Posted on 01/10/2017 7:31:29 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Most of it is a pipe dream, or generations away at best.
But, the nation needs forward thinkers.
Sigh. I cannot figure out if I was born 50 years too soon, or 50 years to late when I read articles like this one. In the end, what will be will be because of God’s will.
Socialism is one solution, just give stuff to everyone whether they work or not, but it fosters terrible qualities in human beings. Even when the economic value of working is meaningless, the moral value of HAVING to work is enormous.
I realized just a couple of years ago that we actually live in that utopia. It’s really a dystopia. Those “living wage” people are called welfare recipients. Their neighborhoods are quite dangerous. They are in no way happy people.
The author is relentlessly positive about all this disruption, as well as the uses to which all this looming technological advance will be put. Human nature being what it is, there will be quite a few nasty surprises. Prepare yourselves, fasten your seatbelt and return your tray tables to the full, upright and locked position. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Me, personally, I’m all for autonomy and some technology holds great promise for increasing personal autonomy. I don’t hate solar power, I see great possibilities, even to the point of not resenting subsidization to the extent that many FReepers do.
Of course I hate the cronyism that’s always present whenever Uncle Sugar is showering anything with money. That’s always been there. It was there with the construction of the interstate highway system, the millionaires that were made with the location of key interchanges in former agricultural areas alone would be astounding, if we were ever allowed to know the extent of the insider corruption.
average life span increases by 3 months per year.
It's on the internet so it must be true... or fake news.
IBM Watson Health anlyzed my shop's data and came up with extremely erroneous conclusion due to errors an 8th grader would not make. It used a numerator as the denominator.
And other reports are that longevity in the US went down, not up, in the past couple years. Maybe fake predictions are the new Kodak camera.
Idea people with the means and determination to create and bring desirable “things” to fruition via CAD will prosper, so long as intellectual property is respected. It’ll even be a boom for unique, beautiful and desirable things. But, they won’t be cheap. Custom manufacturing never is, even with 3D printing.
I see the solar energy, 3D printing, AI, and materials handling technology all creating a situation in which most jobs are unnecessary or voluntary in another 2-3 decades.
Once the technology that produces the petri dish veal ‘marries’ the 3D printing technology, you will essentially have the replicator from Star Trek. So long to starvation, as long as stuff (anything really) carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen is around to feed into the machine.
Want something made? Even if it is a house, download the software, make the parts for it, and ‘rent’ some robot time to put your house together.
That software can’t be free and neither can the design be free, otherwise there is no motivation to create it. Want a cool house? We’re looking at an explosion in design options and variety, an explosion in novel materials and construction methods. Cheap it cannot be, though. Look at the supply chain required to make that cool house possible. They’re not slaves.
Waiting for the invention of an artificial womb. Just think of the social implications of that one.
“How many people will be qualified and be able to find work ... all industry is 3d printing ... 3d printers ... 3d print the money ... 3d printed ... 3d printing ... 3d printed robots ... 3d printed office cubes ... own 3d printers... monthly fees for everything instead?...”
Great series of circularities.
Digital-pioneer optimists are morons. Optimistic, ignorant, overbearing morons: just because a few trends have been hopeful, for a few years, we dare not assume that all conditions will improve, indefinitely, without exception. Trend is not destiny.
3D printing cannot replace more traditional methods of manufacture and construction in all cases. For example: it’s not going to make firearms.
Firearms require tempered steel: springs and hardened parts (hammers, triggers, sears, pins etc) simply cannot be made the way 3D printers build up material in increments, to create an object.
And final assembly cannot be accomplished by tossing all the parts into a box for a robot to slap together. Fitting is always required: some need more, some need less. Handwork and a trained eye, seasoned by good judgment and experience, are essential. Human skill.
About 100 years ago over 80% of the people worked on farms, today less than 4%. Jobs were created in fields and industries that no one imagined.
Today’s “visionaries” more often than not see only the obvious and are as clueless about all the eventualities as their peers 100 years ago.
Whatever it is, God’s in charge; we’re just along for the ride.
” I think virtually all jobs available on the planet will go away.”
Where ? Majority of traditional jobs (where people actually produce something using their hands) have already gone away. Now majority of employees either sell something or teach other people or help them in any other way. Even those that still work in manufacturing, more often plan the production, estimate trends or control/fix the machines than walk around with hammers in their hands. It’s not a look into the future. It has already largely happened.
We should write a book together because that’s exactly right.
People now don’t even bother moving from regions where there are no jobs and no hope of jobs, because just enough money comes in from the state to keep them warmish and well-fed, and they can obtain drugs and other vices in sufficient quantities to make life bearable on a surface level.
But it’s desperately depressing on a moral level, which they do feel, and they want someone to blame. But whom?
What does an AI care for profit?
You are still assuming that there will be people involved in the supply chain or even the code writing on the software.
I’m not. Automation from beginning to end... That is where the author of the article sees things going and I agree with him. Once that genie is let out of the bottle, it will happen no matter how much the large corporations, governments, and change resistant may not want it to.
Some forms of work will survive — entertainment, sports, journalism, story-telling, boutique farming, law enforcement, travel and hospitality, and other things that a robot can’t do (that list will get smaller and smaller as time goes on) or that humans will want to do (write, paint, act, play, travel, work with the soil, craft their own ____). The motive for doing those things will be different though — a “want to” model instead of a “have to” model.
Good grief you’re sounding like a communist utopian, lol. People are going to work their butts off creating beautiful things to give away? No, they’re not. If there is no reward the creation will not be offered to the public, not even at the end of a gun. What the public gets by force is by it’s very nature inferior.
I think one of the implications is something some millennials have already figured out is cottage crafts. Brew pubs, cheese dairies, bakeries whose goods I see hawked at farmer’s markets.
Robot goods will be dirt cheap and hand crafted goods will become the items with cache.
I am minded of various descriptions from various fantasy fiction about the skilled craftsmanship of elven cultures whose long lives led to superior mastery of various arts.
The problem is that large numbers of humans may choose to live like orcs rather than elves when presented with the opportunity.
I do agree with some of what you are saying but also disagree in some ways.
When computers were first invented, everyone was talking about computers translating languages. Turns out it was a tougher nut to crack than they thought. Meanwhile, we used LED’s as that little indicator on our stereos way back in the 70’s. Then they discovered how to alter the chemical compound to make multiple colors and finally, white. And now the “white” can be tuned to any color temperature you want. and they are revolutionizing lighting as much as the invention of the incandescent bulb.
And back in the early 70’s, a remote controlled TV was a costly option. It was getting better and better, but then one day the electronic tuner was invented and with it the infrared LED remote. Now you can get remote controlled LED candles.
Yep, candles are virtually obsolete now.
And I compare the old mechanical tv remote control to the modern 3D printer. Give it a decade or two.
What technology does, often is not improve the current way of doing something, but attack it from a completely different angle, suddenly making the once impossible into a very simple and cheaply done thing.
Think Digital Photography. And we are nowhere near done exploiting that little gem of a technology. Many of us are STILL thinking of it from a “film” paradigm.
I think that in some ways the author is overly optimistic and in others not nearly optimistic enough.
I know he’s just a kid, but the subject is fascinating.
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