanding on the increased food supply, etc.
Losing an industry, or having an industry work force shrink, can certainly cause problems. I think it's a real good place for government intervention, but only in the area of helping those people move into other jobs and other fields, and (so far) automation has always created new jobs and new fields. Trying to fight the market and put out a product that's more expensive is a recipe for disaster, and no one wins. You're wasting money by forcing yourself to pay more, and you're giving up money that could be made through more profitable work.
Look at Virginia Tech. That was a reasonable response, imho, because there was zero evidence that there was an impending rampage, rather than an isolated incident.
But when the rampage materialized, they were viciously criticized for not having massively overreacted, on the off chance that there could be a rampage.
Basically, the problem is people. No one in this country is willing to say, "They tried, it wasn't enough, it happens." Instead someone has to be blamed, and they have to take all the blame, even that that ought to just go to the damn perpetrator, because they should have been superhuman and seen it coming.
So is it any wonder that the people in charge constantly overreact? Schneier hit the nail on the head this time. If you're going to be crucified for taking a commonsense, measured response that happens to be wrong, and lionized for an off-the-charts overreaction, whether its right or wrong, which one will you do? Rewarded behaviour is repeated, and punished behaviour is not.
They were defiantly anti-establishment, but then they became the establishment, and of those two things, it was the establishment that didn't really change. They despised their parents, yet as their parents retired, they moved right into their old jobs without a protest.
I don't know, "Selling out" is always how I think of it. The boomers sold out almost as badly as you can sell out, considering their earlier rhetoric.
No, it's worse than that...The people that are in power now, were the rebels back then. The damn president did cocaine and dodged the draft! For someone of his social class, that's as hippy as it gets.
It's always tempting to think that there must have been this other group of evil people who took over from the idealists and peaceniks, but the truth of it is, it's all the same people. They got older, they got good jobs, and they sold out to the system.
Whether you're analyzing the competition in a game, or analyzing the competition in the corporate world, or analyzing the competition in the realm of diplomacy, it's all the same.
People put the same absurd levels of energy into all these pursuits, and they drive down into the nitty gritty details with a level of analysis and planning that would blow your mind.
The "discouraged" thing is a concern, but most people have to go back to work occasionally...Not everyone can be living with their parents for the rest of their lives, so they've got to be on and off the radar, and that's measurable.
There are always big number jumps, because the whole idea of the "workforce" is an ephemeral. You don't want to count kids, or retirees. You don't want to count trust fund slobs or people on disability, or people who are too disabled to work. Traditionally, women are counted and uncounted weirdly because stay-at-home moms and housewives aren't viewed as unemployed.
Most of the off the chart numbers grab people who are in one of those non-working categories...The 13% number includes people who are in prison, people who are in the military and not deployed, and people who are on disability, as well as a few other groups that would be considered debatable.
The flat truth of it is, you're only really unemployed if you actually want to be employed, and aren't. Otherwise, you're not really a resource for the market. Just kinda the way it goes. The biggest concern is always people who are unable to find work who want it or need it badly. This causes a lot of society issues...Remember all that crap in France a while back? The riots and stuff? That was the result of a lot of people who really wanted to work and couldn't. The fact that we aren't seeing a lot of that here suggests to me that the problem vis a vis people who want to work, isn't all that bad.
Now having a society with a lot of dead weight isn't a good thing either, but I wouldn't call it an unemployment issue, so much as a dole mentality or something. Not to say it shouldn't be addressed, but it's not really the same issue.
I don't know what their actual problem is...Design by committee probably. I think one of Apple's greatest strengths right now is that they have a real solid clarity of vision; they have people who know what would be cool and useful and they give them the freedom to make it happen.
Microsoft has bits and pieces...Some teams know what they're doing, and put out good products...I'm not displeased with IE 7, or Office, aside from the usual proprietary crap. Vista...Well, I haven't used it much, so I'll not claim to be an expert. But it fails on some of the most fundamental stuff, stuff that should be right as a given, like file copying and responsiveness. The security features are executed really poorly from a user standpoint; it's much more friendly to turn them off.
To me that just suggests that no one is in charge. The worst design decisions almost always result from committee and compromise. You need to hire a good lead, and let them stamp their vision on it.
"I bet that as the number of people in the field grows salaries go down -- until eventually only a few true greats of their craft can actually earn a good living in such creative fields, computing eventually included."
Talking about an insult to the intelligence...It's called "Supply and Demand" and yes, it does govern how much something is worth based on what the demand is. Where you err is in thinking that demand is constant and supply in endlessly increasing.
