Dry Under the Waterfall
If I read *one* more bit of blather about the "information haves and have nots" I am going to take my Streetsweeper down to my local McDonalds and decrease the imbalance between these two groups by reducing the quantity of the latter. It would work just as well as any other solution. The latest blather was in a parting shot in David Kline's last "Market Forces" column in Hot Wired (www.wired.com). "How can we assure that the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, the homeless, and tempest-tossed get onto the Net"? (My formulation -- not his.) The answer is we can't. I have been online every day since 1987 or so. Since that time I have begged, pleaded, cajoled, and threatened friends, relatives, casual acquaintances, and total strangers to get them on line. (We are talking here about people who have the cash to easily get wired if they care to.) Sometimes it has worked. Mostly it has not. It has gotten easier to dragoon people onto the net recently but it is still hard. I have taken to telling people who ask me for help setting up their computer systems that I will only help them on the condition that they obtain an ISP account and use it. The usual reason for resistance (beyond a reluctance to spend money) is a failure to appreciate the value of the online experience. No matter how much I plead, many people have not (in the past) been able to see what this all was good for. This was particularly true when online computing was a text-only experience. Non-readers have a problem with text. Now, even though the net is more graphical, it still lacks appeal for 95% of the population (or at least enough appeal to get them on to it). Even though we may know that many people could improve their lives and economic standing by learning to compute and telecommunicate, they don't *know* it and so they are not wired. Par example -- an auto mechanic of my acquaintance was assigned to the office where he worked to handle advanced paper shuffling involving auto parts. He started to use an XT to track parts and got to like it. He asked me for some advice and over the years bought an XT and other machines until he now has two desktops and a laptop networked at home. He's on the net as well. At work, he has become a supervisor in part because he can use computers. The original purchase of a computer has been paid for many times over by increased income. There is nothing new about this, of course. Even without computers, it is obvious that someone who can read and write can average more money in the modern world than one who can't. And yet many people refuse to learn to be good readers. Because they don't read, they also know less. Sans books and periodicals, you simply can't encounter a critical mass of ideas and information sufficient to achieve a self-sustaining intellectual life and the flexible abilities necessary to survive in the current economy. For readers, the modern economy is a piece of cake. And reading is not a "certification" it's a skill. You can get it with minor help. It takes no money and it can't be denied to you by a racist society. Without so much as a high school diploma, a good reader can succeed easily in today's America (credential-happy Europeans have to fend for themselves). Do you doubt this. Assume you are a good reader without credentials. 1) Learn to type. (Used manual portables cost $12 at the Sally Army.) 3) Get a temp job that requires typing. (Lie about your high school diploma. Since you are well dressed from the same Sally Army where you got your typewriter and have excellent communication skills -- these things are under your control -- it shouldn't be much trouble.) 2) Learn to word process. (Commodore 64's and used b/w TV sets cost $25 or less at flea markets. Running the tutorials at hourly PC rental places are pretty cheap as well. If you are a good typist, temp agencies will cross train you on PCs so they can rent your rear end out for more dough.) 4) Become an experienced (permanent) temp word processor on the night shift in the financial district of NYC making $22.50-$27.00/hour. ($18.00/hour -- days.) 5) Then become a (contract) tech writer and start to make more money. All that is necessary for the above is the ability to read and write fluently which is open to all persons of normal intelligence. But most choose not to learn those skills (which is why they pay so much in today's market). Similarly, most people are not interested in learning to compute and in getting wired. Instead they stand around an bitch about how their incomes are flat and they can't find work when they get laid off at 50. Hardly surprising. They've already established that they're dead from the neck up. I wouldn't hire them, why should anyone else. This is the phenomenon of the modern world. So many people one meets are pig ignorant. They are sitting under a waterfall of knowledge cascading over them in a volume unprecedented in human history and yet they contrive not to get wet. Meanwhile, we are told that the information have-nots are being denied access to the wonders of the information age. I'm very sorry but they have already rejected the wonders of the last information age that started 541 years ago with the publication of the Mazarin Bible. People who can't even bother to read and write will not be helped by our cash and Al Gore's preaching. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think. DCF "So Louis Freeh wants expanded wiretap authority. What's the matter? Craig Livingstone short of reading material"?
You make some very good points about those too unsocialized, too unmotivated, too "declasse," as it were, to even enter the age of reading that began 500 years ago. A question though: What about the 3 million hard-working, reading, middle-class folks who have been downsized into oblivion the last three years alone? What about the tens of millions of readers who had the skills needed for the industrial age, but not for the information age? Well, change means pain, and we'll get to the millennium one way or another. But we can do it the hard way or the easy way. The hard way means severe social dislocation, possibly even threats to democracy. The easy way seems the smarter approach -- no serious effort at reforming education and at skills retraining has ever been undertaken, and it seems a better use of our tax dollars than most of the crap it's spent on now. David
David Kline wrote:
Well, change means pain, and we'll get to the millennium one way or another. But we can do it the hard way or the easy way. The hard way means severe social dislocation, possibly even threats to democracy. The easy way seems the smarter approach
But there's absolutely no reason to believe it'll work. I mean, heck; people successful enough to become *legislators* are unlikely to use on-line media.
