New oven!

Yesterday, my oven died. It turns out, it was a burnt-out coil, which was replaced today. See, I have an electric oven, and the way it works is by sending electricity through a wire near the bottom of the stove, which produces light and heat. The wire died yesterday, and today I got a new one installed. In a way, my oven is a very specialized kind of light bulb.

Speaking of light bulbs, I recently learned that Edison, when he was trying to make one, spent a month (going almost without sleep) testing different kinds of filaments to see what would make a good light source. It seems a shame that, for the very last month of human history in which there were no electric lights, Edison, the very man who invented them, would be so sleep-deprived.

In other thoughts, I've been struck by a concept: the means of design. Marx was very concerned with the means of production, but during the past twenty years or so, the means of production are not how people get rich. It's designing those means of production that holds the key to serious money. The problem is, though, how do you come up with designs? Is it just an ethereal "aha" moment, that comes from nowhere and strikes without warning or explanation? I don't think that's exactly it. A good example would be a knitting pattern (and by "good", I mean of particular interest to me). Not anyone can just sit down and make a new knitting pattern; not everyone knows how to knit. You have to be trained in the ways of knitting, learning how to knit and purl, what ribbing will do, how to cable, and just all manner of things that let you shape a garment the way you like. All of this information is easily available, but unless you start looking around for it, you might never know it's out there.

So I believe that all this information, taken together, constitutes the means of design for knitted garments. Okay, okay, it's a lot of thought for freakin' knitting, the latest hipster craze. But what about car engines? Computer programs? Pharmaceuticals? These are not things you can just sit down and make; ya gotta have the knowhow. So those who design the means of production for these things get rich; who trains those designers? Teachers, of course. My guess? The teachers who understand how to teach the means of design, who are already in some demand, will become much more so, and the classes they teach will become incredibly expensive. I expect that this will become another way to divide the haves from the have-nots. Those who got rich in the last economy will be able to send their kids to the best engineering schools. Of course, engineering programs typically demand actual intelligence in a way, say, political careers do not. So just being part of the upper class will not get you by in the next round. Wait; Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Barack Obama... Crap! I'm too late! It's already happened! Okay, disregard this entry.