Why Can't Big Data Take a Bow, and then Contribute to the Collaborative Commons?
Back in the early 1960s, when our elementary school teachers and principal had a particularly important point to make, they brought us across the courtyard into the junior high auditorium. Needless to say, those events made a huge impression. I have a particularly vivid memory of one part of an excursion to watch an old-fashioned film of a television news special.
Our principal introduced and concluded the big event explaining why we need an education. In the near future, as technology relieves us of the worst burdens of physical labor, the workweek will only be 15 to 20 hours. Schools exist to help us take full advantage of the joys of creativity, self-exploration, and learning how to learn in the free time we would share.
Much later, I learned that the documentary and my principal's prediction were inspired by John Maynard Keynes's "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren." Even during the most hopeless part of the Great Depression, Keynes said that "technological unemployment" may be frightening as the need for human labor is reduced, but "much sooner perhaps than we are all aware of" the benefits of this transformation will accrue. As humans are more liberated from the need to toil for a paycheck, we will "devote more of our further energies to non-economic purposes."
Keynes and my principal were a bit too optimistic. But, Jeremy Rifkin's The Zero Marginal Cost Society makes a strong case that both will eventually be proven correct. Although Rifkin may also be too hopeful, he presents an impressive body of evidence in explaining why he anticipates the rise of the Collaborative Commons within the next forty years.
Keynes and my principal were a bit too optimistic. But, Jeremy Rifkin's The Zero Marginal Cost Society makes a strong case that both will eventually be proven correct. Although Rifkin may also be too hopeful, he presents an impressive body of evidence in explaining why he anticipates the rise of the Collaborative Commons within the next forty years.
Rifkin argues "The capitalist era is passing - not quickly, but inevitably." After a long and protracted fight, he predicts, the Collaborative Commons will likely be "the primary arbiter of economic life." In other words, we will transition to an economy based on sharing, as opposed to private property, profits, and competition.
Although I fear Rifkin is too optimistic, he makes a strong case. For instance, he Why Can't Big Data Take a Bow, and then Contribute to the Collaborative Commons? | John Thompson:
Although I fear Rifkin is too optimistic, he makes a strong case. For instance, he Why Can't Big Data Take a Bow, and then Contribute to the Collaborative Commons? | John Thompson: