Free Information and the Impact on Employment

What will be the impact on employment of an internet that is providing "free information"? What is to become of employment by people with special "information" or "knowledge", such as a Teacher,  Doctor or Engineer?

Perhaps history and the impact of tools can suggest an outcome. First, most all people were hunter/gatherers, but their tools continued to improve until a small fraction of the population (farmers ~1-2%) could supply all the food needed by the whole population. Next, in the industrial age, people found employment by use of their physical dexterity, ability to learn, and to a lessor extent, their strength.  In the latter stages, machines started to replace these workers. (The process was delayed by the emergence of the undeveloped countries that could supply labor at lower cost than the machines.)  Many people became employed as "knowledge workers" and used their brains for business practices such as transactions of all types, including sales, record keeping, and planning. Part of this "knowledge base" population practiced law, medicine, engineering, science. etc.  All of these functions are now being automated rapidly, as  machines coupled with computers take over both the production and services job base. What will be the outcome?

The usual measure of an economy is GDP and growth of GDP. In other words, transactions as measured by the cost of goods and services. What if  machines with computers take over the creation of goods and services? The cost of these goods, services and the machines/computers are likely to decrease rapidly.  This is deflation. It means we may live with low cost goods and services and with minimal employment. Really?

Probably not, because we naturally strive for a higher standard of living. That means new goods and services, and NEW types of employment to provide these NEW things. New things require Research and; Development, R&D. So the economy will depend largely on new and improved products and services.

Product life time is reducing exponentially (See Kurzweill).  A prescient public policy would be to recognize this and strongly support an R&D economy. This means providing an environment for innovation, including patent protection, tax incentives, capital, and human skill development for the R&D processes.

Andy Grove (Intel founder) noted a warning to nurture manufacturing: He suggests that R&D is a small part  of supplying new products and services. Manufacturing requires major investment and produces the most jobs The machines to make the machines are often in the "manufacturing sector". My inclination is to include them in R&D. Each new round of manufacturing technology is R&D driven. So production and manufacturing can also be called R&D in this view. For the purpose of increasing employment, perhaps we should add a M, and call it RD&M,  for research, development, and manufacturing. OK, lets add marketing and sales and call it "business".

So to provide new jobs, we need an environment that provides:
  Stable and fair laws for businesses and workers,
  Incentives for the corporations and the workforce.
     (especially Tax policy)
  Incentives by direct government spending (maybe? and prizes?)\
  Regulated competition