Information wants to be free

Information wants to be free really sounds like a great idea.  But.

It takes time and effort to create information.  If you also have to “work” to keep a roof over your head and/or food on the table then you understand why there is “TANSTAAFL” (There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch).

Consider the problem of the “Starving Artist”.   He/She/They are creating “information” and usually can’t NOT do it.  So how do they live?  Often enough it is “badly” to the point of the clique about the “Starving Artist in a Garret”.

One possible solution is to hire lower-cost Information Workers to create information that is just as good as something you, yourself may create but you pay less for it.  Don’t laugh, that is exactly how many MBA professionals make a living in a place like India.  They sell their lower cost MBA skills to companies in America via telecommuting or other channels.

Andrew Yang makes a perfectly reasonable case for VAST TECHNOLOGICAL un-employment in the near future.  He is not the first.  More than one Science Fiction Author and probably more than one Social Critic have written about this.  Andrew Yang is the first in this US Presidential race to talk about it and offer solutions.  One of the drivers for unemployment is when someone or something can do it cheaper and still “make a living at it.”  Artificial Intelligence even in limited forms (aka Expert Systems) can and have replaced flesh and blood natural intelligence.  As AI gets better and better, expert systems can turn into “self-taught” expert systems.  As soon as AI gets really good at it, a variety of Knowlege workers will become technologically unemployed.

Tom M