Automation has always created unprecedented wealth...starting in the industrial revolution, and continuing on until the present. More people doing less work means less gets done overall, while you still have to pay the same number of people, which means the product of the work is more expensive, which means no one can afford to buy anything. Pre-industrial revolution you were lucky to have a set of clothes to wear while your other set of clothes were being washed, because it took hours and hours of labor to make the cloth. Today? A little different.
Fewer people producing more product means the product is cheaper, and prices go down. Now, fewer people also means less people working in creating that product, but more product pushes the need for jobs all the way down the line, with transport, sales, warehousing, etc, providing jobs for more people that originally were employed making the thing in the first place. This is self-evident, as populations continue to grow, and yet the percentage of people out of work remains relatively steady.
Acting like there is a finite supply of work is ridiculous...Maybe you can't swing it in one field, but that doesn't mean there is no work. Fields die out all the time, and new fields are created all the time, and supply and demand pushes people from one field to the next depending on their abilities and the need for their labor. Right now we're seeing a correction in the computer industry as all the people who jumped in when you could get hired for knowing where the off button was are getting "replaced" by automation that does their relatively simple jobs. They can either learn more and stay in the field, or move on. It is of no interest to the market.
"the basic human side of me knows that improved productivity means fewer jobs, and that means a buyers market for labour with all that entails ; lower employment, lower wages, lower standard of living."
I'm so tired of hearing this. There was this thing...It was called "the industrial revolution". At this point in our species development, we started making machines to do simple work. Since that time productivity, numbers of jobs, standard of living, everything, has gone through the fricking roof.
Not only has it not been a bad thing for most people, but its been an amazing thing! People live longer, with better health, and more stuff. Their labor produces unimaginably more goods than the labor of their forefathers, and far from making everyone poor, by the standards of time before the industrial revolution, it's made everyone fabulously rich.
And by everyone, I mean the ~900 million people who were around before the industrial revolution, as well as the extra ~5,100 million people who came along after it.
Because it sounds better than, "Too lazy/proud to walk to the soup kitchen?"
How about some real numbers? Just for a lark I checked the 1990 Census(PDF from Hell) and the 2000 Census(also PDF) just to see what kind of dramatic drops we're getting for artists and computer scientists (sorry no data for "hacker"), because, obviously, they're starving to death.
From 1990 to 2000 we lost -400,934 artists in this country, for a negative decrease or "growth" of 19%. Oh. The. Horror.
From 1990 to 2000 we lost -2,388,940 computer scientists (and math professionals, they're lumped together), for a negative decrease or "growth" of 306%
Obviously these numbers are from the last census, but I'll be surprised if the trend doesn't continue. We'll definitely see more artists, because we have that sort of population, and we'll definitely see more CS professionals, though I'll be very surprised if the rate of increase doesn't drop off dramatically as the field "matures" compared to levels in 1990.
The truth of it is, the global amount of computer work is still increasing, and while other countries are getting a piece of the pie, we still dominate that field. Salaries normalize because the demand for new workers is being met. Low skill work offshores and automates, as it has in every industry since the industrial revolution.
If you're used to living in a world where a low level of skill, the kind that Web 2.0 - style applications would be in a position to replace, garnered you a high salary and a fancy title, yes, it's quite the rude awakening. For the rest of us, it's business as usual.
Slashdot Mirror
"There was no suggestion of anyone blaming YouTube in the summary or in the article. WTF?"
Yet.
There may never be one, because it's in Finland, and their "ZOMG THINK OF TEH CHILDRENS" reflex is not as annoying as the one in the states.
If it had happened in the states, there would be calls to ban guns, youtube, games, certain types of music (KMFDM again), and calls to arm principles, put armed guards in schools, arm teachers, arm other students...etc.
It's a huge waste of time and energy. This stuff happens. We all wish it didn't but it does. It's always some quiet kid, who no one thinks twice about, until wham, he's gunning down people in the halls, and then everyone in the world should have seen it coming, and it's all because of whatever pet peeve people have about society.
Oh sure, that wasn't meant to be a real number, just a piece of hyperbole. Truth of it is, school shootings are absurdly rare...They seem a lot less rare because the media makes so much of them.
For the number of people who dream of getting a gun and mowing down their high school (myself included on several occasions, and I was in college when Columbine happened), the number of people who actually do it is as low as can be.
I certainly think parents are the first line of defense. Teacher's can't be expected to "sense" when a kid is about to snap and start killing people, but a parent should notice that sort of nihilism, and at least get them to therapy, where a professional would have a chance of doing a real evaluation. Not to say that I'm a big fan of psychotherapy, but still.
