by Flemming Funch
Andy Oram wonders "Can computers help reverse falling employment?"."The gigantic combine of capitalism has always obsessively pursued efficiency, and computers make the pursuit almost child play. Capitalism has succeeded in sowing a cornucopia of innovation up and down society. But capitalism is atrocious at distributing the fruits of innovation. Each labor-saving device means the idling of thousands of people, wasting their years of experience, rigorous training, and practical insights.
People who work with computers remain fixated on efficiency. Every week I hear the debates over whether businesses should use Linux or Windows, the commentators always wrangling over which systems will save the most money. I find this battle increasingly tiresome. I'm more interested in finding the systems that will put more people to work." Well, the intention is good enough. Capitalism is quite likely to lead to a very small percentage of the population owning most of the very automated production facilities, and a very large percentage of the population being unemployed, because their work isn't really needed. So, isn't there something we can do with software and computers that can change things?
Oram's main idea seems to be essentially to think of some good things that need doing, and invite large numbers of open source programmers to work on them. I wish the economy worked that way. But it doesn't. In communism it sort of does, but the problem there is that individual creativity isn't particularly nurtured or rewarded. So that in itself wouldn't particularly be economically feasible without some kind of revolution. But as to this question that he proposes for systems people to keep in mind ... "What can I do to bring average people back into the process of wealth creation?" That's a different matter. If we can think more about how to get more people involved in creating wealth, which obviously involves being directly involved in how one makes a profit - that can make a difference.
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