The Age of Knowledge
By
Ray Kurzweil
We are presenting to you a most interesting article regarding changes in the current capitalist process of production as they are unfolding themselves within the context of yet another technological revolution. We do not necessarily agree with the author on all scientific and philosophic issues, as he comes to specific conclusions in accordance with his research data in particular and world outlook in general. This concerns in the first place his concept of labour, which is reduced to manual labour, whereas he does not distinguish between manual or physical and intellectual labour, as we define it.
However, most surprisingly, although we never read or studied any of the works of Ray Kurzweil, he actually verifies our views concerning physical, intellectual and rational labour as expressed in several of our chats and publications. We have come to certain theoretical conclusions via our own scientific and philosophic deliberations, and yet, concerning the contemporary labour process, this author actually confirms our central asseverations.
We'll underline the important passages for the readers to note the basic issues.
Also, we include the original URL, and we respect the Copyright of the Author. With great pleasure, we distribute this publication for discussion in our chats, debates and forums.
Franz J. T. Lee
16th June, 2000.
http://www.kurzweiltech.com/l991.ht
The industrial revolution of the last two centuries
--the first Industrial Revolution -- was
characterized by machines that extended, multiplied,
and leveraged our physical capabilities.
With these new machines, humans could manipulate
objects for which our muscles alone were
inadequate and carry out physical tasks at previously
unachievable speeds. As a result, the
world during this period was hungry for natural
resources and labor. Mao's postulate that
"power comes from the barrel of a gun" was true
when he said it. Through physical coercion,
one could control natural resources and compel people
to labor. While not providing the
happiest or most productive of workers, it worked
well enough.
The second industrial revolution, the one that
is now in progress, is based on machines that
extend, multiply, and leverage our mental abilities.
A remarkable aspect of this new technology
is that it uses almost no natural resources.
Silicon
chips use infinitesimal amounts of sand and
other readily available materials. They use insignificant
amounts of electricity. As electronics,
computers, and other forms of technology (bioengineering,
for example) grow smaller and
smaller, the material resources used are becoming
an inconsequential portion of their value.
Indeed, software uses virtually no resources
at all. The value of such technology lies primarily
in the knowledge governing the design of the
hardware, software, and databases that constitute
our intelligent machines, and in the ability
to continue advancing these designs.
Today, even manufacturing is dominated by its
knowledge content, not by natural resources or
labor. One has only to tour modern factories with
their delicately programmed robotic
assemblers and material handlers to recognize the
increasing dominance of knowledge as a
cornerstone of wealth. This decreasing importance
of material resources has allowed Japan, a
country very poor in natural resources but rich
in knowledge and expertise, to prosper. While
the first Industrial Revolution increased the
demand for and the value of natural resources the
second industrial revolution is doing the opposite.
In the case of computer software, it is apparent
that one is paying for the knowledge inherent
in the design and not for the raw materials represented
by the floppy disk and user's manual.
What is sometimes less apparent is that the same
economic model holds for most computer
hardware as well. An advanced chip generally costs
no more to produce than a floppy disk. As
with a software program, the bulk of the cost
of a chip is neither raw materials nor
manufacturing labor, but rather what accountants
call amortization of development, and what
philosophers call knowledge.
It is estimated that raw materials comprise less
than two percent of the value of chips (which is
about the same estimate as for software) and less
than five percent of the value of computers.
As our computers become more powerful, the percentage
of
their value accounted for by raw
materials continues to diminish, approaching zero.
Raw materials approaching zero
It is interesting to note that the same (inverse
exponential) trend holds for most other
categories of products. Raw materials comprise about
20 percent of the value of musical
instruments (down from about 60 percent ten years
ago) with this figure continuing to rapidly
decline as acoustic musical instrument technology
is being replaced with digital electronic
technology. Just last year we reached the halfway
point in the transformation of musical
instruments from the 19th-century acoustic technology
to the digital electronics of the late 20th
century: more than half of musical instrument industry
revenues are now from electronic
products. If we look at the typical electronic musical
instrument (a digital home keyboard, for
example), it is basically a computer with at least
90 percent of its value based on its knowledge
content. By the end of this decade, more than 90
percent of all musical instrument industry
revenues are expected to be based on this type of
technology.
