IVIV (1) There Will be Computers for This

[alice wellintown]

I disagree. There are several "generation gaps" in the use of these
machines and, as I noted, these gaps are present up and down and
across the generations of users. It's far more complicated than your
claim than the younger you are the more you know about these machines.
Your claim is like Isaiah's claim about the Tube. Isaiah's assessment
of Zoyd's generation is correct, but he fails to see how his
generation also lacks attention and self-reflection. Ironic.

 Generally speaking, your average teen doesn't have a clue about a
bunch of things that twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings know
about these machines. And, the twenty-thirty generation doesn't know a
bunch that their forty-something and fifty-something colleagues and
competitors know. And, as you noted, the same is true in reverse.
Generally.

The same holds true for the  generations who work for the cartels,
using the machines to leverage whole economies. The young guru or gun
slinger at Goldman or Bear is writing credit default swaps but she has
never even seen a Bear Market or a deep and protracted recession. The
guy at the top doesn't know, often doesn't care to know, or isn't even
capable of knowing what the young guru and gun slingers are making.

The faith in the machine made models is so great that, after nearly
crashing a global economy, the cartels are back at the alter making
bread that seems, miraculously, to rise again and save us all from the
bottomlewss perdition.


So, it's not a matter of being old or even sounding old. Not for me or
for anyone in this system.


And, again, yes the new machine has opened doors and democratized, but
it has also closed doors and monopolized. Like all technologies it has
pluses and minuses.

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 3:40 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> Alice.  This is so much the perspective of someone who is old.
> Everyone knows that the kids are much better at these new information
> machines than their elders.  Hell, Gates was a kid when he put
> together the pieces of stuff that became his empire.  Likewise the
> Apple kids.  And you think they have empowered kartels?  No.  They
> have opened doors that cannot be shut, not forged chains.
>
> Alice, this is another example of your shoehorning reality (and TRP's
> fiction) into your latest bullhorn.
>
> David Morris