[wordup] The problem with abundance

[Adam Shand]

I don't think he's asking very interesting questions at the end, but 
it's a fairly good way of thinking about new technology.

Adam.

From:http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031007.gtdejageroct7/BNStory/Technology/

The problem with abundance
By Peter de Jager
Friday, Oct. 10, 2003

   Peter de Jager is a keynote speaker and futurist. Contact him
   at pdejager at technobility.com or www.technobility.com.

What do traffic jams, obesity and spam have in common?

They are all problems caused by abundance in a world more attuned to 
scarcity. By achieving the goal of abundance, technology renders the 
natural checks and balances of scarcity obsolete.

The automobile made it possible for individuals to travel 100 kilometres 
in an hour. The result is that roads and parking must potentially 
accommodate everyone driving downtown from an area approximately 200 Km 
in diameter. The speed of travel reduces the constraints of distance. 
When we unthinkingly increase the speed at which we can travel, we 
increase the distance we travel without thinking.

The human body was designed to survive on scarcity, and it has served us 
well over the past 50,000-plus years. On those rare occasions when food 
was abundant it was stored as fat in advance of future scarcity. Today 
we are surrounded by an excess of food and the body continues to follow 
a proven survival strategy — it stores energy in fat for lean days which 
no longer arrive.

The ability to send sales pitches via e-mail at a negligible cost means 
it is economical and good business practice to send-millions of e-mails 
even with response rates as low as .001per cent. That pile of fetid Spam 
in your mailbox is a direct result of technological progress. There 
should be no surprise here; the rise of Spam follows the same growth 
curve of books after the invention of the printing press, although in a 
much shorter time frame. The speed and negligible cost of e-mail 
delivers an abundance of potential customers to anyone with a computer.

There are other obvious examples. Today the music industry is being 
hammered on the anvil of abundance. We've always copied music, but in 
limited quantities because copying that LP/Cassette to an audio tape 
took time, was expensive and the quality wasn't the same.

Today, we cheaply create our own CDs by the hundreds and the quality is 
exactly the same as those we buy for $20 or more. The rise in the number 
of people copying music and burning their own CDs, has collapsed the 
music industry's ability to dole out tiny snippets of music as if it 
were a scarce resource. Their attempt to hold back progress is to sue 
the consumer.

Ironically, it was the music industry which embraced and introduced both 
the CD and digital music to the consumer. They never thought about the 
long term consequences to their business, although they had ample 
warning of future problems. When their cost to produce the CD dropped 
drastically to the point where consumers could create their own music CD 
for less than 50 cents, warning bells should have rung out loudly. 
Perhaps they did, but obviously nobody paid attention until the 
consequences began to nibble away at their profits.

The increased capability to communicate effortlessly with anyone in the 
world is an amazing result of technological know-how. It also means we 
can significantly reduce costs by sending work to the other side of the 
world, rather than employing people closer to home. Work is now 
geographically ambivalent and all white collar work is at risk of 
displacement.

A technology which has, as its primary advantage, an ability to create 
abundance, carries within it the potential to create problems 
invulnerable to simplistic solutions. Like genies let loose from the 
bottle, they are almost impossible to control. We can't solve traffic 
congestion by reducing the speed of traffic to 10 KM/Hr. Nor can we 
solve obesity by reducing the shelves in the supermarket, or Spam by 
making it difficult and costly to send e-mail.

It's not that it is physically impossible to do these things; it's that 
people will resist with all their might, those who attempt to replace 
new found abundance with their parents' scarcity.

Anyone considering a new technology should at least ask the question: 
"What are the long term consequences if this advance reduces costs to 
zero, or increases access so that everyone with a desire to do so, can 
use the technology?" That might seem to be a giant 'societal' question 
of value only to economists and city planners, but it has applications 
closer to home.

What does it mean for "family time" when every room has a TV?

What does it mean for my company when everyone has instant messaging?

What does it mean for newspapers when everyone has access to digital paper?

What does it mean for the telecom industry when everyone has a wireless 
network?

Any technology which creates abundance poses problems for any process 
which existed to benefit from scarcity.