From Paul Mason’s The graduates of 2012 will survive only in the cracks of our economy

Rachel Rosenfelt, the 23-year-old New Yorker who set up an online publication called The New Inquiry, sums it up: “there is surplus population” of talented young people, with precisely skills a 21st-century infocapitialism would need if it took off. But it is stalled.

Just as they created, out of nothing, forms of protest that broke with the past, this generation is creating forms of business and commerce, literature and art, that live in the cracks left by shrinking GDP and collapsing credit.

And they know more: they are not surprised when those in power betray, or when a long-cherished theory is disproved. This is the first generation able to treat knowledge like software: available for upload, use, upgrade and eventual disposal. They are able to start with levels of knowledge previous generations had to learn through a long process of ingestion and skill acquisition. Now all they need is for the economic model to catch up with the human potential technology has created.

The economic model won’t catch up all on its own, of course! Come to the next meeting of SteadyStateManchester, at Madlab, on Thurs 19th July…