The situation over the next few decades will be much different than the last century. In the last century technology was only taking away manual labor jobs. Humans were able to cope because these jobs were replaced with knowledge based work. People aren't complaining that robots will take our jobs just because they are getting better at taking away manual labor jobs. They are worried that knowledge based work is the next to go.

There will still be a bastion of work in creative jobs (creative thinking, not the arts), but there is a real worry that there aren't enough of these creative jobs to go around. And there are worries that not everyone will be capable of these creative jobs. Office work worked great as a replacement for manual labor because most of the jobs did not creative much more intelligence than the jobs they were replacing. But not every factory worker or garbage man is capable of being a senior mechanical engineer, an actuary, or any number of other careers where critical thinking is very necessary.

If you are the type of person who struggled in algebra class in high school, the new economy will probably be a very scary place.

Most iPhone users having over 25k income does not specify how many are in the 25k-60k range. Your source was using those numbers to show that more iPods than iPhones are owned by families with under 25k income. It wasn't saying that a significant number of iPhone owners are poor.

Also, I would assume more iPhones are owned by lower class families than iPads, since the total cost is amortized within their phone bill.

That is a good point. But generally aren't most R&D costs recouped by early expensive versions of products? Similar to TVs, where early models are very expensive but within 5-10 years they cost 10% of their original price. I am not aware of all the details of ARM development over the past 30 years, but it probably didn't always cater to lower-margin devices. Especially since a significant part of its early development was assisted by Apple and VLSI (neither company is known for catering to the low end market).

Humans are well designed to fully enjoy life without electricity, refrigeration, air conditioning, toilet paper, non-bipedal locomotion, and any number of other modern indulgences. Just saying people can live happy lives without modern technology does not necessarily mean they don't live happier lives with them. While I agree with your basic premise that our lives would be happier if we ate better, I think that is because of other benefits of being healthy (more energy, less chronic health problems, etc). I have lived long periods of my life in both healthy and unhealthy diets, and I never enjoyed the healthier foods more (even when almost exclusively eating healthy foods for periods of a few years).

From what I can tell, because of how our bodies are designed, foods with high levels of fat, sugar, and salt really do taste better and those who give them up really are missing out. Regardless of the benefits they gain from being healthier. Technology that allows us to be perfectly healthy while eating all the junk food we want is obviously the best solution. And I don't just mean eating anything we want without gaining weight, because there are plenty of other health issues with junk food other than weight gain. We aren't there yet, but I am optimistic that we are getting close and may get there in my lifetime.

That's fine; they will make plenty of money from those who are willing. Facebook makes plenty of money without the people who refuse to have a social media fingerprint as well. This will be no different.

I know you are being tongue and cheek, but very recent history is starting to show companies can make plenty of money just catering to the upper middle class. The richest company in the world (Apple) makes products that are only intended for a very small percentage of even a wealthy nation's population (46.3% of households with iPads have income over $100k). While rapid economic growth does need a sizable consumer class, I don't believe it necessarily needs a robust middle class. A much smaller but still sizable upper middle class will probably do just as well.

There has always been a small percentage of aristocrats in society who do not have to work because of their amassed wealth. Looking at how they spent their time is probably a decent indicator of how most of the population will spend their time 50-100 years from now. My guess is most people will put far more effort into their hobbies, and many of those hobbies will turn into part time jobs. All basic and even most non-basic needs will be covered by social welfare programs paid for by publicly owned mostly-automated industries. People will only work because they want to, and the very few undesirable jobs that can't be automated will pay excessively well.

At least that is the best possible outcome. Their are plenty of dystopian possibilities as well.

Well, since you can't read a dictionary, here you go:

Creative (noun)
1) one who is creative; especially : one involved in the creation of advertisements
2) creative activity or the material produced by it especially in advertising

I assume he was going with the first meaning.

I will absolutely turn down a position if they care so little about their employees and their productivity to give them substandard equipment. I am never going to sit around for a spinning disk hard drive to load my applications again, or deal with a computer with under 16 GB of RAM. If a company is going to complain about $1000 in yearly hardware purchases so I can have a new laptop every three years, two decent monitors, and noise cancelling headphones, how are they going to treat me as an employee? When I am approached for a job I take effort to notice the quality of the equipment I see their current employees using. I have never seen an employee with bad equipment treated well by their employer, and rarely see employees with amazing equipment treated poorly.

Perhaps you don't have trouble attracting employees, but if you treat your employees poorly you will have trouble attracting good employees. Most people have never worked at a company where almost all their coworkers are top notch, so they don't even know what they are missing.

And regardless of a company's respect of their employees, it is simply unproductive to give people slow hardware. Shaving $500 per year in hardware costs per employee is less than 1% of even a low paid IT worker. I have seen the result of 4 year old laptops that weren't even top of the line when they were new. It involves a lot of wasted time waiting for apps to load and dealing with constant crashes or reboots.

While I do agree this is the most likely solution, it is not a fact that this will be necessary. Increasing research and education spending would have a positive impact on our economy. A better economy increases tax revenue, which could balance the budget without cutting any programs. The Clinton administration did not balance the budget by being fiscally conservative, they just rode the wave of the technology boom (although it is debatable if the budget was every truly balanced). A new technology wave from the biotech sector, to pick one possible example, could have a similar effect in the near future. But only if we spend the necessary research dollars.

The way things are going now it is becoming more likely that another country will take advantage of the next technology boom, not the US.

How does social welfare spending have anything to do with whether military spending should be cut? My spending on a new tablet, phone, and computer every other year is dwarfed by my mortgage, grocery bill, and car/life/health insurance payments. But if I lost my job, I would skip buying the iPad Air 3 long before I would skip paying my mortgage.

Military spending as a percentage of our total budget is not that important. US military spending as a percentage of worldwide military spending is much more important. I would still feel quite secure if our military budget was twice that of the 2nd highest spender in the world, and that would still cut our military spending by over 40%. It would also allow us to increase NASA funding by 15x its current level, although I wouldn't advocate putting all of the savings there.

Thousands of people die in the US from the flu each year. Tens of thousands during years when H3N2 variants are prevalent. Since only a few Americans have died from Ebola this year, it is quite likely that a thousand or even close to ten thousand times more Americans die from the flu this year than from Ebola.

I think its safe to say the flu will kill more Americans this year than Ebola will this century, or more likely this millennium.

Well color me identifiably disappointed. We had better discussions from Slashdot posts than Gladwell gave in this interview.

I am curious of how these interviews are run. I assumed the questions are compiled and then sent to the interviewee who then has as much time to respond as he needs. That way he can provide a thoughtful and complete response since there would be no further dialogue.

But Gladwell's answers are what you would expect during a back and forth discussion. This is what you would find in an in-person interview where the interviewer asks follow-up questions and starts a meaningful dialogue. But without further questions, each of these responses are hollow and meaningless. I am very disappointed, because while I don't agree with everything Gladwell writes he at least is normally thought provoking.

He doesn't necessarily have to take a managerial role, but he does have to understand he will probably reach a relatively low ceiling of pay / responsibilities if he doesn't. One man can only be so valuable with only his own labor. Taking on managerial roles allows skilled people to become a force multiplier, which increases their value.

But if someone is willing to cap out at around $125k (Chicagoland salary) then they can continue being a purely technical resource until retirement if they are really good and keep learning.