ProphecyBoy

Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class - Salon.com

I like Jaron Lanier a lot, but this illustration as some sort of evidence of the internet hollowing out the middle class is, forgive me for saying so, idiotic. A child could figure out where those jobs went. 

1) Instagram SHOWS the photos. We have to include all of the people who work on the cloud that supports that. 

2) Kodak made cameras and film. Cameras are still being made - even moreso. At the very least, we should include the current #1 camera maker’s employees. At this point, that’s apple. Fifty thousand employees. Pro rate it to only the apple devices that have cameras, ignoring their mac business. 30,000 employees. 

3) The film business still exists. It was just lost to Fujichrome, who still makes film and has over 30,000 employees. This has nothing to do with the web, but rather something called “Globalization.” 

The internet didn’t kill a single job in photography. There are more cameras now than ever. There are still tens of thousands of people making film. 

Take the market cap of JUST these three companies - facebook, apple, fujifilm, and we’re looking at $500 billion market cap, and nearly 90,000 employees. 

Think that’s unfair? Canon has nearly 200,000 employees. Nikon has 24,000. 10,000 more than Kodak. Shit, ZEISS has 24,000 employees. 

Never mind every single camera in an android phone. 

Those jobs went overseas, and they went to computer companies, Mr. Lanier. They still exist. The internet didn’t kill a single one of them. 

(via rickwebb)

Rafer sez:
Huzzah, plus Kodak’s consumer film executives went out of their way to line their pockets on the way down, at the explicit and afaik knowing expense of the nascent digital businesses. They killed Kodak, probably knew they were doing so, and showed no signs of caring at all.

I was the first internet PM for Kodak Hollywood. My product line was one of their victims.

(via rafer)

Well played, Mr. Webb.

I’m less bullish on Jaron Lanier. After his book “You Are Not A Gadget” everything he says sounds to me like some variation of “YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!”

If you were looking for a takedown of the Obvious Link-Bait Story of the Day, here it is.

With cameras in every device, and photos being shared faster than anything, the internet has saved photography, if anything, and photography != middle class, ever.

There are millions of people making middle class livings off of small app companies that didn’t exist five years ago. That’s a middle class cottage industry for the 21st century, not fucking cameras, forcrissakes. The number of people employed in making smartphone apps and hardware to the number of people involved in camera production don’t compare.

I’m really exhausted of people claiming the End of Times because their skillset is obsolete. Review the past century, if not before, and find your place in it. Learn and evolve. Or not. Your choice.