George Gilder (author of Wealth and Poverty and Microcosm)
estimates that the cost of raw
materials for automobiles is now down to 40 percent
of total costs. Again, this figure will
continue to decline with the increasing use of computers
and electronics as well as the
replacement of expensive and relatively simple body
materials such as steel with inexpensive
yet relatively complex alternative materials such
as new high-tech plastics.
Such routine products as tables and chairs have a
rapidly increasing knowledge content
through the use of new materials and automated manufacturing
methods that use little or no
labor. Increasingly, the value of a manufactured
product is its design and the software
controlling its automated manufacturing process,
both forms of knowledge.
The software of life
This inexorable trend toward knowledge as the principal
component of wealth affects even
commodities. We are now beginning to master the
ability to grow produce without soil. This
will offer the opportunity to build factories that
can create in large volume anything that grows.
Since it will be possible to easily control pests
in such an environment, insecticides and other
chemicals will not be needed. Bioengineering
will create the gene-altered vegetable, fruit, and
grain species that can obtain their sustenance
from a nutrient-enriched water. The same
techniques will create varieties that provide
optimal nutrition, taste, and other desirable
properties. The process of cultivation and harvesting
will be, of course, fully automated. Thus
the value of such produce will consist of the
genetic blueprints for these crops, the
programming that controls this automated process
and energy. The first two are clearly
dominated by knowledge. The latter we will discuss
in a moment .
Key to this landless revolution in agriculture
is bioengineering. We are only now beginning to
feel the impact of bioengineering, a technology
of momentous potential -- both promising and
perilous. By tinkering with the fundamental structure
of life, we have the ability to create new
materials and new life forms that can cure (or
cause) disease, enhance (or spoil) our
environment, and otherwise transform our lives.
This technology is clearly knowledge based:
we are making programming changes in the software
of life.
In mastering bioengineering, the first order of business
is to understand the program that
evolution has already written. While a master programmer,
evolution forgot to document her
code. The human genome project, a multibillion-dollar
federally supported effort, will write it
all down (at least the human version). The result
-- six billion bits needed for the genetic
definition of a human being -- will fit on a couple
of compact discs. Understanding it is another
matter for it is written in a dense machine language
with few Rosetta stones available.
It may seem odd to extol the declining importance
and value of natural resources when the
attention of the world was recently riveted on
a crisis centering on the availability and price of
a quintessential material resource, oil. In response,
I would point out that the second industrial
revolution is a gradual process and, while some
industries have been almost totally
revolutionized in the relative balance of material
and intellectual resources, energy is somewhat
earlier in this process. For some reason, the
energy industry has been firmly stuck in the first
Industrial Revolution.
But it is not hard to see how we can ultimately
replace oil with intellect. For example, with
suitable innovations, we could eventually power
our cars with electricity rather than gasoline.
And we could go on to produce the electricity
through new methods that do not involve the
irreversible consumption of material resources.
Ideas for achieving this range from the
controversial breeder reactor to more benign
solar and geothermal power. One has to wonder
why the energy industry has been so resistant
to entering the second industrial revolution.
The fortunate truth
The most significant political development of the
post-World War II era -- the collapse of
Communism -- is a byproduct of the exigencies of
the second industrial revolution. It is a
fortunate truth of human nature that creativity
and innovation cannot be forced. To create
knowledge, people need the free exchange of information
and ideas. They need free access to
the world's accumulated knowledge bases. A society
that restricts access to copiers and
typewriters for fear of the dissemination of uncontrolled
knowledge will certainly fear the
much more powerful communication technologies of
PCs, FAX machines, Email, local area
networks, telecommunication databases, electronic
bulletin boards, and all of the multifarious
methods of instantaneous electronic communication.
Controlled societies have been faced with a fundamental
dilemma. If they provide their
engineers and professionals in all disciplines with
advanced workstation technology, they are
opening the floodgates to free communication by
methods far more powerful than the copiers
they have traditionally banned. On the other hand,
if they fail to do so, they become
increasingly ineffectual. The Soviet Union is already
on a par with the more backward Third
World countries economically. It has been a superpower
only in the military sphere, and with
the increasing reliance of military strategy on
intelligent weapons, this type of power has
dissipated as well.
Innovation requires more than just computer workstations
and electronic communication
technologies. It also requires an atmosphere of
tolerance for new and unorthodox ideas, the
encouragement of risk taking, and the ability to
share ideas and knowledge. A society run
entirely by government bureaucracies is not in a
position to provide the incentives and
environment needed for entrepreneurship and the
rapid development of new skills and
technologies.
The navigators of knowledge
With knowledge as a component of wealth gradually
asymptoting to 100 percent, we need to
put the proper priority on the question of how
to promote innovation, which is the creation of
knowledge that has economic value. Clearly,
libraries have a crucial role to play here. A library
is a repository of a society's knowledge. For the
past several hundred years, the primary
medium for storing our knowledge has been books.
In recent decades, we have supplemented
books with other media: recordings, movies, and
most recently electronic databases. Libraries
have adjusted to each of these innovations and many
offer information in diverse forms.
Early in the next century, computerized knowledge
navigators will help us to explore the
increasingly complex knowledge that our libraries
contain. Professor Marvin Minsky of MIT
contemplates a future conversation between two readers
of LJ: "Can you imagine that they
used to have libraries where the books didn't talk
to each other?" We'll talk more about the
library of the future in an upcoming column.
The age of knowledge is the culmination of a process
of automation that began with the
automation of the English textile industry more
than two and a half centuries ago. John Kay's
flying shuttle and the myriad machines that followed
have gradually transformed the nature of
work, by successively automating jobs at the
lower rungs of the skill ladder while at the same
time opening up new opportunities at the top
of the ladder. With knowledge firmly implanted
as the foundation of wealth and power in the
late 20th and early 21st century, nurturing
knowledge -- its creation and dissemination
-- will be the cornerstone of our security.
Perhaps the most beneficial attribute of the age
of knowledge is the decentralization of power.
Knowledge does not simply foster wealth and power,
in the age of knowledge it is wealth and
power. By increasing our ability to master knowledge,
we can each shape our individual
destiny.
Reprinted with permission from Library Journal, September
1991. Copyright © 1991,
Reed Elsevier, USA
Copyright © 1996, Kurzweil Technologies, Inc.
Hello folks!
Enclosed is my response to Ray Kurzweil' s article. Please post for the other crew members too.
Ray Kurzweil’s the Age of Knowledge is basically a descriptive article
that has said nothing new to what
has already been discussed or debated within the current changes of
the new Global Economy. The crust
of his analysis seems focused more on the progression and prognostics
of change from a resource based
economy to the new knowledge-based one and the importance of wealth
creation to ‘society’ and the
transformation of physical labor to knowledge based workers.
Ray’s insight is at best very simplistic and lacks any theoretical or
philosophical foundation of political
economy. Therefore, to my mind there isn't anything to debate. He has
failed to grasp the ‘fuel’ that has
led to the ‘spread’ of the ‘fire’ of innovation and creation of new
technologies. What is this "fuel"? It is
simply labor. While he admonished the impact of the "closed-society"
on innovation and the creation of
new technology he failed to understand that it was this very process
that give birth to the current boom in
the creation of new technologies.
The foundations of the cradle that led to the birth of current technological
revolution were nurtured
precisely because of the advent of the cold war vis-à-vis the
‘closed societies’. It was the cold war and
the "closed societies" that led to the continuous transformation of
production from a resource based
economy to the one of what it is today. Most of the technological changes
applied to production have its
origins to the military industrial complex. Don’t forget folks the
impact of the discovery of nuclear energy,
the atomic bomb, miniaturization, laser technology and advanced computers;
and their uses and for what
purposes.
Ray’s analysis is simply short sighted. While he paraded left and right
the potential of new technologies
and its importance of wealth creation for ‘free’ societies he again
failed to use the same ‘prognostics’
based analysis in predicting the impact of such technologies in the
transformation of today's so called
‘free’ economy. When he speaks of wealth creation, to whom and for
whose benefit is he referring to?
The irony is only a minority of the world's population have accessed
and benefited from the creation of
new technologies. The ‘storage’ and access to these new technologies
are bunkered in the NEW "closed
societies" of western developed based capitalist countries for their
own self aggrandizement and
indulgement through their "holy" international property protection
rights laws as currently policed by their
lackeys world wide through the UN, WTO, NAFTA, FTA, and the EU. So
again, of what and whose
benefit is this new technology all about?
Khalid