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Technology Stocks : PC Sector Round Table -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Pierre-X who wrote (818)	9/9/1998 10:15:00 AM
From: Sam	Respond to of 2025

PX, On displaced workers: What is the Pilzer book you are quoting from? I have heard that fisherman parable from several people over the past 6 months or so (economists all), none of whom attributed it. The rest of the parable, they say, is that the 8 people left over now have the time to focus on getting other sources of food, making art, building better houses, doing whatever (including, of course, forming a gov--ment and taxing the two who are doing the work). But the simplicity of the parable is what gives it power. Let me tell another story from another time which illustrates a different reaction to technology. In Alexandria in the first century A.D., a man named Hiero allegedly invented the steam engine and saw how it might replace the massive manual labor requirements of the Roman Empire. He went to Rome to show his invention to the Senate and get official approval and glory. The Senate saw it, and went in closed meetings about it. When they emerged, they had the man executed and his plans destroyed. They felt that the invention would make slavery unnecessary, and, with the slaves freed, would lead to a social upheaval that they wouldn't be able to control. (Story from Robert Graves, I forget the name of the book, though.) These are perilous times. Not that that in itself differentiates these times from any other. What differentiates them, I suspect, is our belief that somehow we can create times that aren't perilous.