Something This Blogger Hasn't Forgotten About...

...and I'm anxious to spend more time organizing thoughts that actually make some sense on the subject: better knowledge utilization for overall wealth creation, than we now have in place. When I watched a short video of a Time interview with Jaron Lanier, I knew that in spite of a busy personal schedule this week, that interview at least deserved a short response. His book is "Who Owns the Future", and Jaron is understandably concerned about the hollowing out process occurring in places such as Silicon Valley, where technology is "undermining" jobs. He suggests an approach where we can "make information cost something" - perhaps we can sell our contributions for "tiny royalties" for instance.

Suffice to say my approach to all of the above is quite the opposite. Technology is here to give us the freedom we never quite had: but we don't yet understand how it can work for us. The fact that we keep fighting technology is a tremendous part of what makes wealth creation appear so uncertain in the present. Spare me the Singularity! Now, about that notion of charging one another for all our countless online contributions...

Often the most important things that need to be heard, are being said when it's hard for people to take  time out of their busy lives to stop and listen. Anytime someone puts up even a small pay wall for such knowledge, that just means it's even harder for someone to make the decision to spare a few minutes of their time. Consequently, whenever economic and social change is needed, the ideas that could help people get there would even be less likely to be heard. Plus, if people still have to pay for most information just as before, whoever is in power is going to be quite willing to pay someone, for the information most important to them. Anywhere people are presently getting paid to share knowledge, chances are it's mainstream for a good reason.

The blogger who says what they feel most "needs to be said" knows that can knock down page views, as well. One of my blogger friends had that happen to her when she switched up the format a bit, but she persevered because she knew what was most important to be blogging about. I already know from just watching page views these past few weeks, that my first mentions of long term economic coordination might mean fewer views, at times. But that doesn't make the discussion any less important: it just means we are all - and that includes me - quite distracted with the daily back and forth of a continuing recession pattern and still dealing with it's effects. But that's the way progress gets made: people find ways to think about issues in the short, medium and long term all at once.

We can make technology work for us by adapting our own economic settings, so that each of us can participate fully and freely in knowledge use. When we begin to support one another in that endeavor, it becomes easier to think how other forms of wealth creation and the resource flows of the 21st century might actually happen. But we have to make that leap of faith - of believing we are all worthy of taking part in knowledge skills at all levels - before technology can work to our benefit. Technology only works against us when we work against ourselves. We are the ones who can set our aspirations free.