[tt] [Open Manufacturing] Re: 10 Products and Innovations From Recessions Past

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> -----

From: "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com>
Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:25:54 -0400
To: openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com
Subject: [Open Manufacturing] Re: 10 Products and Innovations From Recessions
 Past
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 (Macintosh/20090605)
Reply-To: openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com


Kevin Carson wrote:
> According to Piore and Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide, networked
> manufacturing came about on the present scale as a result of the
> stagnation of the '70s and '80s.  Conventional mass-production
> manufacturers have always shifted some production to networks of
> suppliers using general-purpose machines for craft production.  The
> reason is that the expensive, product-specific machinery used by
> (Galbraith's term) the "technostructure" requires stability and
> predictability of demand to ensure that it can be utilized to capacity
> and dispose of the resulting product, and manufacturing corporations
> respond to economic uncertainty by postponing major capital
> investments and instead outsourcing production to supplier networks
> that can quickly expand production or switch products in response to
> demand.
> 
> The difference is that with the long-term structural changes that
> began in the '70s (resulting both from global capital saturation as
> European and Asian levels of plant and equipment finally recovered
> from WWII destruction, and from the oil shocks), the shift from
> in-house capital investment to supplier networks with general purpose
> machinery was permanent.
> 
> Likewise, economic downturns lead--of necessity--to unemployed and
> underemployed workers shifting a major part of their subsistence needs
> from wage labor to the informal and household sectors.  This time,
> it's being done via Craigslist, Freecycle, barter networks, the
> expansion of home gardening, and the like.

Thanks for the history and insight. And indirectly some suggestions about 
possible new-Depression-era ventures to support uncertain but major 
manufacturers? :-)

A few years ago, I read how Craig Newmark of Craigslist
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist
turned down opportunities to sell the service as well as to broaden what ads 
require revenue. He was painted as a nice guy, and that may be true, but I 
can wonder if he did not actually want to take down newspapers somehow? The 
picture on Wikipedia is of him with a sledge hammer. :-)

 From there: "As of 2009[update], Craigslist operates with a staff of 28 
people.[3] Its sole source of revenue is paid job ads in select cities – $75 
per ad for the San Francisco Bay Area; $25 per ad for New York, Los Angeles, 
San Diego, Boston, Seattle, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Portland, Oregon – 
and paid broker apartment listings in New York City ($10 per ad). ... In 
December 2006, at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York, Craigslist 
CEO Jim Buckmaster told Wall Street analysts that Craigslist has little 
interest in maximizing profit, instead preferring to help users find cars, 
apartments, jobs, and dates. ... Having observed people helping one another 
in friendly, social and trusting communal ways on the Internet, the WELL, 
and Usenet, and feeling isolated as a relative newcomer to San Francisco, 
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark decided to create something similar for 
local events. ... Newmark says that Craigslist works because it gives people 
a voice, a sense of community trust and even intimacy. Other factors he 
cites are consistency of down-to-earth values, customer service and 
simplicity. After first being approached about running banner ads, Newmark 
decided to decline. In 2002, Craigslist staff posted mock-banner ads 
throughout the site as an April Fools joke."

Reminds me a little of this news item:
  "China Looks to Undermine U.S. Power, With ‘Assassin’s Mace’"
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/china-looks-to-undermine-us-power-with-assassins-mace/
"U.S. airpower depends on the ability to overcome surface-to-air missile 
(SAM) defenses, and one of the key weapons for this role is the AGM-88 High 
Speed Anti-radiation Missile (HARM), which homes in on radar emissions. (You 
can see them, under the F/A-18’s wings in the picture, above.) The defenders 
can either turn off their radar, thus blinding themselves, or have it 
destroyed. This is where the black box that Ramo found at a military trade 
show in Zhuhai in 2002 comes in:
     “…packed inside were several thousand microtransmitters and when you 
plugged the device in and turned it on, it broadcast signals - 10,000 of 
them - on the frequency of a SAM site. From the perspective of an American 
pilot - or , more precisely, the perspective of his HARM missile looking for 
a ‘lock’ on a SAM radar signal - this meant an air-to-ground picture that 
looked like 10,001 SAM signals, only one of which was real…”
Ramo suggests that if defenders have these black boxes then the U.S. 
aircraft would be helpless against enemy SAMs, and air superiority would be 
lost at stroke. This is just one example of Beijing’s “Assassin’s Mace” 
family of weaponry that’s been much discussed in both Chinese and American 
military circles. The Pentagon defines the Maces as technologies that might 
afford an inferior military an advantage in a conflict with a superior 
power. In this view, an Assassin’s Mace is anything which provides a cheap 
means of countering an expensive weapon. Other examples might include 
Chinese anti-satellite weapons, which might instantly knock out U.S. space 
assets, or a conventional ballistic missile, designed to take out a 
supercarrier and all its aircraft in one hit. It’s an interesting contrast 
to the perspective of the American arms industry, which can end up spending 
vast amounts countering low-tech, low-cost threats like mines and IEDs."

Interesting definition of "inferior" and "superior" used there as if just 
winning in that sense did not matter (given it is presumably unfair for the 
people who spend less or have less fancy stuff to win?). From:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)
""Superiority" is a science fiction short story by Arthur C. Clarke, first 
published in 1951. It depicts an arms race, and shows how the side which is 
more technologically advanced can be defeated, despite its apparent 
superiority, because of its own organizational flaws and its willingness to 
use new technologies without fully understanding them. The story is (or was) 
required reading at West Point."

It seems part of the problem is that US society, including manufacturers, 
schools, and the US military are using post-scarcity technologies without 
really understanding them.

A related example:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/drone-kills-25-calls-for-moratorium-hit-new-york-times/
"""
To Americans, the drones over Pakistan are terrorist-killers. In Pakistan, 
the robotic planes are wiping out neighbors. Which is why America needs to 
“declare a moratorium on drone strikes into Pakistan,” counterinsurgency 
experts Andrew Exum and David Kilcullen writes in today’s New York Times. 
... “The drone campaign is in fact part of a larger strategic error — our 
insistence on personalizing this conflict with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. 
Devoting time and resources toward killing or capturing “high-value” targets 
— not to mention the bounties placed on their heads — distracts us from 
larger problems, while turning figures like Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the 
Pakistani Taliban umbrella group, into Robin Hoods,” the pair add.
"""

Essentially, did Craigslist with a tiny staff take out the imperial 
mouthpiece US newspaper industry on purpose?

Yet, to truly understand post-scarcity technologies, is that not to embrace 
them in some form by working towards global shared abundance? :-)

Anyway, while I feel a post-scarcity economy may yet emerge, I am wondering 
if this downturn in the current conventional US economy is structural and 
permanent? And it may remain until the structural changes are acknowledged 
and then addressed -- stuff like limited demand and rising productivity and 
a broken link between jobs and the right to consume, as post-scarcity 
technology continues to spread exponentially?

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/


--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Open Manufacturing" group.
To post to this group, send email to openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to openmanufacturing+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE