Saturday, March 31, 2007

Flat World Thought for the Day 3-31-07

In an article from the February issue of Money Magazine:
A quarter-century ago, blue-collar workers got a nasty shock when they found themselves going head to head with manufacturers in Japan and South Korea. But that's nothing compared with the scale and pace of what's coming.

"Japan and South Korea are 3% of the global labor force," says Sperling. "China and India make up 40%. There is no precedent for this huge group of workers that through information technology can compete with American workers overnight."

Those new hands aren't all going to be set to building cars and toasters. They'll be engaged in what economists call "tradable services," which include any job that doesn't need to be done in person. New technology will expose more and more jobs, says Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder. "I can imagine down the road the technology will be good enough," says Blinder, "that on the stage where I lecture at Princeton there could be a hologram of a professor in India delivering the lecture for a tenth of my pay."

Hmmm . . .
" . . . the scale and pace of what's coming."

"tradable services"

"New technology will expose more and more jobs . . . "

". . . down the road the technology will be good enough . . . "
Interesting, but . . .
"delivering the lecture . . ." ????
Ouch.

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