Key terms
Key concepts
Readings
Activities
Discussion questions/points
Key terms
Electronics
Technology revolution
Property relations
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Key concepts
For the bulk of history, production has been based on human labor. For the first time in history, electronics makes production possible without human labor, by capturing and incorporating the knowledge and skills and efforts of previous generations of workers in the new technologies. This new quality — laborless production — is what makes electronics a revolutionary technology. It distinguishes production today not just from electro-mechanical (industrial) production of the recent past, but also from the bulk of history. This is a very big change.
We are at the beginning of a technology revolution. New technologies continue to develop at a rapid pace and spread to more and more areas of the economy. The impact of new technologies is just being felt.
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Readings
Davis and Stack, "The Digital Advantage", in Cutting Edge. Verso. 1997.
Recent newspaper and magazine articles (see activities below)
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Activities
Look for recent newspaper or magazine articles that describe new technologies or production processes. Some good sources for such articles are the daily newspaper, or magazines like Discover, Omni, or Wired. When reading the articles, consider the ways in which the technologies replace things that people used to do.
Make a list of features of new technologies, and how they change the role of people in the production process. Some key points include:
When looking at the newspaper articles consider the following:
- speed of development and rapid dispersion
- cheapening cost
- new areas of human activity
- not just replacement of people by machines, but the squeezing out of labor from all levels
- we're not at an end to a process, but at the beginning
- the new tools are not just robots and computers, but they are new materials, new processes, a new science.
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Discussion questions/points
1. A "revolutionary technology" is a technology of a new quality that is, qualitatively different from existing technology. Why is electronics a revolutionary technology? That is, what makes it qualitatively different from electro-mechanical technology?
2. From the discussion on historical materialism, what are the implications of introducing a "revolutionary technology" into a society?
3. Practically speaking, from your own or your parents' experience, how is this playing out in the world today? How is the economy being reorganized around new technologies?
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