Author: Jim Ulvog

Another view of the radical change that will hit us down the road

The radical rate of change around us is compounded by the power of artificial intelligence.  The Economist magazine had an article last week on point: Difference Engine: Luddite Legacy.

For a long time, like since the start of the industrial revolution, mechanical tools have displaced muscle power.  In recent decades and especially quite recently, we have seen lots of manufacturing move from higher-wage countries to lower-wage countries.

The disruption is spreading.  (Hey, that’s the point of this and many other blogs.)  The Economist article points towards the spread to knowledge workers. Continue reading “Another view of the radical change that will hit us down the road”

More oil drilled in North Dakota than California? Run that by me again.

Did you ever think you would see this headline?

N.Dakota Oil Continues Exponential Growth and is on Pace to Become the No. 2 Oil State in January.  That is a post from Mark Perry pointing out the dramatic growth in oil production from North Dakota sites.

Check out the graph to see the drastic expansion the last four years.  In about 2008 oil production hit an inflection point.  Here’s the basic shape of the graph:  horizontal before 2008 and on roughly a 45° angle after that.

Continue reading “More oil drilled in North Dakota than California? Run that by me again.”

The computing pendulum has swung back to dumb terminals and service bureaus – will it swing back?

Those of us who’ve used computers for a while remember when we did our work at ‘dumb terminals’, which did nothing other than connect us to the mainframe. Often work was submitted in batch to a service bureau which processed all the transactions at night so we could get updated reports in the morning.

The pendulum then swung to having all the software and data in the workstation at your desk.  That requires a far more powerful machine and eliminates reliance on the service bureau.  The mainframe was less important in the era of distributed computing.

My friend John Bredehoft has a thoughtful post on the swinging pendulum in computing, What if you don’t know that you’re living in the cloud?

Continue reading “The computing pendulum has swung back to dumb terminals and service bureaus – will it swing back?”

It is a blast being alive today, or isn’t technology cool?

I am chuckling and getting a kick out of being alive in 2011.

Just downloaded two books, one is 1,100 pages long and the other 1,400 pages.  I’m doing a technical review of a book and before lunch asked the editor for a copy of the prior year resource, which was in 2 volumes.  The editor spent a few seconds uploading files to yousendit.com and an automatic e-mail went out saying it was available.   After lunch Continue reading “It is a blast being alive today, or isn’t technology cool?”

What caused the drop in hours it takes to buy eggs?

Previously discussed the twentyfold drop in the cost of eggs compared to hourly wage of a teacher.  What caused the change? 

Technology change which enabled productivity improvements.

This discussion is based on The Price of Everything, by Prof. Russell Roberts.

When my father was a child living on the farm, every year the family would get several hundred newborn chicks.  Continue reading “What caused the drop in hours it takes to buy eggs?”

How the price of eggs show we have seen a twentyfold increase in the standard of living in the last 100 years.

Found an incredibly helpful explanation of the radical change in the standard of living over the last 100 years.  It is an explanation of the change in the price of eggs provided by Prof. Russell Roberts in his book The Price of Everything.  I’ve been discussing this book in the last several posts starting here and continuing here and here.

A challenge I have had when looking at history, particularly the Civil War, is trying to relate salaries or costs from back then to today. It’s one thing to say a soldier made $10 a month or a skilled laborer made $100 a month or a set of uniforms cost $17 or a barrel of flour went from this price to that price in the South.  However, I can’t relate that to anything.

How do those prices compare to now? Adjusting for inflation doesn’t really work.  Comparing those prices to the cost of an ounce of gold or an ounce of silver helps a little, but that brings in distortions from inflation that we have seen in the last 30 years along with the odd things in today’s economy.

How about using a comparable job to buy a comparable product then and now?

I will drill down in my review of Mr. Roberts book by pulling together several ideas into one linear discussion.

Continue reading “How the price of eggs show we have seen a twentyfold increase in the standard of living in the last 100 years.”

100 years ago only the very richest people had servants – today even the poor have servants

I have discussed Russell Roberts’ book, The Price of Everything, here, here, and here.  At one point in the book, he suggests that today even poor people have servants.

As a way of measuring increasing standard of living in the last hundred years, the main character in his book compares a rich guy served dinner by a waiter today to a rich guy 100 years ago served dinner by a servant.

As a starting point, consider one of Prof. Roberts’ comparisons:  the rich guy back then had an expensive, fancy watch while the servant had no watch.  Today, the rich guy has an exquisitely expensive, fancy watch, while the waiter has an inexpensive digital watch. 

Which do you suppose keeps better time and requires less maintenance?

Continue reading “100 years ago only the very richest people had servants – today even the poor have servants”

Opportunities and challenges in China

Walter Russell Mead is travelling in China. As all travelers know, this produces lots of insight. I still cherish the learning time I experienced during a number of overseas field audits for a client. But I digress.

In Chasing China Up The Food Chain, Mr Mead says:

The other day I was looking for a pair of gym shorts in Guangzhou and stopped at a sporting goods store. I found some — with a label proudly advertising “Made in Thailand.”

I’ve long read that manufacturers looking for the lowest cost are now building in Vietnam and Cambodia. That is a very serious problem for China.

The solution? Continue reading “Opportunities and challenges in China”

Another revolutionary step in the publishing industry – Amazon.com becomes a publisher

Amazon is moving into the publishing arena.  Not just e-publishing books in Kindle format, but the full-blown publishing gig.

I’ve only started to understand what they are doing, but it will be one more radical change in the publishing world.

Continue reading “Another revolutionary step in the publishing industry – Amazon.com becomes a publisher”

Have things gotten better in the last 100 years? Hint: there’s no better time to be alive than today.

This is a continuing review and commentary on The Price of Everything (introduced here and here).  At one point the characters discuss how much better off we are today than 100 years ago.  The main character, Prof. Ruth Lieber, makes a guess on the improvement in overall standard of living:

A good guess is that we’re somewhere between five and 15 times better off in terms of material well-being than we were 100 years ago. Maybe more.

A good point estimate is that our standard of living has increased tenfold in the last century.  Not 50% better.  Not 100% better.  But perhaps something range of 1000% better.

Continue reading “Have things gotten better in the last 100 years? Hint: there’s no better time to be alive than today.”

What are the underlying drivers of economic development?

I’ve previously mentioned that freer countries are richer countries. See

What does freedom have to do with countries getting richer?

Russell Roberts offers a partial explanation in his book The Price of Everything – A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity

Continue reading “What are the underlying drivers of economic development?”