Engineers built communications and automation technology, which has allowed executives to outsource and eliminate jobs far more quickly than people here can get trained for new ones. The human toll of these changes has been higher than drone and surveillance technology combined.
I think this comes down to a conflict (not very well fought from the engineers' side) between cost-cutters and excellence-maximizers. The first category want to take something that's already being done and cut people out of the action. That's not always a bad thing, because they attack inefficiencies and should, in theory, make the world richer. However, they end up taking almost all of the gains for themselves (and externalizing costs). The second also want to cut costs, remove grunt work, etc. but because they want to do more, i.e. "now that I shaved clock cycles off of this operation, that frees up resources to do more cool shit".
Businessmen tend to be cost-cutters, because that's the one thing people can agree on in executive tussles. For executives, R&D, philanthropy, etc. all devolve into bikeshedding, but the bottom line is a common language. People with vision, on the other hand, tend to get into conflicts and causes that have negative expectancy for their political fortunes. Engineers tend to be excellence-maximizers.
The excellence-maximizers do believe that they're helping society and adding value-- and they're right, at least on the latter. They cut jobs and create value. The problem is that society is run by greedy cost-cutters who have no vision but a lot of greed, and who make sure that none of the gains trickle back. Thus, those affected by the industry changes never get the resources (time, money, education) to survive them.
Right. Automation increases the overall productive capacity of a society, but does so in a way that (by reducing the demand for labor), allows holders of capital to capture more of the value generated by that production for themselves.
That said, I'm not sure what to do with that realization other than hold on to it as a vaguely disquieting feeling. I'm certainly not advocating that engineers do less in the way of creating automation or communications technology. I tend to believe its the job of the political class to reconcile technological change with societal well-being. But that same thinking applies to engineers in the defense industry as much as engineers in the automation industry.
> I tend to believe its the job of the political class to reconcile technological change with societal well-being.
In a democracy (including a representative democracy) the "political class" is the citizenry at large, so that responsibility belongs to everyone in such a society. (Accepting, arguendo, that it is an obligation of the "political class".)
I tend to believe its the job of the political class to reconcile technological change with societal well-being.
I agree-- but I also don't trust the current "political class".
It's made worse by the current Silicon Valley arrogance, which assumes everything "big" (esp. government) to be intractably mediocre (and, therefore, useless) because the whole populace (i.e. the full IQ spectrum) is a part of it. I feel like this secessionism is a rather Machiavellian move by the technological elite to convince their underlings not to see the big picture, because it's all mediocre and inefficient out there anyway. The attitudes coming out of both the technological and political elites (both anti-intellectual and limited in their own ways) are bad for both sides.
I think this comes down to a conflict (not very well fought from the engineers' side) between cost-cutters and excellence-maximizers. The first category want to take something that's already being done and cut people out of the action. That's not always a bad thing, because they attack inefficiencies and should, in theory, make the world richer. However, they end up taking almost all of the gains for themselves (and externalizing costs). The second also want to cut costs, remove grunt work, etc. but because they want to do more, i.e. "now that I shaved clock cycles off of this operation, that frees up resources to do more cool shit".
Businessmen tend to be cost-cutters, because that's the one thing people can agree on in executive tussles. For executives, R&D, philanthropy, etc. all devolve into bikeshedding, but the bottom line is a common language. People with vision, on the other hand, tend to get into conflicts and causes that have negative expectancy for their political fortunes. Engineers tend to be excellence-maximizers.
The excellence-maximizers do believe that they're helping society and adding value-- and they're right, at least on the latter. They cut jobs and create value. The problem is that society is run by greedy cost-cutters who have no vision but a lot of greed, and who make sure that none of the gains trickle back. Thus, those affected by the industry changes never get the resources (time, money, education) to survive them.