The nature of consumption of digital products favors standardization and builds itself around dominant platforms. For computers to talk effectively to one another, they need to speak the same language and use the same formats. At the early startup stage, there may be dozens or hundreds of fledgling companies vying to establish this new standard, but over time, consumers and investors reward only the largest one with tremendous success, while the rest simply fall away.
The more important reason behind the digital economy‘s failure to create significant jobs is that minimizing the use of human labor tends to be one of its fundamental goals. "As intelligent machines become cheaper and more capable, they will increasingly replace human labor, especially in relatively structured environments such as factories and especially for the most routine and repetitive tasks,"
This is a promising tale, but there is a catch. Undoubtedly the technology industry creates many jobs, but the jobs it provides tend to be rather specific and geared toward educated, upwardly mobile(and overwhelmingly male) individuals.
Digital technology has proven very good at creating two types ofjobs: high-paying, highly specialized jobs at the top (such as software designers and CEOs), and low paying, low-skill jobs at the bottom(such as Foxconn phone assemblers and Amazon Warehouse fulfillers).
The result is an economy of increasing inequality.
Wolf then asked the teachers to list only positive attributes of each model, as they would be making something called a pro-pro chart. "Nothing negative," she said, "only pro here." Teachers called out ideas for each: Online-only schools could connect students to teachers anywhere and anytime. They could be more cost-effective,
and nearly every aspect of the experience was customizable to the individual needs of students. Teachers could even work from home, in their pajamas ... a comment that elicited whoops of approval. In terms of advantages, brick-and-mortar schools were situated in a particular community, and students could form deep social bonds with teachers and peers there, what Federico called the "hidden curriculum" of socialization.
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