Thanks - great set of articles. The Technium article is really interesting because it hones in on some random thoughts I've had about applying similar logic to service/knowledge businesses - avoiding commoditization (is that even a word?) of the services, providing a training ground for future partners and whatnot.

There are some profound impacts on professional practices from technological changes: if trust and deep (but probably narrow) technical knowledge become the highest value added services, how will the future partners in law and accounting firms get trained? The professions have for decades depended on armies of smurfs starting out of college with the firms and then spending years building the technical base of knowledge they'll need to become partners later. During the years they're learning, they're essentially the copiers described in the article: doing repetitive tasks (with occasional projects where they can get deeply absorbed in student mode on increasingly complicated technical issues). As wikis & other information portals allow clients to "insource" those tasks, the climbing-the-pyramid process that the smurfs go through over th years gets turned on its head. Tasks previously done by new associates are now getting done by the client - is the new model for law firms becoming like a guild where only a select few new associates are brought in, they're tutored essentially one-on-one for years and then become a partner when a gray-beard retires?

I'm not crying for the law, accounting and other professional firms, but I think the economics of the practices and life-cycles of the old new associate-senior associate-partner continum are going to change dramatically.