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G THE W4Y YOU WORI<
There, in 1976, President Yalery
Giscard d'Estaing ordered the
1nspector General of Finance to
analyze the impact of the computer
on French society.
The
1
nspector General even then
concluded that changes had already
begun: a decreasc in goods-produc–
ing jobs, an increasc in jobs in the
service sector and many more activ–
it ies in which informat ion is the
raw material. Gradually, industrial
jobs as we have known them wi ll
play a smaller role.
We are hcading i n to a
society based signifi cantly on
-
information.
The Wa/1 Street Jour–
nal
quoted one computer expert as
saying, "Tnformation is becoming
our most valuable commodity."
But a Massachusetts Institute of
Technology computer professor
places firm limits on this propasa!:
"The asser tion that all human
knowledge is encodable in strcams
of zeros and ones-philosophically,
that's very hard to swallow. In
effect, the whole world is made to
seem computable. This gencrates a
kind of tunnel vision, where thc
only problems that seem legitimate
are problems that can be pu t on a
computer."
Absolutely true-the most im–
portant knowledge is not encod–
able-il is revealed spiritual knowl–
edge. T hat kind of knowledge we
give you free ly in
The P lain
Truth.
Never theless, our readers should
know how to cope even with mate–
rial knowledge and the technologi–
cal changes taking place around
them.
-
We must now face the fact that
in the U.S. work force, for exam–
ple, only 13 percent are employed
in manufacturing, while sorne 60
percent either produce or process
information.
J ust 1
O
years ago computers
were limited to big business and
data processing centers. Today
more than half of all Americans
earn their living exchanging var ious
types of info rmation-and the
computer helps imme nsely. One
majar result has been more jobs
available for women- a trend that
will cont inue.
Compu teri zed au tomation is
shi ft ing manufactu ring and indus–
t ry from the United States and
deve loped count r ies to Th ird
Wor ld nations where labor is
cheaper.
"We are in a •megashift' from an
indust r ial to an informat ion-based
society," states J ohn Naisbitt in
M egatrends: Ten New Directions
Transforming Our Lives.
" By the
year 2000 the Th ird World wi ll be
manufactur ing as much as 30 per–
cent of the world's goods."
A g roup of U.S . Congressmen
commissioned a s tud y into the
American work force and discov–
.ered that 20 to 30 million U.S.
workers wi ll be displaced from
their jobs, as manu facturing com–
panies-auto , steel and rubber
industries-are forced to turn to
automation and relinquish ac–
tual production to foreign
competit ion.
"Th e speed and
force of this change
will be awesome," the
report declared, espe–
cially in the psycho–
logical and emotional
shock of those wh o
fear they may not find
employment again .
Thousands of new
t
jobs, however, wi ll be
~
created mostly in in-
~
formation sys t e ms,
13:
says
Fortune
maga-