An Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal describes yet one more view of the radical change surrounding us and the tremendous opportunities in our near future.
Mark P. Mills and Julio M Ottino discuss The Coming Tech-led Boom.
The causes of the transition and the reasons we should be optimistic about the future are familiar to me, and I hope to you as well if you’ve been reading this blog.
Walter Russell Mead is starting a series of posts describing the change we are in and how to move past it: Beyond Blue Part One: The Crisis of the American Dream
He likens our current situation to the massive transition from farm to suburb. Before WWII, most people lived and worked on a family farm. Since then, most people have grown up in the suburbs with the industrial/office job model we have now.
That transition was terribly painful. But we as a country came through it into a far more abundant life.
Mark Perry relays some of the discussion of North Dakota Sheriffs & Deputies Association about the impact of the oil boom in Western North Dakota: Bakken Oil is Having Major Impact on Western ND.
Professor Perry highlights 12 of the 35 issues discussed. Here are three amazing items: Read more…
(Cross-post from my other blog, Nonprofit Update)
For quite a while now I’ve been fascinated by the rapid increase in oil production in the Bakken field in North Dakota.
Have had a lot of posts on my blog Outrun Change. Under 1% unemployment in one county. Production graphs that are going vertical. More oil produced in ND than California. That kind of stuff.
This month my interest level took off like those oil production charts.
A book to be released in February suggests that radical advances in technologies will improve the lives of everyone, especially the poor – Abundance – The future is better than you think.
Here’s a description from the book’s website:
In Abundance, space entrepreneur turned innovation pioneer Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler document how progress in artificial intelligence, robotics, infinite computing, ubiquitous broadband networks, digital manufacturing, nanomaterials, synthetic biology, and many other exponentially growing technologies will enable us to make greater gains in the next two decades than we have in the previous two hundred years. We will soon have the ability to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman, and child on the planet.
Manufacturing jobs keep coming back to the U.S.
Mark Perry points to an article in Financial Times, Business returns to US as Asia loses edge (free registration required).
Rapidly rising wages in China are changing the equation on where it makes sense to locate plants. Here’s what that picture looks like, in a comment from Mr. Bruce Cochrane, who opened up a furniture plant in North Carolina. The FT article says:
The change around us, in media, the flood of information, book publishing, nanotechnology, education, the economy in general, and even awareness of bad effects of poorly done international aid, is overwhelming.
In his post When the world changes… , Seth Godin says:
The history of media and technology is an endless series of failed rearguard actions as industry leaders attempt to solidify their positions on a bed of quicksand.
Clay Shirky has an intriguing idea on how newspapers might adapt to the net – threshold paywall. You pay for over a certain number of page views – Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users
Underlying issue is the traditional newspaper model is a bundle – some local news generated by the paper, purchased national news, sports, comics, horoscope, Ann Landers, coupons, and classifieds.
People will pay a little for the bundle. Bad experiences by several papers show that few people will pay to get through a paywall for the bundle. The likely reason is that if you want just the horoscopes, or just national news, or just sports, there is far too much free stuff.
Even without social media, we face a flood of information.
Just in terms of blogs, I have about 50 set up on my RSS feeder so I can quickly browse all the authors I want to read.
Social media multiplies the flood.
One reason I’ve been slow to jump into the Twitter world is because merely following a handful of active Tweeters produces a few hundred tweets a day when you include all the people who reply to their posts. I don’t have time to sort through that much background discussion.
Schumpeter’s column, Too much buzz in The Economist discusses the difficulty companies are going to have in sorting through the volume of stuff in social media. One of the challenges in responding to complaining tweeters is missing the mass of people who are unhappy but not voicing their discontent in social media.
His closing comment is great: Read more…
The Bakken field is producing tremendous amounts of energy. Mark Perry at Carpe Diem pointed out a cool visual on the rapid increase in production in the northwest corner of North Dakota.
Check out this link at Today In Energy for a quarterly visual on production from 1995 through 2010.
(Cross-post from my other blog, Nonprofit Update.)
Mark J. Perry compares how long it takes to buy an electric kitchen oven in 1966 versus what you could buy today for the same number of hours labor. See his visual illustration at Living the Good Life: The Good Old Days Are Now.
He translates the cost of an oven in 1966 into the number of hours labor needed to buy it at the average hourly wage then. He figures out the average hourly wage today and figures out what home appliances could be purchased for the same number of hours work. The cost reductions are amazing.
