Digital Wisdom, Digital Education, Digital Exhaustion

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Digital technology, I believe, can be used to make us not just smarter but truly wiser. Digital wisdom is a twofold concept, referring both to wisdom arising from the use of digital technology to access cognitive power beyond our innate capacity and to wisdom in the prudent use of technology to enhance our capabilities. Because of technology, wisdom seekers in the future will benefit from unprecedented, instant access to ongoing worldwide discussions, all of recorded history, everything ever written, massive libraries of case studies and collected data, and highly realistic simulated experiences equivalent to years or even centuries of actual experience. How and how much they make use of these resources, how they filter through them to find what they need, and how technology aids them will certainly play an important role in determining the wisdom of their decisions and judgments. Technology alone will not replace intuition, good judgment, problem-solving abilities, and a clear moral compass. But in an unimaginably complex future, the digitally unenhanced person, however wise, will not be able to access the tools of wisdom that will be available to even the least wise digitally enhanced human.

H. Sapiens Digital:From Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom, Marc Prensky

I don’t mean to be glib or anything, and I certainly like the idea of promoting wisdom over “mere cleverness” as Prensky suggests, but this piece makes me tired. There are lots of good ideas here, but it’s the Utopian vision of an ambitious professional more than a near-future prognosis.

One way to get at what I mean is to think about the “we” that Prensky uses throughout the essay. It’s certainly true that cell phones and notebook computers extend our cognitive abilities in a helpful way. Everything he says “we” will do or will need to do, however, is dependent on higher education.

Prensky wants us to assume that access to these tools will be more or less universal. It’s easier to imagine a world in which the vast majority of people have very limited computers or cell phones (like the so-called $100 laptop or my TracFone) while a small minority use more sophisticated versions.

There are already two very different systems of health care in U.S., for example, and nothing inherent in the technology will ensure that there won’t be two (or more) Internets, one that works via a simple search interface (for example) and one that works through more complex information aggregation.

Technology can’t trump class. It’s no substitute for all the messy work necessary to make sure that a majority of people have the education they need to use the new tools. I think Prensky misses something else: we won’t just need the tools, we will need the tools to help us escape, if only for a moment, from the world.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Writing

American Watch

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US labor law currently permits a wide range of employer conduct that interferes with worker organizing. Enforcement delays are endemic, regularly denying aggrieved workers their right to an “effective remedy.” Sanctions for illegal conduct are too feeble to adequately discourage employer law breaking, breaching the international law requirement that penalties be “sufficiently dissuasive” to deter violations.

Unfair union election rules allow employers to engage in one-sided, aggressive anti-union campaigning while denying union advocates a similar chance to respond and banning union organizers from the workplace or even from distributing information on company property. If confronted with clear evidence of employee support for a union, employers can force a formal election and manipulate the often lengthy pre-election period to pound their anti-union drumbeat and, in many cases, violate US labor laws, confident that any penalties will be minimal and long delayed.

Workers who overcome these obstacles and successfully form a union may still be unable to conclude a collective agreement, in large part because weak US labor law provisions fail to meaningfully punish illegal employer bad-faith negotiating or to adequately define good-faith bargaining requirements.

Human Rights Watch: The Employee Free Choice Act, A Human Rights Imperative

Nothing spooks the U.S. managerial cadres more than unions. I have always been surprised, for example, at the money universities spend to prevent unionization or to fight an existing union. Administrators would cut their own salaries before they would stop paying a retainer to their union fighting law firm.

If you have never been around contract negotiations, or an organizing drive, you probably think this is just one of those lefty myths about the big bad Capital wolf waiting at our door. If you want a feel for the reality of the paranoia, though, you just have to do a quick search on the act. It’s very real.

What’s so interesting is that all of the fear assumes that people don’t really want unions. The law, then, won’t make it easier for people to make a decision about unions, it will make it easier for unions to manipulate people. Because, of course, no one in their right mind wants a union. I bet those law firms know better.

Posted in: Economics, Language, Professional, Union, War, Writing

The “S” Word

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Paul Krugman has launched a determined ideological campaign for the return of the ideas of John Maynard Keynes as the best and most effective framework, for both economic theory and policy, to address the rapidly spreading global financial and economic crisis. For public policy this campaign implies “very significant” public investments in jobs, income, infrastructure, education. By significant is meant surpassing in size, per year, – if you want to return to something greater than zero growth – the expected contraction in the economy from Dec, 2007, the official start of the current Recession, until it ends. The forecasters with the most accurate record in this crisis expect a 4-6 percent contraction lasting 5-6 additional fiscal quarters. The number of economists predicting double-digit official unemployment rates is swelling. Nonetheless, one should be cautious interpreting any forecasted numbers…economic forecasting is no less difficult or uncertain than weather forecasting.

Paul Krugman’s Ideological Campaign for the Return of “Depression Economics,” John Case, Political Affairs Magazine

It all seems so long ago, but there was a particularly surreal moment in the Presidential campaign when McCain (via his minions) began accusing Obama of being a socialist. Seemingly out of nowhere a friend asked me to define socialism, and it took me a bit before I could come up a more or less standard definition: “democratic ownership of the means of production.”

That’s a very rough definition, and it’s more than a little revisionist in terminology if not in intent. Socialist were certainly more democratic in spirit than, say, Communists, but they did not always put it that way. In any case, it’s got me thinking about how much public economic discourse might change in the post-market era.

Cesear Chavez advocates “Socialism for the 21st Century,” of course, and in England they have never been shy about the need to nationalize banks, given the current crisis. I can’t see the development of a New American Socialist Party, but it would be great if the old Cold War fears didn’t block the debate over the need for investment in infrastructure and national health care.

Posted in: Economics, Language, Writing