Here's a striking discussion by Princeton economist Alan Blinder on the nature of offshoring and what it means for the flat world. Blinder is the author of "The Quiet Revolution." He compares programming and other currently "offshorable" jobs to farming in the late 18th century --
"Let me give you a large-scale analogy: suppose you were privileged in the year 1802 to walk into President Jefferson's office and say, "You know what, President Jefferson? Right now, 83 percent of Americans earn their living on farms. In 150 years, that'll be about 3 percent." You know, Jefferson might have asked you, "Well, what will the other 80 percent do?" And of course, you wouldn't have known, and nobody would have known. But they found better things to do than working on farms. And so in the end, I think we're gonna have huge gains from this process. What I'm worried about is getting from here to there..."
Next month's i.c. stars CIO event "Capitalize on Illinois" in Chicago focuses on offshoring and I'll include a summary of that discussion here.
