Dry Under the Waterfall

If I read *one* more bit of blather about the "information haves and have
nots" I am going to take my Streetsweeper down to my local McDonalds and
decrease the imbalance between these two groups by reducing the quantity of
the latter.  It would work just as well as any other solution.

The latest blather was in a parting shot in David Kline's last "Market
Forces" column in Hot Wired (www.wired.com).

"How can we assure that the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe
free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, the homeless, and
tempest-tossed get onto the Net"? (My formulation -- not his.)

The answer is we can't.  I have been online every day since 1987 or so.
Since that time I have begged, pleaded, cajoled, and threatened friends,
relatives, casual acquaintances, and total strangers to get them on line.
(We are talking here about people who have the cash to easily get wired if
they care to.)  Sometimes it has worked.  Mostly it has not.  It has gotten
easier to dragoon people onto the net recently but it is still hard.  I have
taken to telling people who ask me for help setting up their computer
systems that I will only help them on the condition that they obtain an ISP
account and use it.

The usual reason for resistance (beyond a reluctance to spend money) is a
failure to appreciate the value of the online experience.  No matter how
much I plead, many people have not (in the past) been able to see what this
all was good for.  This was particularly true when online computing was a
text-only experience.  Non-readers have a problem with text.

Now, even though the net is more graphical, it still lacks appeal for 95% of
the population (or at least enough appeal to get them on to it).  Even
though we may know that many people could improve their lives and economic
standing by learning to compute and telecommunicate, they don't *know* it
and so they are not wired.  Par example -- an auto mechanic of my
acquaintance was assigned to the office where he worked to handle advanced
paper shuffling involving auto parts.  He started to use an XT to track
parts and got to like it.  He asked me for some advice and over the years
bought an XT and other machines until he now has two desktops and a laptop
networked at home.  He's on the net as well.  At work, he has become a
supervisor in part because he can use computers.  The original purchase of a
computer has been paid for many times over by increased income.

There is nothing new about this, of course.  Even without computers, it is
obvious that someone who can read and write can average more money in the
modern world than one who can't.  And yet many people refuse to learn to be
good readers.  Because they don't read, they also know less.  Sans books and
periodicals, you simply can't encounter a critical mass of ideas and
information sufficient to achieve a self-sustaining intellectual life and
the flexible abilities necessary to survive in the current economy.  For
readers, the modern economy is a piece of cake.  And reading is not a
"certification" it's a skill.  You can get it with minor help.  It takes no
money and it can't be denied to you by a racist society.  Without so much as
a high school diploma, a good reader can succeed easily in today's America
(credential-happy Europeans have to fend for themselves).

Do you doubt this.  Assume you are a good reader without credentials.  1)
Learn to type.  (Used manual portables cost $12 at the Sally Army.)  3)  Get
a temp job that requires typing.  (Lie about your high school diploma.
Since you are well dressed from the same Sally Army where you got your
typewriter and have excellent communication skills -- these things are under
your control -- it shouldn't be much trouble.)  2) Learn to word process.
(Commodore 64's and used b/w TV sets cost $25 or less at flea markets.
Running the tutorials at hourly PC rental places are pretty cheap as well.
If you are a good typist, temp agencies will cross train you on PCs so they
can rent your rear end out for more dough.) 4)  Become an experienced
(permanent) temp word processor on the night shift in the financial district
of NYC making $22.50-$27.00/hour.  ($18.00/hour -- days.)  5)  Then become a
(contract) tech writer and start to make more money.  

All that is necessary for the above is the ability to read and write
fluently which is open to all persons of normal intelligence.  But most
choose not to learn those skills (which is why they pay so much in today's
market).  Similarly, most people are not interested in learning to compute
and in getting wired. Instead they stand around an bitch about how their
incomes are flat and they can't find work when they get laid off at 50.
Hardly surprising.  They've already established that they're dead from the
neck up.  I wouldn't hire them, why should anyone else.

This is the phenomenon of the modern world.  So many people one meets are
pig ignorant.  They are sitting under a waterfall of knowledge cascading
over them in a volume unprecedented in human history and yet they contrive
not to get wet.

Meanwhile, we are told that the information have-nots are being denied
access to the wonders of the information age.  I'm very sorry but they have
already rejected the wonders of the last information age that started 541
years ago with the publication of the Mazarin Bible.  People who can't even
bother to read and write will not be helped by our cash and Al Gore's
preaching.  You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.

DCF

"So Louis Freeh wants expanded wiretap authority.  What's the matter?  Craig
Livingstone short of reading material"?

You make some very good points about those too unsocialized, too 
unmotivated, too "declasse," as it were, to even enter the age of reading 
that began 500 years ago.

A question though: What about the 3 million hard-working, reading, 
middle-class folks who have been downsized into oblivion the last three 
years alone? What about the tens of millions of readers who had the skills
needed for the industrial age, but not for the information age?

Well, change means pain, and we'll get to the millennium one way or 
another. But we can do it the hard way or the easy way. The hard way 
means severe social dislocation, possibly even threats to democracy. The 
easy way seems the smarter approach -- no serious effort at reforming 
education and at skills retraining has ever been undertaken, and it seems 
a better use of our tax dollars than most of the crap it's spent on now.

