(00:00:06) A lot of people think there will never be a return to the Past growth levels for some of the heavy manufacturing Industries. That's why there's so much talk about retraining people who have worked in mining and automobile manufacturing steel works. And so on this new boom, we are told will be in high technology Industries those that emphasize computers Electronics in the like they help shed some light on how all this high technology Revolution may change the lives of individuals indeed Society. We're pleased to have with us in the studio today. Dr. Arthur Hawkins professor of future studies at the University of Minnesota. And also a private consultant on the subject. Dr. Hawkins. Welcome, it's nice. Thank you very much. Are we indeed do you think on the verge of a major change in society? Something is great. For example as the change to the industrial revolution of the 19th century, or maybe as great as the change from hand-printed manuscripts to movable type. Loads of years before that. Yes, I do. I think that the rule of thumb sociologically is when you find out that there's a Revolution coming. It's already been underway for quite some time. I would say that the current so-called Information Society has been around 40 to 60 years. We just haven't recognized it. We're now discovering that the old ways that we used to do things as in heavy industry don't work as well as they used to sometimes they don't work at all because we aren't learning the lessons of the age that were in what are some of the characteristics of this high-tech in society. Well a high-tech Society is characterized by high levels of information and high levels and often unorthodox ways of information flow. In other words, the key resource of the this type of society is information data information knowledge and wisdom. You might say when a company can't take advantage of that new information which becomes available to other Anthony's it doesn't even see it or understand it. It's there that company can be in severe difficulty and I think that when you talk about heavy industry, that's what you're referring to companies that did not modernize their Industries in the United States at the end of World War two and lost their lead agreed egregiously lost their lead to other countries principally Japan. So the the key to the information age where any industry is concerned is using updated information to make changes when those changes will result in a profit rather than to try to make those changes after the fact and to sort of patch the situation up six minutes after 12 o'clock. Arthur Hawkins is with us today, and we invite your questions for him on the high-tech Society 2276 thousand is the phone number for those of you living in Minneapolis st. Paul in other parts of the state toll-free one 800 695 hundred and if you listen, Outside the state of Minnesota called us directly in the Twin Cities. The area code is 6 12 and that Twin Cities number is 2276 thousand. So as a practical matter, what do we do with the people who have been working on the Iron Range in the mining industry with people who have been working in Detroit on cars Well, I this is a very personal opinion. I am noted now that some of the dfl ours in Minnesota are trying to create jobs for a fraction of the unemployed in Minnesota. I think the figure around 60,000 or so by in effect raising the tax burden on the remainder of the state's population. You don't deal with iron range problems in my judgment by essentially putting people back to work on the tax base and not at the same time improving the educational skills of those people so they can make technology transfers to other types of work nor do you necessarily help those people when you don't bring industry into the state and don't retain industry in the state. That could give them jobs. If in fact they were retrained appropriately for new types of work. My feeling is that we lose ourselves in pity for people who are suffering and we forget sometimes to look at the basic infrastructure of the society or of the state economically and sociologically and educationally that can result in an Iron Range occurring in the first place may be able to pursue this a little bit further but there's some people on the line with questions now, so if you slip your headphones on we will go to our first caller. Hi, you're on the air. (00:04:38) Yeah. I'm calling from st. Louis Park. I was wondering what he sees in the future for what was a great start and I'm a space program that has just about vanished to zero point and it was a program that for example brought him the microchip technology to a fantastic point because they needed it so our whole industry developed and as I have heard the He's program for the money. It's meant created about $8 per dollar. (00:05:11) Yes. I was just on an airplane. The other day after being in Winnipeg was the director of the Voyager deep-space probe program and we were talking about the subject the decline of the of the Space Program in certain respects and the question whether or not by pursuing this high technology area in the future, we could replicate The Fallout that you referred to earlier the technology and economic Fallout. It seems to me that the surveys that we've taken indicate clearly that the American population wants to explore space and they want to build colonies or at least space stations in that environment. What you don't see is a corresponding political response to this this very didactic or empirical attitude based in the United States. And so you might say where there is no vision and fill it in with the obvious, but I think our country as a whole Whether it's in space or in other areas military quality of military technology for example has a lot to learn about using ideas novel ideas and refurbished old ideas to get the country moving and one final comment on that. You don't get a high technology country when your education system cannot support the level of workmanship that a high-technology country requires. So in space in Pharmaceuticals and dozens of various textile steel aluminum. So on the US has to watch very carefully that it that it keeps the leads it starts and it starts New Leads where others have have slowed down. Where does the profit motive for all this fit in you're talking about some tremendous investments in research and development. Where's the money for all that investment to come from? Well in our country and in any country, whether it's socialist or capitalist, ultimately Investments have to come from some for some form of profit. Call it value added capitalism under a socialist or communist mantle or under a capitalist one. So we have to make profits to have venture or other forms of capital for front-end change in the society. You don't you see I'd rather see the state of Minnesota. For example use money from the tax base to create a variety of options for inventors and for Venture Capital activity for new firms new companies technology Parks energy parks and the like and for retraining of workers as in Iron Range workers rather than to put that money into maintenance work a maintenance work is important in the infrastructure of roads and so on but less important I think than the requirement to get the economy moving through using the brains that the American people have and the strong work ethic and high-tech areas more listeners are on the line and we also have another line or to open in the Minneapolis st. Paul area. The telephone number is In 6002 276 thousand if you like to join our conversation and in other parts of Minnesota toll-free, 1-800-695-1418 (00:08:16) is my question. Let me show you off here is I'm involved in exposing my called high-tech and my concern is with the present thinking of retraining people. Some of the realities are with CAD Systems computer aided design that one really good engineer can sit down at a terminal and do a design that would take five or six engineers and several technicians to design build debug and he can come out with a working chip at the end of his design if he's design chips, which is when most familiar with And how is it proposed to take people and I know it sounds elitist as hell construction workers Ironworkers people on the Range assembly line workers people that have some of them have a high school education, maybe a lot of them, but they just made it to high school and we're talking about training people to do a job that right. Now people good people with college education's are being bumped the side by technology and Robotics for assembly and so forth. I just I'd like to know what the feelings are on various futurists on that. Thank you very (00:09:44) much. Okay, well put and complex. Let me just start out a little in ask you way. I was in Charleston South Carolina earlier this week talking to Vocational Technical Educators in the Charleston area. There's a vocational technical institute with over 700 students. I was told By the president of that Institute that over half of those students have four year college degrees. Now, what you're looking at is a compounding of a problem for people who have the educational characteristics that you attributed to Iron Range victims of Economic and other stresses. There's no question that people in Middle years say 30 to 60 in terms of the work years who do not have fundamental Reading Writing computational and say map reading or manual following skills will have to be given those skills in order to make many of the transitions to job or work change that that you've been talking about. Another point that you brought up which interest me greatly is the cad computer assisted design and Manufacturing Revolution that starting this revolution I think could result in not only a single engineer doing what many Engineers otherwise would do. But a single technician doing what many Engineers might do in other words, if you look at cad/cam computer-assisted design and Manufacturing development, it's conceivable that vocational technical institutes could essentially teach through CAD Cam and other means what our engineering schools are now teaching at the undergraduate and to some extent at The Graduate level translation as we automate these things. We begin to eliminate the need for certain types of professionals doing what they've always done and what we create is the opportunity for those professionals to do new things in the question is will our institutions follow that direction another listener has a question for our Harkins. Go ahead. You're on the air. (00:11:48) Yes. I'm a counselor at our Vocational Technical Institute. And I have a personal question. My people skills are very strong in their what I enjoy doing. But I'm wondering should I be beginning to spend a lot of time and energy and money on improving my technical skills? Well, I have to become more and more technically skillful or and secondly, will there be a continued need for people who are able to work with people in those kinds of ways. (00:12:15) Well now you've come to the core of it in many human terms all social change or technology change or whatever involves personal psychological endocrine responses on people's Parts. I think we need to build a bridge or many ridges perhaps between the people sciences and Technologies and the hard sciences and Technologies. In other words. It's perfectly all right to think of having warm relationships among workers in high technology environments or warm. Supportive teachers in high technology teaching and learning environments the best the best source on this at the present time that I could suggest you read is the rapidly becoming famous book megatrends by John Nesbitt. John has coined the famous phrase high-tech high-touch and in it. He said within the book He suggests that we can have a better Society with higher technology. If we improve our human skills at the same time as we improve our Hardware skills, and I look for a tremendous opportunity for the liberal arts colleges to work with Vocational Technical institutes to develop cross-listed courses and cross exchanges of Faculty to help bring about a more developed High touch and high-tech and a synthesis between the two. More listeners with questions. Hi, you're on the air. (00:13:40) Yeah. I was just wondering what your guest thinks about the society transforming its attitudes about work and pay for work considering so many people going to be losing their jobs. And so many people are going to to not be trainable or trained in the ways that they need to be in order to meet the high tech society and and many of the jobs are going to be disappearing because of the robotics. So it's along the lines of the question was asked two questions ago, but I'm wondering about transformation of the society to some simpler values so that people can have their their needs their food needs. Their health needs are housing needs and they weren't needs (00:14:19) met. Well, that's it. That's you know, the Socialist states purport to have solve this issue or this problem by simply saying we'll use a large fraction of gross national product for housing subsidized housing for available making available. Will Medical Care food education and so on? There are the Alternatives in the in the in the capitalist societies? I think our greater to provide those basic services and goods. If you have a profit-making system, you can afford to have retraining and low interest loans and prefabricated housing and various new forms of high-tech Agriculture and so on and so on so that as an alternative to having a socialist State you could have a state that acted socialistic lie out of a capitalist base in other words through high profits High GNP growth and through low interest loans and so on are people could live better than they live today and yet at the same time retain the advantages of living in a democratic capitalist system. 19 minutes past the our dr. Arthur Hawkins is with us. We're talking about the high-tech Society. Hi. What's your question? (00:15:34) My question is I'm from st. Paul and the problem that seems to bother me is that whatever I hear seems to be true what you say may be true and that is emphasis on the changing our did industrial society and so on and a tech from production and so forth. We all know industry in particular knows which should be done to improve our economy. But the underlying problem to me as seems to be something more than that and it seems to be a basic defect in our society and that is a short-term greed and how are we going to solve that problem in order to get this? Let's say the industrial and Technical Leaders in this country to work in unison and prevent this sort of thing. In other words. There has to be in my estimation a cap on the Greet which is a basic defect of our society. (00:16:44) Well that you see in my opinion a high information base technical capitalist democracy is always going to be kind of a heck of a place to live in it's going to be changing a lot and people are going to get hurt and people are going to be benefited and things are going to be unsettled a planned State as in the Soviet Union or East Germany for example will on in many measures be be a more Placid and predictable place in which to live now. We're coming down to values I guess and and what what you'd like like to see as preferred values in the types of Social and economic and Technical Systems that you'd like to see coming out of these but let me suggest to you that that living In a society like this one in which you do have a chance to make or break your future and yet whether it's a floor under you to protect you from total loss of human dignity and total loss of human property that that from my own value standpoint is is just one heck of a situation in which to live. It's very challenging and it does tend to bring out the best and the worst in individuals and in groups of people. I think there's one other quick point to make here and that is education systems have not prepared us for the type of changes. We're going through right now and we can see more changes coming down the pike that education systems are not paying attention to in fact, these systems are themselves being taken apart torn asunder kicked around defunded underfunded and refunded everywhere in the United States. So it's a general cross institutional problem or situation that we're looking at now, and and I think it's time for us to open our eyes. To it and realize it's here and decide what kind of values we want to pursue and let our systems develop accordingly to follow up briefly on his question. Some people look at the automobile industry in this country and they say that the problems are the fault partly of management which had interest in short-term profits because after all that's what's rewarded the unions had interest in keeping those wages up because that's what they're late. Are there members wanted and government regulations were too strict now whether or not that's true with the automobile industry. How do we keep that kind of thing from happening in some of these high-tech Industries? Well, the famous case famous in the last two weeks in terms of high-tech changes along the lines that you've just suggested for the Auto industry was Atari Atari is losing is causing the loss of four thousand jobs in California. I was out there last week when they announced this at my Lord The LA Times editorial was just blistering on that subject. So now off go the jobs to into a third world country. I don't think in an open Society with the type of entrepreneurial. Energy that we seem to generate here that we can prevent these companies from making those types of choices. You know, there are two too many sort of personal issues here for all of us to to treat all of them. But one of them is that people in those Industries in that particular one in Atari already knew their the changes were in the win that Atari was thinking about moving that company the course it didn't move at all. They move the low labor the low cost the people of the labor end of it out of the country. Now those people who were in that industry probably should have made some decisions themselves about where they wanted to go with their lives and pursued some of those decisions accordingly in order to get one foot out of Atari and keep one foot in so that if a Terry left, they could move up in the Atari hierarchy or move out of Atari one. You have to sort of at some point come to the level of the individuals responsibility in these matters of Which lead to both gains and losses for the individual and I would say that to to make of the individual light persistent victim in terms of these natural changes that are going on here. And in Japan is to deny the individual a dignity that I believe in this society that person has a right to more listeners are on the line with questions for art Harkins. Hi. Go ahead, please (00:21:08) you see the electronics field as mean very important which field of electronics you feel feels more important Communications or industrial Electronics. I'm currently a student at wanted area vocational Institute. (00:21:24) Well, let me try to answer that question a little bit in a circular kind of way and then come back to your to your actual point the best thing for a technical person to do today whether they're in electronics are in technical aspects of oceanography or in CAD cam or whatever is to understand where these Technologies Jeez came from historically where they are and what kinds of Trends are developing or breakthroughs are being worked on in those technology areas. In other words. Try to avoid this is my suggestion being a little to vocational in your approach. In other words, you get you can get really victimized pretty easily by saying well where where is the energy going in terms of employment opportunity and then to jump on that bandwagon and run that way without doing your homework about what in fact the other things are that are going on that could make that area automatable within a few years for example, or overload it and cause the the wage situation not to increase or the salary situation not to increase the way you want it to computer programming is already an area that's overloaded in certain respects. And and the result is that salary increases are not therefore when people want them sometimes and promotional promotional opportunities are not there and and security. Therefore is somewhat diminished so The Japanese example here is somewhat applicable their workers are on the whole far better educated than ours. They have within their society their economics of their society tremendous business failures, probably more business failures on a comparative basis than the United States and the myth of the permanently employed. Japanese worker is in fact a myth because it only applies to a fraction of the Japanese labor force and this fraction is tied to large and successful businesses not to smaller ones where the situation is very different. So my suggestion is if you want to go into industrial Electronics or into I don't recall what the other one was which one was that sir Communications Communications pick the thing that you feel best doing because you have surveyed all the opportunities in the electronics realm, you know, the directions electronic research and development are going in and you pick the thing that makes you feel personally Good about working there. So that your work is something you enjoy regardless of particularly what it is with in electronics. Let's take our next caller higher on the air. What's your question, (00:23:53) please? Dr. Harkins. I've been doing a unskilled day laborer for about the last six seven months and thanks and I was wondering you know, like I'm getting pretty depressed about doing all this, you know, and I was wondering just when were actually going to stop saying well we should retrain all our workers and things actually start doing or do you know of any programs either either privately funded or publicly funded people can actually get into now in order to train into computers high-tech or electronics and things. (00:24:29) Okay, many many many high schools many many many variables Vocational Technical Institute some colleges offer for credit or not for credit daytime and nighttime courses that are at least introductory. With respect to various areas of high technology what I would suggest that you do and others who are in the situation that you're in is immediately find the nearest good Public Library, you can and start going through the trade magazines the electronics and the genetic engineering and the other magazines that deal with these areas that your library has on the shelf and see what kinds of things those magazines are concerned about look particularly at the editorials and the advertisements and see in the advertisements what kinds of jobs are being offered what kinds of requirements are suggested looking at a large City Newspapers such as the New York Times of the Los Angeles Times in the classified section will also give you an idea of what kinds of things are expected and what the new breakthrough are or the new heavily funded areas of research and development and and Manufacturing and so on are so in other words. I'm suggesting that you become a bit of an intellectual in your approach to the question. How can I remove myself from part-time? Labor and get into something else and this is going to be a constant matter things are going to be keep just changing and changing and changing and getting into one area is not going to guarantee you'll be there forever. You always have to stay on top of things. Don't you? I think so. Yeah. It's about half past the hour. Dr. Arthur Hawkins is with us talking about the high technology society and we're taking your calls at 2276 thousand for Minneapolis. St. Paul area listeners, in other parts of the state call toll-free at 1-866-553-2368. And those of you listening outside the state of Minnesota can call us directly in the Twin Cities. The area code is 612. If you get a busy signal don't get too discouraged keep trying and you may be able to get in. Hi, you're on the air. (00:26:27) Oh, dr. Darkins. I'm one of those many thousands of people caught between the excitement and the confusion of personal computers. Many of my friends are in colleagues are getting them our host household consists of a clergyman the teacher couple of young children. Just wondering if it's if it's a valuable. Decision or worthwhile thing to do to procure a personal computer for just general purposes as opposed to very specific intentional purposes with the idea that it will be if it's obvious used to ourselves and our children in the near future. I will hang up and listen to the answer. Thank you. (00:27:00) Thank you. Well, I think if you're going to spend money on a computer regardless of your income level you better have some sense that that computer is not simply a purchase for fad sake what it's a purchase for some kind of fixed idea of what it will be used for such as word processing or perhaps going on one of the information networks or or for educational purposes or that you're going to buy this thing and you're going to invent uses for it as well as find out what uses are already available now computer pricing, as you know is ranging all over the place from around 70 dollars to as much as you want to pay but for a reasonably affordable amount of money from the standpoint of what what would assume most people can can Image say somewhere between four hundred and two thousand dollars people ought to be able to to purchase these things. Now whether anyone should actually purchase a computer in any given case I think is finally going to depend on on whether or not they see this computer is playing an important part in their lives and certainly with software clubs exchanging software and with the various information Nets that are in existence in the Twin Cities as well as nationally. There's just a heck of a lot to do with these things. We use ours at home for word processing primarily and for going on the source and CompuServe information networks other people use them for very different things. What kinds of developments do you see with home computers or say the next five or ten years are the ones that we have today going to be is outmoded as the Tin Lizzies of the 20s. Well, the funny thing of it is Tin Lizzies are not outmoded fact, they're very valuable. You can go out and buy a tin Lizzie for a lot of money today and drive it around in the in the ancient Auto shows and so on Classic Auto shows and have a heck of a good time sure with a contemporary computer say an apple 3 or Xerox a 20 or an IBM PC or whatever. You're going to see an industry. There is an industry growing up to interface these computers with other types of computers and I believe there will be a very strong what we call retrofit industry growing up so that as computers age in terms of the new generations of computers that are coming out will be able to retrofit them to some very considerable extent update their capabilities good example, that would be voice input capability to bypass the keyboard and make the computer more compatible enough. Listener has a question for art Harkins. Hi, you're on the (00:29:45) air. Yes. You may have touched upon my question to some extent while I was waiting but I have some difficulty in reconciling myself to the basic thrust of going towards high technology. My argument is that if we as a country have a problem in World competitive market in terms of vitalizing our Industries and staying competitive in traditional Industries wouldn't we have the same kind of problems even in high technology Industries and to give you an analogy even though we may have moved from an Agricultural Society at least to a traditional technology type of society. We still are a very competitive agricultural country. So isn't it absolutely necessary to have any kind of industry that we have y whether it is traditional or high technology to be competitive in the World Market isn't that the real issue? (00:30:39) It is a real issue in my judgment, of course agriculture is a high Technology area we are the best agricultural. Well, according to some measures we are the highest most productive people in the world agriculturally and what have we done to make that possible. Well, we've essentially automated much of Agriculture or we've used various techniques of Technology technological and social techniques to make agriculture more efficient in 200 years we've gone from maybe eighty to ninety percent of the population engaged in agricultural work to about two and a half percent and it may be possible for us to automate our factories in the same way and go from the current roughly 30% of our people in the workforce who are producing hard Goods down to one or two percent and I think the office is another place where we need to automate considerably going from the very high percentages of people who are doing repetitive work in those offices and inefficiently doing it for the most part down to as low a percentage as we can go. Internationally much of our difficulty is coming from States Nation States and companies within them that have managed to to move into Traditional High labor industrial society areas and to semi automate and otherwise make more efficient these these the labor that goes into these areas to cut their costs and to begin to Target World Markets and to be successful in getting those World Markets. I would I would like to see the United States become a country interested in selling its products worldwide including its automobiles, but I don't think you're going to have USB people selling automobiles worldwide that are not made with robots, but it but it but are instead made with human hands. We can't afford that and they won't be able to afford to buy them. More listeners are waiting with questions. Hi, you're on the air. (00:32:36) Yes, sir. I'm calling from Osage Minnesota. And I often hear that high technology essentially means and to a great extent that we're pushing around a lot of information and I'm curious as to whether mr. Harkness has really could tell us what that information is and what kind of real value it is to a business or to the Society. And also I'd like to ask since in my opinion many of our Commodities and our basic resources for have been for probably the last 30 years constantly degraded at the price at the market price. This means agricultural Commodities Commodities pulp wood Lumber minerals and parsley. This is degraded by the printing of large amounts of money by our When our dollar eventually collapses in the next could be next week or next few years is that is high technology actually got a strong contribution to make when we have to start over again, is it really got anything of real sound value? I know some of it will be a value but is it going to be the big thing that everybody seems to be counting (00:33:57) on? Okay, I think that's an excellent question. I think that high technology is a relative matter if if you look at an automobile manufactured by any of our companies in the 1950s and compare them with most of the automobile manufacturer of automobiles manufactured in this country today, you're going to see that there's better workmanship in general that there are certain things that indicate an attention toward greater safety of the driver and passengers and that there's been weight reduction in fuel efficiency increments and so on so you'd say relatively that there's a higher technology in the automobile. But there's a you see there's a sort of a problem here. You can have this high technology, but if you don't have markets you're in trouble. So I'm suggesting that you know that if Commodities aren't gives their up and down and then more or less at the mercy of middlemen and so on and Russian grain deals there you have to ask the question whether the other structures that are that that farmers depend upon or that lumbermen depend upon are properly designed. Let me give you a quick case housing many many Americans need affordable housing. Now, the lumber industry has been suffering because of the quote General economic situation, but also we've never made as many houses as we could because we've never had the Technologies for housing construction the union compliance the bankers compliance or the lenders compliance and the zoning and other compliances regulation compliance has to make new forms of housing technology feasible and get them online so that people with a affordable interest rate could have Listen housing not in other words. You got us very strange thing the Commodities people suffer because there is not sufficient high technology and other areas. I'm speaking now of social technology as well as others to allow high levels of sale of their products and reasonable profits. Well as Paradox is all over I guess and are 21 minutes before the hour Arthur Hawkins is with us and we have another listener with a question. Go ahead please (00:36:00) if dr. hargens would care to discuss how high-tech might affect any cap children such as ways that they might overcome their handicaps some education Delivery Systems of education and so on. (00:36:13) Well, I just finished about six months ago writing Co writing a chapter on that topic and boy, I suppose many people who are listening saw the CBS program 60 minutes program several weeks ago about a computer an Apple computer that was used to bypass signals from one part of a woman's spinal column. Rather to another so that this woman could with the aid of the computer takes some halting steps for the first time since a trauma had severed her spinal cord that is a bit of a metaphor for or an icon. I guess for many alternative Futures. We're in high-tech can help handicapped people in many ways. We're all handicapped to some extent and their envisioned in hearing in mobility in dozens of communication always getting people in touch with other people high-tech offers, the the impaired person many many opportunities. Some of them are pretty far out. For example artificial site people are working on artificial side at the University of Utah and other places and to an extent it's been developed. It's very crude and it involves putting electrodes in the back of the skull, but it works one other equally far out thing or maybe more so is to invent more Wheelchairs that respond to voice command that are sensitive to their environments in the way new robots are and that can move around in the rain and so on with protection of the occupant of the chair climb stairs and and make that person Mobile in that in the truest sense of the word and I'd like to see much much more research. If we all continue to live longer the chances are greater and greater that we're going to have an accident that will incapacitate Us in some way and I will I hope that those systems are waiting for me in case I ever have such an accident or listeners with questions your next go ahead please (00:38:12) I'm from Minneapolis and you alluded to the end of World War II the societies who had there. Factories obliterated we helped to rebuild and now they are the competition Marshall Plan in Europe. And what happened to Japan then we let ours age and can't compete on the international steel market with the more efficient production of Steel in these other countries. Well, I compared when I thought of production costs and wages and unions it also applies to NPR because when's the last time you ever saw an opera recording made in United States? Because the cost of Union musicians for the forces required push the whole industry overseas and isn't that some kind of a lesson? (00:39:15) Well, I think it is a lesson that you know that there is a rather precipitous decline in Union membership in the United States. It's down to about one in five workers. Now as I understand it. I'm not against unions. I'm not I'm not for unions either I think on them for a dime for is the same thing you are and that is a viable economy that can compete worldwide in the Arts as it were and and in automobiles and steel and high tech in general the it seems to me that the US after World War II got a little fat and lazy and we had our own domestic Market to fill up with automobiles television sets washing machines and so on and we did that and in that process, I think we just fail to recognize that other countries might recover rather quickly and might be able to compete with us or that they might be in a position to buy our products. If our products were of high enough quality and priced appropriately. I hope we have that message now because every time you walk down a Target There's something in the inner city and you watch people who are having economic difficulties buying foreign-made products. You have to ask yourself if we couldn't have made those products here and kept our tax money in this country. As long as you raise the point. What do you see as the future of the labor movement in this country? Well, I think we're headed into a new period of entrepreneurial fervor in the United States many many many new jobs are being created by small brand new companies. In fact in 1982. That was the major source of new opportunity in this country. The major companies the IBM's honeywell's and so on are holding their own and growing economically the 3M s for example because they are automating or they are making more efficient their existing situations. They can use the same number of workers roughly speaking to do more and more in productivity terms. The small companies are the source of opportunity for most of us. Today and the small company couldn't be an individual home. The members the family members of a home can be a profit-making company. They're largely non-union, aren't they? Well, there are there all non-union in a sense. I think we're moving toward a concept of contract between the individual and some source of of contractual understanding as in my company for example subcontracting to another company to get some work done or my wife who has their own company writing a letter of agreement or contract with another company to get something done as opposed to being mirror employees of a single company. We increasingly move toward being independent self employed people who write agreements to do things with other people 15 minutes before one o'clock Arthur Hawkins is with us and we're answering your questions. Hi, you're (00:42:04) next. He said earlier in the program if I understood right to deal with the problem of all the laborers who would be displaced by this high technology you suggest carrying out socialist purposes from a capitalist base. I think you said now I wonder how do you propose to finance socialist purposes these socialist purposes without a great extension of our present system of government taxation of capitalist interests and creating more government social programs, which is again only socialism pure and simple as a not another words, How do you differentiate your idea from socialism, which you say we seem to say we should avoid? (00:43:04) Okay, I am definitely convinced that you cannot have a good healthy Society with situation where people are unemployed and out of luck and not being retrained and receiving an adequate medical attention and poor education in the rest of it. I just don't think you can have it a decent Society under those terms. However, how you go about addressing those those problems people have is another question. I would like to see the Control Data concept of serving society's needs in a profit-making way. Take hold in this country. I am one of those who would love to see most of what we now call Public Services funded by the tax base shut down over a period of say 8 or 9 years so that the services that are performed out of the Space are performed by the private sector competing internally to provide these services at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer. And of course at the highest possible profit margin to themselves out of this we could have I believe lower taxes to get better Services because in many cases are our more well-to-do populations do not require these services at any where near the high level that other people do so that the tax base serves best those who under those circumstances serves best those who have the least money to begin with many of our services are delivered at such high cost that quite frankly most of us in the private sector can look at those areas and find many many different ways within one hour to deliver those same services at lower cost outside the public context 12 minutes before one. Let's take another listener with a question for art Harkins. Go ahead, please. (00:44:57) Hi, I'd like to say I really enjoying this this afternoon's program. I've been waiting for a while. I was hoping you'd have some few more future son, and I've got so many questions. So I'm going to try to boil it down to one that kind of follows on the heels of the Union discussion. One of the things that I've noticed over the last couple of years is I I used to do quite a bit of work in politics and everything seemed to with to boil it down seem to boil down to a left right way of thinking it's always the liberal conservative kind of thing and yet I find since I've been working in other other areas work. So few people actually think in terms of that as a socialist versus capitalist situation. What I'm wondering about is are there any kind of studies any kind of indications that show that people are finally giving up that left right way of thinking in Takes and following more what the general public is thinking in terms of pragmatic or for lack of better term pragmatic practical everyday thinking as far as that been going to be reflected in elections. (00:46:10) Well, I hope it's reflected in elections. I'm not going to tell you who my own presidential choice would be for the next time around but that particular person has the reputation for being a radical Centrist. In other words someone who is a pragmatic person who will do whatever needs to be done to quote. Somebody else the the this kind of Praxis or pragmatism is growing in this country as our fear of Communism declines in our openness about discussing our economics to circumstances and social circumstances increases and as the competition from abroad increases the old Left Right syndrome is being replaced by a form of kennedy-esque pragmatism in my own judgment that is mixing up. And drawing blurring blurring the patterns that used to separate political parties and even divisions within political parties more listeners with questions. Hi, you're next. (00:47:09) Oh, dr. Hawkins. My name is Tom Williams. I'm a senior senior at the University of Minnesota. And I wonder if you could give a brief summary of what you see as the future linguistic applications of computers and the communication industry in particular in the cross-cultural communication via the universal language of the verbal sort such as Musical and mathematical notation R of the nonverbal sort. (00:47:30) Well, there are a whole bunch of companies doing work in what we call Expert systems and artificial intelligence areas. One of the things that's coming out of this and Hewlett-Packard has such on the market now is voice recognition chips that can be programmed into any particular language that is to say the chips can be designed for recognition of any particular language the the universal nature of mathematics. Is universal because people have accepted it. There are many different possible ways to construe Logics of numbers and so on that are alternative ways to to more conventional ones what you have when you have a world communicating with itself Russian scientists working with American scientists and people from keenya working with people from say Brazil. What you have is is a an opportunity to develop languages of a mathematical or musical or communicational kind of any sort that people can use to the to their Mutual benefit that does not mean that there won't be great variation on these developing but the future of computers as communication enhancing devices is as wide open as the direct connection of two central nervous systems By Radio communication More listeners have questions for art Harkins and we have about eight minutes to go. Hi. You're on the air. (00:48:57) Thank you. I'm from Lima to Minnesota. He in the future for a young person who's going into chemistry or physics or mathematics as a major in college. How do you see them fitting into the predicted expansion of computers and high technology of both today and the future? (00:49:13) Well, you've just named three Fields where we desperately need people and there are others where we language arts. For example, where we need people one of the things I would do if I were in college today graduate school or otherwise in going into the Sciences is look very very carefully outside the coursework literature. I were being given and even to some extent outside the journals in the library that tied to my field and I would be looking at whether whether or not the particular kind of mathematics or physics or chemical engineering or whatever that I were going into is is being subject to a lot of growth and or whether it's being subject to a lot of automation because one of the things we are looking at is a lot of automation of what we currently call science. Making of that science technology. In other words science is supposed to be inquiring into new fields of Discovery technology simply applies for the most part that Discovery and so if I were in college today, I'd be looking very hard at where my field is going and you're not likely to find that out in college that is in the classroom. You're more likely to find it out elsewhere. We'll move on to another listener who has a question for our guest. Go ahead, please (00:50:27) yes, and I just finished reading a book called smells Beautiful by Schumacher. I'm sure that he is aware of that Brooke and I was wondering how he would react to several points. I found interesting in that book. One of them was that the high technology was written a few years back, but I think it's still relevant. The high technology is not really functioning well in this country and he point specifically to agriculture in the soil being ruined and all sorts of bad repercussions from our practices in this country and also to the major problem of dwindling resources for energy and other resources and he talks about appropriate and small-scale technology and I was wondering what dr. Hargens thought of this for a possible future (00:51:11) Direction. Okay, one of the things we find out as we develop new technologies and put them online is that we quickly find fault with them. You remember back in the 60s and 70s. When anti-nuclear power and anti bomb groups were were out in the field. So to speak criticizing the way we were doing things now, they're back out in the field again, and we have the freeze movement and dr. Caldecott and so on telling us that we need to do things differently when you find fault with a technology you are doing your job as a human being who has served or not served by that technology you're saying I don't like this. I want it changed and I'm going to help people make that change and that's precisely what Schumacher was trying to say. We need to have technologies that are human scaled or human rated and you don't get these by sitting back and being content with leaky Atomic reactors or smoke stacks that are dumping oxides all over the place and so on you do exactly what Schumacher would say, you get out there and change these things and that is high technology. What you're doing is high technology. The technology is built to serve the people not the other way around actually five minutes before one o'clock time for a couple more calls high. You're (00:52:22) next. All right. Listen to this very carefully and enjoying most of it, but I resent the complete and the union edited the unions are being blamed for high wages low work. Nothing has been said about 5,000 lazy Management's for instance. The steel companies have spent virtually no money and remodeling the plants. There's some of the equipment's 50 years old the Japanese have got fresh equipment. So as the Germans peel the po2 stockholders another point we seem to resent a socialism effort applies to the poor but will socialize and replaced a Lockheed aircraft Chrysler Corporation virtual Corporation and don't forget it socialism when it becomes cost overruns and we take the management of the whole for wasting money. Okay? See Woody have to (00:53:22) this. Thank you very much, sir. I don't have an any Union attitude. I have a attitude toward Union which is the same as non-union workers. Do they do the job. Can they get what they want from from their work is the situation productive or not? I am in fact a card holding Teamster. I have a card which I can activate any time. I want I was a Teamster from the age of 16 to about 23 working in ice cream manufacturing and truck driving, but I think that your point about management is so well taken management management managers are workers. They may wear white collars and three-piece suits but their workers and if managers don't update plants in managers don't learn themselves about new technologies and economic trends that could affect profitability in their circumstances. They're not doing their work anymore than then they are not doing their work. If they don't listen to workers on the line who are the real experts in how things are done on the line and make the changes that workers on the line want to see made. This is exactly what the quality Circle concept. All about which we re imported from the Japanese after we gave it to them and it's the worker and the manager who work together as co-workers that make for efficiency in the long run, and I think whether the workers unionized or not is somewhat Irrelevant in this regard. Well, dr. Hawkins. I am afraid. We have run out of time such as always the case here on on Saturdays. Wish we could keep on going, but we must step aside for some other programs that are coming up. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you.