Template:M intro technology rumours of our demise: Difference between revisions

Now, to lionise the human spirit ''in the abstract'', as we do, is not to say we should sanctify bank employees as a class ''in the particular''. The JC has spent a quarter century among them. They — we — may be unusually paid, for all the difference we make to the median life on planet Earth, but we are not unusually gifted or intelligent.  

It is an ongoing marvel how commercial organisations can be so reliably profitable given the calibre of the hordes they employ to steer them. We have argued [[mediocrity drift|elsewhere]] that informal systems tend to be configured to ''ensure'' staff mediocrity over time. Others have too.<ref>See {{br|The Peter Principle}}; {{br|Parkinson’s Law}}: for classic studies.</ref>

There is some irony here. As western economies have shifted, from the production of ''things'' to the delivery of ''services'', the proportion of their workforce in “white collar work” has exploded. All kinds of occupations that scarcely existed a generation ago have weaponised themselves into self-declared professions. The ratio of jobs requiring, ''de facto'', university degrees (the modern lite professional qualification) has grown. The number of universities have expanded; polytechnics rebadging themselves. This, too, feels like a [[system effect]] of the modernist orthodoxy: if we can only assess people by reference to formal criteria, then industries devoted to contriving and dishing out those criteria are sure to emerge. The self-interests of different constituencies in the system contrive to entrench each other: this is how feedback loops work.