Human capital

Recently I came across a very interesting quote by the political philosopher John Gray of the London School of Economics, which summed up perfectly a lot of incoherent ideas I had been having about why the knowledge/media economy is becoming increasingly prevalent in developed Western nations like our own.

Western nations are increasingly de-industrialised due to manufacturing being outsourced to developing countries because of their low labour costs, where for all intents and purposes exploited human beings are treated as if they are machines. Western nations are therefore forced to move more and more of their economy up the ‘value chain’ of production and into the knowledge economy where their highly developed technology/communications networks, education institutions, and R & D investment can still give an economic advantage. Hence:

“…new technologies are steadily stripping away the functions of the labour force that the Industrial Revolution has created…An economy whose core tasks are done by machines will value human labour only in so far as it cannot be replaced…we are approaching a time when…almost all humans work to amuse other humans.” (John Gray, Straw Dogs, p159-160)

For what are the ‘creative’ industries of the media and knowledge economies but the one realm of human experience that cannot yet be replicated by technology?

JS