People always do those types of recriminations afterward; "Oh why did we not heed all these warning signs which are now obvious."
The truth of it is, those warning signs are almost never obvious beforehand, because if they were, someone would have locked the guy up. A lot of the behaviour which is "obvious evidence of psychosis" could have a lot of interpretations if the person never kills anyone.
I hope people are more sane in Finland than over here in the states, because something like that happening here would provoke nothing but unproductive attempts to restrict freedoms, hours and hours of meaningless television commentary, and a host of lawsuits.
The eternal question: Is he just messed up, or is he scary messed up?
People always telegraph their intentions beforehand, but seeing it is almost always reserved for after the fact. Most attempts to predict this sort of behaviour run aground on the fact that it doesn't sound all that different from regular messed up behaviour. Of course a lot of people would like to stomp that out, but a lot of antisocial people still don't go to the point of mass murder...or even solo murder, or self-murder.
I look at things like this, and my first response is never: "Oh gosh, we should have seen it coming!" For every real nutjob, there are a hundred others who are just being young, alienated, and angry. Every quasi-normal action is held up as a "warning sign" and every admittedly abnormal action is magnified, and then used to villify people who "should have seen it coming."
I don't know. Just my experience that, every time something like this happens, it's used as an excuse to harass people who don't fit the "normal" mold, whatever the hell that is, and when, in reality, 99% of the people you're harassing have done nothing wrong, and will do nothing wrong.
That's only true for the tracks they think you'll play on the radio. Very seldom do studios release an entire album that has been sanitized; if some song gets big that was unexpected, the radio station will censor it themselves using whatever editing tools they have on hand.
Why boot up a bloated OS just to check your mail or run instant messenger? Sandbox every application that boots this way, and you increase your security, raise your battery life, whiten your teeth, etc.
People always say, "Well all this person does is check email! Why do they need a fancy computer/operating system/office suite." The real question should be, why do they need an OS at all?
I love my desktop, and I'll probably keep one until they get something that I can wear that does all the same stuff, but I'm fricking sick to death of dealing with people's computer issues, when they only really need a web browser. Handing out knoppix disks works well enough, as a stopgap, but reducing things to a more simple state is highly desirable.
I'm sure there are reasonable ways to sandbox javascript...But no one has done it yet.
You want to give a website the ability to run client side perl?
Considering the amount of havok that is caused using javascript, a language that can't even actually write to a file, I can't even imagine the chaos that would be caused by perl, with all of it's methods for reading system states, and manipulating files and output devices.
Javascript is intentionally designed to be less functional than any of the languages you've mentioned, and with good reason...A client side language with the sort of feature set that perl or ruby or python has would be death on a plate in the context of a modern web browser; you'd go to a webpage and it wouldn't just slip you a trojan--it'd reinstall your OS.
Client side languages need to be concerned purely with the cosmetics of the interface. Any single step beyond that opens up some extremely scary security concerns.
The thing that turns me off is the gear grind. I can play hardcore until I hit the level cap, but then to have to turn around and hunt individual pieces of gear to progress, just strikes me as worthless. "Oh boy, if I run this bg 150 more times, I can get new pants."
I miss having real skill-based pvp.
The question is, "Is the method they use to pick the numbers truly random?"
Just because a pattern is not apparent to a casual glance, or because you think that the ball machine is a good random generator, doesn't mean that the results aren't skewed by a small, yet significant amount. A broad analysis of the numbers can give surprising insight.
If you can extract information from their randomizer, you can gamble, without leaving so much to random chance.
The problem is training. People in the States are told to sit tight and wait for help, and not to rush and overwhelm an attacker with numbers. Casualties are almost always going to be less if you mob the gunman rather than just wait to be shot...Their aim will be off, they won't be able to reload, etc etc. During both Columbine and V-Tech, the gunmen were given time to reload, and that cost a lot of people lives.
Though, in terms of air hijacking, I think 9/11 made it absolutely clear that to be passive is to be dead. I just wish those lessons would sink in for the rest of society.
It's all about "comparative advantage." Comparative advantage is an economic principle...In a nutshell, if someone can do it cheaper, for god's sake don't try to compete with them, and "cheaper" in this context is complex. Even if the foreign product is more expensive than what you could do, if your people could make a more profitable product with their labor, instead of the product you could import, it still makes more sense to import. It's called an opportunity cost...Basically, what will you give up in order to produce this product internally?