David

David Kline wrote:

> Well, change means pain, and we'll get to the millennium one way or
> another. But we can do it the hard way or the easy way. The hard way
> means severe social dislocation, possibly even threats to democracy. The
> easy way seems the smarter approach 

But there's absolutely no reason to believe it'll work.  I mean, heck;
people successful enough to become *legislators* are unlikely to use
on-line media.  

> no serious effort at reforming education and at skills retraining has 
> ever been undertaken

Have a nice life trying to reform American education.  We're stuck with
the dream system of 1840 right now, and people still seem to look back
to "the good old days".  There's no political capital in "let's make 
our educational system more sophisticated", but there's plenty of it
in "let's get back to the basics in our education system".

People generally learn to read because they want to, education system
or no.  A child or adult ready & willing (& without some physical
disability) can get going in a couple of weeks.  The drudgery of
early elementary school has little to do with it.

> and it seems a better use of our tax dollars  than most of the crap 
> it's spent on now.

Here's a novel idea: why not just refund our tax dollars instead of
spending them on a wacko boondogle like dropping a network appliance
into every home?

(What's the actual---like, *real*---penetration of Minitel?  I don't
care about how many French households have a terminal; how many French
people are real active users?  Can you be a content provider with
Minitel?)

______c_____________________________________________________________________
Mike M Nally * Tiv^H^H^H IBM * Austin TX    * For the time being,
       m5@tivoli.com * m101@io.com          *    
      <URL:http://www.io.com/~m101>         *    three heads and eight arms.

>
>You make some very good points about those too unsocialized, too 
>unmotivated, too "declasse," as it were, to even enter the age of reading 
>that began 500 years ago.
>
>A question though: What about the 3 million hard-working, reading, 
>middle-class folks who have been downsized into oblivion the last three 
>years alone? What about the tens of millions of readers who had the skills
>needed for the industrial age, but not for the information age?

I am as equally tired of this cliche as DCF is in his essay of his
own pet peeve.

in a capitalist economy, labor is best/optimally utilized through 
relocation when the nature of the economy changes as ours is.
the massive *relocation* that is occuring in the workforce is in
fact an indication that our economy is moving at light speed into the
21st century.

I am tired of people that feel that the world owes them a job because
they are alive. ultimately you must work to live in this world, and
the only exceptions are those that have somehow twisted the "system"
into feeding them otherwise and bankrupting it in the process.
merely because you have a body does not mean you can provide a
valuable service to the world. what? the world is valuing supposed
"work" that involves nothing but dumbly moving one's appendages
far less? well, whose fault is that? our economy is fairer than
people want to admit-- we are seeing the signs that this is true,
not that it is false.

it has been drummed deeply into people's brains in the public educational
establishment that education is a key concept of success. and someone
gets to be 30 with few educational skills, finding it hard to 
get a job, and says, "nobody told me it would be like this"?

"downsized into oblivion"? excuse me? because someone is laid off they
evaporate? well, that is the conventional wisdom of course, in which
the concept of firing is equivalent to execution in many people's
minds.

I have talked to various people who launched into new careers by
going to school and picking up entirely new skills, perceiving their
"layoff" as an opportunity instead of as a condemnation.

a layoff is the economy saying to someone, "look, you may be a valuable
person, but in this role there is not that much value. please try, try
again". it is not a PROBLEM that people switch careers. its the natural
price of having a state-of-the-art economy.

another pet peeve of mine is PEOPLE WHO CHOOSE TO HAVE FAMILIES
that they cannot necessarily support. yes, that's right-- it's a choice
to have a family, and if you're a responsible person, you will think
long and hard about what it means to your life if you decide to have
kids and the lifetime commitment and cash it will require of you.
ask how much thought went into this "decision" of some people, and
you might be aghast. and why do they feel the government must pay them
for their own mistake in judgement?

>no serious effort at reforming 
>education and at skills retraining has ever been undertaken, and it seems 
>a better use of our tax dollars than most of the crap it's spent on now.

as DCF said, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him
think. quite to the contrary college enrollment and student loans
by the government are up enormously over the past few decades.
also the GI bill is more popular than ever.

however like you I would like to see more transfer of funds from supporting
deadbeats funneled into the education system..

anyone who doesn't understand why our economy is moving the way it
is should read Toffler who predicted the shift far before it occured.

jobs are *not* being lost in the ultimate sense. our economy is undergoing
a fundamental shift in which new jobs are being created in categories that
defy old thinking such as within large corporations. if you only look
at large corporations as the barometer of the economy (as most people
do, encouraged by the media in a paranoid feedback loop), indeed it 
would look a lot like the world is ending.

This is apparently some kind of list. Please take me off it.

Thanks.

Duncan Frissell writes:
> Now, even though the net is more graphical, it still lacks appeal for 95% of
> the population (or at least enough appeal to get them on to it).

Untrue, Duncan. Far more than 5% of the population is online already,
and the numbers are expanding rapidly. Soon even the semi-literate
will be on line, if only so they can get the latest pornography and
sports videos.

I agree, however, with your point that the "information have nots"
aren't going to be helped by any handout program. I have friends who
started out dirt poor using the Net from their fifth floor walkup
apartment in tenements in Hell's Kitchen with ancient used equipment,
and who now have decent jobs paying well over national average doing
-- what else -- net related work. Its entirely a question of personal
motivation.

Perry