Eating crow on Google Knol re: Jobless Recovery
Paul D. Fernhout
Google Knol vs. Wikipedia including a Star Wars anology (worried that Knol
would be too commercial and harm a growing open source Wikipedia),
http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/browse_thread/thread/3db9570c808782fd
http://groups.google.com/group/openvirgle/msg/64761d37e823b2db?hl=en
http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Project-Virgle.html
But after having an article about the Jobless Recovery that I helped
organize on Wikipedia (and put a lot of work into) get mostly deleted, I
have to say I'm seeing more the value of the Google Knol approach. :-) Or at
least, to having some other alternatives to Wikipedia. Other comments by me
on that in a thread someone else started on "the wikipedia decline":
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/thread.html#6190
So, rather than get involved in an edit war. I moved the deleted content to
Google Knol. I guess I could have just put it on my website, but I decided
to try something different. Fighting over the content on Wikipedia would
also be me and a few heterodox thinkers vs. legions of believers trained in
mainstream economic theology, and I'd be on the losing end of that most
likely, and I don't have enough time/emotion for doing that endlessly.
Here is the citation on Knol:
Paul D. Fernhout. Beyond a Jobless Recovery: A heterodox perspective on 21st
century economics [Internet]. Version 6. Knol. 2010 Jul 2. Available from:
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2
By the way, contrast the mockery of the article here:
"Buddhism and humor as a cure for a Jobless Recovery"
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=29617&pid=239225&st=0
"When I keep saying that a lot of Wikipedia's articles on Economics need to
be simply deleted and written back from scratch, rather than "fixed" this is
the kind I'm talking about: Jobless Recovery. ... Damn, we hit the bottom
with that one. I nominate that for the worst article on Wikipedia"
with this, which was one of the sources by a well-respected economic thinker
that they laughed at: :-)
"Buddhist Economics" by E.F. Schumacher
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least
threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to
enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a
common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming
existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To
organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring,
stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of
criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people,
an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the
most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for
leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete
misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that
work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and
cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of
leisure."
Even though economics is claimed to be a mathematically-based and
empirically-based science, these sorts of broad disagreements are, to some
extent, religious disagreements, like in the sense Albert Einstein talked
about here:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"""
For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are
related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such
objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you
will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and
the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that
knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One
can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be
able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations.
Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the
achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing
to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to
argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only
by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge
of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a
guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the
aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the
limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in
the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes
that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means
itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the
interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of
the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and
valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual,
seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to
perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the
authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and
justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy
society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations
and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something
living, without its being necessary to find justification for their
existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through
revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not
attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.
"""
I also just don't see how anyone can watch, say, this video of Marshall
Brain talking about automation and economics and not at least see there
might be some weaknesses in mainstream economic logic about job creation:
"Marshall Brain - Automation & Unemployment "
http://www.youtube.com/user/pdfernhout#p/f/7/W0Z8TR4ToNs
That Knol article probably still needs a lot of cleanup, as links to
references still go to the Wikipedia archive. But it is a start. I'm
impressed that I could paste in content from Wikipedia (on a Mac) into
Knol's web interface and it preserved links, etc.
Much of it applies to how we can have an "Open Source Planet" like the
Virgle idea promises. Especially this part:
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2#Four_long%282D%29term_heterodox_alternatives
This is not to say I yet have complete warm fuzzies about Google or any
other big corporation playing mostly by a scarcity-mindset. :-)
"How Google Works (Infograph)"
http://digg.com/software/How_Google_Works_Infograph
"A flow type chart that diagrams the process of how Google gets it data and
what happens in the second after you search. It's a $20 billion a year
process for Google, and pretty interesting."
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.musicalphrases.com/ Compose music on your Android phone...
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The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of
abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.