Letters to the Editor
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There is one thing to look forward to
There is one thing to look forward to in the globalized race to the bottom.
If such knowledge work as typesetting, computer programming, etc. can be offshored so can the kind of pro-free-trade economic policy analysis and editorial writing practiced by the likes of Thomas Freedman, Wall Street Journal editors, Cato Institute staffers, etc.
I wonder if any of them have plans for retraining for a 2nd career.
John Reece
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Duhhhhh
Hey Silverman:
IBM is the company who helped the Nazi's with their computing needs i.e. how to tabulate all the jews in the concentration camps.
Get a clue dude!
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the reason there are toyota factories here - is that we INSISTED on it
we set up quotas for japanese automobiles. why can't we do this with the chinese? (assuming the chinese can do something *better* not merely *cheaper* than we). rob anderson, all of asia has lived in a conformist society for a thousand years. to expect something original from them is unrealistic. europe (particularly england) have for several centuries been the creative font of the world. but with elsevier et al buying up publishing, i don't see how *anything* original has a chance. the only dodge is *making* a market and selling out at a good price (just) before it's copied and stolen.
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From someone in the education and reasearch business
Reed Elsevier is a virus that is swallowing up the whole education system, if not the whole country. First, most all of the journals, except for very few, are owned by Elsevier. That means that they control whose article gets published. This does not sound imposing, but it essentially determines who gets research funding, who gets tenure, and who gets advanced degrees. After Elsevier publishes it's research, it owns all of the copyrights, so to view any of the American funded research involves paying sometimes huge fees to Elsevier.
Elsevier then owns all of the associated graphs, pictures and tables ( data ) in order to produce text books. That is how the monopoly on university text books is being (was) built.
The answer is incredibly simple. The U.S. government should stipulate that they own any content produced with their funds. If Elsevier requires a copyright in order to publish, researchers should take their material elsewhere, or self publish.
Additionaly, Universities should not grant credit toward tenure for papers that are not open copyright, or copyrighted by the associated university.
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Worked for McGraw-Hill, Macmillan, PsychCorp, Harcourt and Reed
...and my career spanned 14 years. After about five years of preparation.
How long a run did the steel workers have...130 years?
It is friggin' ridiculous to have a career become obsolete in less than half a generation.
Exhibit A is the CIA Factbook.
The US economy is twice the size of Europe, in terms of dollars per citizen available for trade.
Seven times larger than either China or India.
It is the US Middle Class who purchases the goods and services that come out of these other, smaller, cheaper, developing economies. Where will the money come from when all/enough of the middle class jobs are gone from the US?
Are these companies going to sell goat-herders iPods, for crying out loud? I don't think so.
What happens, unmolested by revolution, is that each of these developing economies has to develop its own middle class to sell to. Which requires energy. In this case, oil.
But all the cheap oil is gone. Poof. Sowwie, Chawwie.
All dressed up and no one to sell to. Another Great Depression scenario. Only this time it will be GLOBAL -- there won't be any downtrodden Germany to sell to and make money off of. Global economic meltdown with no middle class left, anywhere, to sell goods or services to.
This isn't about a globalized economy, kids, this is about global genocide through whatever means necessary.
If the Yellowstone Caldera weren't 40,000 years overdue for an eruption, there wouldn't be much to argue about...but if we get a perfect storm of ELE's we'll lose the entire species.
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An old cartoon
Years ago I saw a cartoon that had two auto executives talking as they watched robots welding cars. One said, "Now, if we can just figure out a way for the robots to buy the cars."
I must confess not reading all responses. I will check back later tonight when I have more time. Very interesting story and very interesting comments.
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wingspan_too, you can't imagine how GRATIFYING it is to have someone who actually KNOWS SOMETHING back me up
like all our species, i too was an innocent babe once. but after 61 years has seen enough to be cynical. (mark twain - "The only sadder sight than a young pessimist is an old optimist."). i'm not saying the populace is in *active* collusion with the corporations, but they allow the government to do so. and since elsevier et al have the moola to pay the bills the gov't allows them to call the tune. BUT FOLKS, if THEY aren't going to control, WE have to pay taxes!
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Nothing to do with PC
Rob,
The folks selling the current outsourcing snake oil don't care about PC of any sort. They care about becoming rich and getting richer. When some people grumbled after the new oligarchs outsourced "Made In America", they were reassured by the usual suspects (Freidman and Co) that world was changing and in order to become successful and not be a left behind Luddite, you needed to become a "knowledge worker" all would be well. Well, we see how that's going. It was just the next phase of the marketing plan.
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If I were a typesetting service ....
I would walk into a University intellectual property office ( in charge of maintaining patents and copyrights) and offer typesetting services directly to the university. All most researchers really want is to see their name and paper in print in a format that "looks just like Elsevier". The peer review process is of course necessary, but the journals themselved dont do it, they send articles out to cooperating researchers to be evaluated. If researchers were to cut Elsevier out of the loop, it would probably improve the process, not bias or jeapardize it. I think it would in fact be best if all of the reviewers of each research paper were known so readers could judge for themsleves whether there might be a conflict of interest involved. Most research is actually aimed toward a small opinionated and competitive crowd and in fact there is always some degree of professional bias, for or against a particular finding.