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Thursday, May 28, 2009

What Comes After an Industrial Society?

It started with this morning's book review at 10:40AM. In the first instance, I was reminded of Billy Joel's Allentown music vid. But what does happens to a society when the industrial era ends/fails? New Zealand manufacturing has been closing down or moving to China rapidly in the last few years. We have tourism and agriculture (some boutique), but I don't think it can feed as many people as "industry".

5 comments:

  1. It's a good question, Meg. We are wrestling with it over here, although I'm sure it hasn't been voiced as succinctly. Most of the growth here is in the service sector, typically low wage work, while most of the real work goes overseas. It really sucks. Unless you're rich to begin with, nobody can afford to live here anymore.

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  2. Interesting to think about, isn't it, Connie. Either we revert to agriculture and other primary industries, or "invent" things... Service sector, having been in it most of my professional life, rarely really "create" things, and I'm amazed how big a section of an economy can earn without creating.... I think it goes largely for E-industries and IT, another area I've worked in, or anyone I knew while I was growing up; teachers, school administrators, banker, lawyer, and more teachers... Oh, and a photographer in advertisement.

    The subject is a little too complicated to come up with an easy solution, but I had never had the question put so simply as this did this reviewer, possibly unintentionally!

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  3. I think the phrase I've been hearing is the technological era.

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  4. Yes, but what do they really do? I've been on the peripheral of IT, in the days when they weren't creating any content per se. Can a society/economy exist mostly on service and technology? Where are we going? What are we going to consume? Who will be making big money, or who has been making big money recently? The only thing I can come up with is people who don't make things, but "roll" other people's stuff, e.g. marketing/banking/finance/advertising or that illusive (to me) "IT" and people who make gadgets that enable these stuff.

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  5. I keep thinking about this. I tend to think of technology as a tool, not content, but I know this is no longer true. There's music and art either generated or substantially enhanced by computers that would not be possible, or take too long, by hand... But beyond that, I get a bit stuck. What is the content of the "technological era"?

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