Food is a good example. Developing country A opens its borders to food trade, and it turns out that local food is a hell of a lot more expensive to produce than foreign food, and all the local farmers go out of business. Good thing or bad thing?
Good thing. Local farmers were wasting their time, and the people living in their country's money with their expensive food. Farmers suffer, but the non-farmers can suddenly buy much more food, and they're happy.
Now the farmers are sitting around, kicking the dirt, wondering how the hell they're going to feed their kids, when a neighbor walks by from the market (with a big bag of foreign food) and says, "Wow, this cheap food is great, but we can't get Agricultural Product A for love or money!" The farmer is perplexed...He's grown product A for years, but product B was always more in demand.
Lightbulb goes off over the farmers head. He runs down to the market, finds out it's true, gets together with some of his farmer neighbors, snags a (hopefully) government subsidized loan to switch over his farm to the scarce crop, and two years later is making twice as much money as he was before the tariffs were dropped. Other people see this, say "There's gold in them thar Product A's!" and a new industry is born, as people move to supply the new demand.
Or he gets a job in some industry that's expanding on the increased food supply, etc.
Losing an industry, or having an industry work force shrink, can certainly cause problems. I think it's a real good place for government intervention, but only in the area of helping those people move into other jobs and other fields, and (so far) automation has always created new jobs and new fields. Trying to fight the market and put out a product that's more expensive is a recipe for disaster, and no one wins. You're wasting money by forcing yourself to pay more, and you're giving up money that could be made through more profitable work.
Look at Virginia Tech. That was a reasonable response, imho, because there was zero evidence that there was an impending rampage, rather than an isolated incident.
But when the rampage materialized, they were viciously criticized for not having massively overreacted, on the off chance that there could be a rampage.
Basically, the problem is people. No one in this country is willing to say, "They tried, it wasn't enough, it happens." Instead someone has to be blamed, and they have to take all the blame, even that that ought to just go to the damn perpetrator, because they should have been superhuman and seen it coming.
So is it any wonder that the people in charge constantly overreact? Schneier hit the nail on the head this time. If you're going to be crucified for taking a commonsense, measured response that happens to be wrong, and lionized for an off-the-charts overreaction, whether its right or wrong, which one will you do? Rewarded behaviour is repeated, and punished behaviour is not.
They were defiantly anti-establishment, but then they became the establishment, and of those two things, it was the establishment that didn't really change. They despised their parents, yet as their parents retired, they moved right into their old jobs without a protest.
I don't know, "Selling out" is always how I think of it. The boomers sold out almost as badly as you can sell out, considering their earlier rhetoric.
No, it's worse than that...The people that are in power now, were the rebels back then. The damn president did cocaine and dodged the draft! For someone of his social class, that's as hippy as it gets.
It's always tempting to think that there must have been this other group of evil people who took over from the idealists and peaceniks, but the truth of it is, it's all the same people. They got older, they got good jobs, and they sold out to the system.
Whether you're analyzing the competition in a game, or analyzing the competition in the corporate world, or analyzing the competition in the realm of diplomacy, it's all the same.
People put the same absurd levels of energy into all these pursuits, and they drive down into the nitty gritty details with a level of analysis and planning that would blow your mind.
The "discouraged" thing is a concern, but most people have to go back to work occasionally...Not everyone can be living with their parents for the rest of their lives, so they've got to be on and off the radar, and that's measurable.
There are always big number jumps, because the whole idea of the "workforce" is an ephemeral. You don't want to count kids, or retirees. You don't want to count trust fund slobs or people on disability, or people who are too disabled to work. Traditionally, women are counted and uncounted weirdly because stay-at-home moms and housewives aren't viewed as unemployed.
Most of the off the chart numbers grab people who are in one of those non-working categories...The 13% number includes people who are in prison, people who are in the military and not deployed, and people who are on disability, as well as a few other groups that would be considered debatable.
The flat truth of it is, you're only really unemployed if you actually want to be employed, and aren't. Otherwise, you're not really a resource for the market. Just kinda the way it goes. The biggest concern is always people who are unable to find work who want it or need it badly. This causes a lot of society issues...Remember all that crap in France a while back? The riots and stuff? That was the result of a lot of people who really wanted to work and couldn't. The fact that we aren't seeing a lot of that here suggests to me that the problem vis a vis people who want to work, isn't all that bad.
Now having a society with a lot of dead weight isn't a good thing either, but I wouldn't call it an unemployment issue, so much as a dole mentality or something. Not to say it shouldn't be addressed, but it's not really the same issue.
I don't know what their actual problem is...Design by committee probably. I think one of Apple's greatest strengths right now is that they have a real solid clarity of vision; they have people who know what would be cool and useful and they give them the freedom to make it happen.
Microsoft has bits and pieces...Some teams know what they're doing, and put out good products...I'm not displeased with IE 7, or Office, aside from the usual proprietary crap. Vista...Well, I haven't used it much, so I'll not claim to be an expert. But it fails on some of the most fundamental stuff, stuff that should be right as a given, like file copying and responsiveness. The security features are executed really poorly from a user standpoint; it's much more friendly to turn them off.
To me that just suggests that no one is in charge. The worst design decisions almost always result from committee and compromise. You need to hire a good lead, and let them stamp their vision on it.
Because it's true.
"I bet that as the number of people in the field grows salaries go down -- until eventually only a few true greats of their craft can actually earn a good living in such creative fields, computing eventually included."
Talking about an insult to the intelligence...It's called "Supply and Demand" and yes, it does govern how much something is worth based on what the demand is. Where you err is in thinking that demand is constant and supply in endlessly increasing.
Automation has always created unprecedented wealth...starting in the industrial revolution, and continuing on until the present. More people doing less work means less gets done overall, while you still have to pay the same number of people, which means the product of the work is more expensive, which means no one can afford to buy anything. Pre-industrial revolution you were lucky to have a set of clothes to wear while your other set of clothes were being washed, because it took hours and hours of labor to make the cloth. Today? A little different.
Fewer people producing more product means the product is cheaper, and prices go down. Now, fewer people also means less people working in creating that product, but more product pushes the need for jobs all the way down the line, with transport, sales, warehousing, etc, providing jobs for more people that originally were employed making the thing in the first place. This is self-evident, as populations continue to grow, and yet the percentage of people out of work remains relatively steady.
Acting like there is a finite supply of work is ridiculous...Maybe you can't swing it in one field, but that doesn't mean there is no work. Fields die out all the time, and new fields are created all the time, and supply and demand pushes people from one field to the next depending on their abilities and the need for their labor. Right now we're seeing a correction in the computer industry as all the people who jumped in when you could get hired for knowing where the off button was are getting "replaced" by automation that does their relatively simple jobs. They can either learn more and stay in the field, or move on. It is of no interest to the market.
"the basic human side of me knows that improved productivity means fewer jobs, and that means a buyers market for labour with all that entails ; lower employment, lower wages, lower standard of living."
I'm so tired of hearing this. There was this thing...It was called "the industrial revolution". At this point in our species development, we started making machines to do simple work. Since that time productivity, numbers of jobs, standard of living, everything, has gone through the fricking roof.
Not only has it not been a bad thing for most people, but its been an amazing thing! People live longer, with better health, and more stuff. Their labor produces unimaginably more goods than the labor of their forefathers, and far from making everyone poor, by the standards of time before the industrial revolution, it's made everyone fabulously rich.
And by everyone, I mean the ~900 million people who were around before the industrial revolution, as well as the extra ~5,100 million people who came along after it.
Blows my fricking mind.
Because it sounds better than, "Too lazy/proud to walk to the soup kitchen?"
How about some real numbers? Just for a lark I checked the 1990 Census(PDF from Hell) and the 2000 Census(also PDF) just to see what kind of dramatic drops we're getting for artists and computer scientists (sorry no data for "hacker"), because, obviously, they're starving to death.
From 1990 to 2000 we lost -400,934 artists in this country, for a negative decrease or "growth" of 19%. Oh. The. Horror.
From 1990 to 2000 we lost -2,388,940 computer scientists (and math professionals, they're lumped together), for a negative decrease or "growth" of 306%
Obviously these numbers are from the last census, but I'll be surprised if the trend doesn't continue. We'll definitely see more artists, because we have that sort of population, and we'll definitely see more CS professionals, though I'll be very surprised if the rate of increase doesn't drop off dramatically as the field "matures" compared to levels in 1990.
The truth of it is, the global amount of computer work is still increasing, and while other countries are getting a piece of the pie, we still dominate that field. Salaries normalize because the demand for new workers is being met. Low skill work offshores and automates, as it has in every industry since the industrial revolution.
If you're used to living in a world where a low level of skill, the kind that Web 2.0 - style applications would be in a position to replace, garnered you a high salary and a fancy title, yes, it's quite the rude awakening. For the rest of us, it's business as usual.
Citation? By all means, enlighten me.
Funny how unemployment isn't skyrocketing when everyone is being automated out of work.
You need to check your assumptions, because they don't reflect reality.