no serious effort at reforming education and at skills retraining has ever been undertaken
Have a nice life trying to reform American education. We're stuck with the dream system of 1840 right now, and people still seem to look back to "the good old days". There's no political capital in "let's make our educational system more sophisticated", but there's plenty of it in "let's get back to the basics in our education system". People generally learn to read because they want to, education system or no. A child or adult ready & willing (& without some physical disability) can get going in a couple of weeks. The drudgery of early elementary school has little to do with it.
and it seems a better use of our tax dollars than most of the crap it's spent on now.
Here's a novel idea: why not just refund our tax dollars instead of spending them on a wacko boondogle like dropping a network appliance into every home? (What's the actual---like, *real*---penetration of Minitel? I don't care about how many French households have a terminal; how many French people are real active users? Can you be a content provider with Minitel?) ______c_____________________________________________________________________ Mike M Nally * Tiv^H^H^H IBM * Austin TX * For the time being, m5@tivoli.com * m101@io.com * <URL:http://www.io.com/~m101> * three heads and eight arms.
You make some very good points about those too unsocialized, too unmotivated, too "declasse," as it were, to even enter the age of reading that began 500 years ago.
A question though: What about the 3 million hard-working, reading, middle-class folks who have been downsized into oblivion the last three years alone? What about the tens of millions of readers who had the skills needed for the industrial age, but not for the information age?
I am as equally tired of this cliche as DCF is in his essay of his own pet peeve. in a capitalist economy, labor is best/optimally utilized through relocation when the nature of the economy changes as ours is. the massive *relocation* that is occuring in the workforce is in fact an indication that our economy is moving at light speed into the 21st century. I am tired of people that feel that the world owes them a job because they are alive. ultimately you must work to live in this world, and the only exceptions are those that have somehow twisted the "system" into feeding them otherwise and bankrupting it in the process. merely because you have a body does not mean you can provide a valuable service to the world. what? the world is valuing supposed "work" that involves nothing but dumbly moving one's appendages far less? well, whose fault is that? our economy is fairer than people want to admit-- we are seeing the signs that this is true, not that it is false. it has been drummed deeply into people's brains in the public educational establishment that education is a key concept of success. and someone gets to be 30 with few educational skills, finding it hard to get a job, and says, "nobody told me it would be like this"? "downsized into oblivion"? excuse me? because someone is laid off they evaporate? well, that is the conventional wisdom of course, in which the concept of firing is equivalent to execution in many people's minds. I have talked to various people who launched into new careers by going to school and picking up entirely new skills, perceiving their "layoff" as an opportunity instead of as a condemnation. a layoff is the economy saying to someone, "look, you may be a valuable person, but in this role there is not that much value. please try, try again". it is not a PROBLEM that people switch careers. its the natural price of having a state-of-the-art economy. another pet peeve of mine is PEOPLE WHO CHOOSE TO HAVE FAMILIES that they cannot necessarily support. yes, that's right-- it's a choice to have a family, and if you're a responsible person, you will think long and hard about what it means to your life if you decide to have kids and the lifetime commitment and cash it will require of you. ask how much thought went into this "decision" of some people, and you might be aghast. and why do they feel the government must pay them for their own mistake in judgement?
no serious effort at reforming education and at skills retraining has ever been undertaken, and it seems a better use of our tax dollars than most of the crap it's spent on now.
as DCF said, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think. quite to the contrary college enrollment and student loans by the government are up enormously over the past few decades. also the GI bill is more popular than ever. however like you I would like to see more transfer of funds from supporting deadbeats funneled into the education system.. anyone who doesn't understand why our economy is moving the way it is should read Toffler who predicted the shift far before it occured. jobs are *not* being lost in the ultimate sense. our economy is undergoing a fundamental shift in which new jobs are being created in categories that defy old thinking such as within large corporations. if you only look at large corporations as the barometer of the economy (as most people do, encouraged by the media in a paranoid feedback loop), indeed it would look a lot like the world is ending.
Duncan Frissell writes:
Now, even though the net is more graphical, it still lacks appeal for 95% of the population (or at least enough appeal to get them on to it).
Untrue, Duncan. Far more than 5% of the population is online already, and the numbers are expanding rapidly. Soon even the semi-literate will be on line, if only so they can get the latest pornography and sports videos. I agree, however, with your point that the "information have nots" aren't going to be helped by any handout program. I have friends who started out dirt poor using the Net from their fifth floor walkup apartment in tenements in Hell's Kitchen with ancient used equipment, and who now have decent jobs paying well over national average doing -- what else -- net related work. Its entirely a question of personal motivation. Perry
participants (5)
-
David Kline -
Duncan Frissell -
Mike McNally -
Perry E. Metzger -
Vladimir Z. Nuri