Why the future isn't all that bleak

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

[QUOTE=marvenger;163724]

Ah - I did not know that. QUOTE]

I was struggling to understand why you thought the linear mode was easier, which I haven't even looked at yet but will at stage. Well hope that helps.

Well, I switched to Hybrid Mode for a moment, to see how that plays out. I can see the orange marks in the thread hierarchy display, for the four most recent posts to this thread that I hadn't read yet, as you described.

In Linear Mode, those four new posts would all be on my screen, ready to read without a single additional mouse click.

In Hybrid Mode, I have to (1) go up to the thread hierarchy display, (2) slide the scroll bar down to the next orange mark, (3) click on that one ... for each of the four messages that were posted on this thread since I came here last night.

Score - 0 mouse actions for Linear, 12 mouse actions for Hybrid.

That's why I work in Linear Mode :cool:.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

We already have a fully automated fast food vending machine in NYC - http://www.bamnfood.com/how_it_works.html

Have never eaten there, but do see people eating there.

I can remember going to an automat in Boston a half century ago. If you're going to serve quickly perishable "food", such as shakes and fries, and if you're doing less than hundreds of sales per hour, average over the 24 hours a robot can work, then I'd suspect you'll find "burger flipping humans" the most economical way to go these days.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

Economist Paul Seabright shows how an awareness of the fragility of our social institutions and their roots in our evolutionary past can help us deal with the challenges of today's globally networked world.

Yes, we're social primates. But we also conceptualize and form civilizations of substantial complexity. We're more than just social primates.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

The robots are cute, but this is just a gimmick to sell baby products at high markups through "normal" distribution channels.

Nobody buys diapers from diapers.com because they have kiva robots. That's like saying Staples is in business because they use Kiva robots (which they do). Or CVS is in business because they have Kiva robots (which they do).

Robots are the future. Automation is the future.

The overhead of people beyond their straight salary is significant .. due to shrinkage, workplace accidents, health care costs, and more is incredible.

Self Checkout lanes, E-Tickets at the airport, online MLS .. increased AI. Everything is pointing to one thing and one thing only .. more is accomplished by fewer people. This started with the Cotton Ginny and will end with robots doing all menial work.

This brings costs and inflationary pressures down.

The only part of the puzzle of real concern is energy. It's a bottleneck that must be solved.

That and bio terror and nuclear proliferation.

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

I can remember going to an automat in Boston a half century ago. If you're going to serve quickly perishable "food", such as shakes and fries, and if you're doing less than hundreds of sales per hour, average over the 24 hours a robot can work, then I'd suspect you'll find "burger flipping humans" the most economical way to go these days.

I also saw the automat. It was a "fake" vending machine. People prepared the food behind a wall and manually loaded the machines. I don't think anyone thought it was an automated restaurant. It was the novelty and the sense that you where looking at what the world might look like in the future that brought people in.

[ggirod]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

Robots are the future. Automation is the future.

Yes they are, and yes it is. I worked in robotics and automation a good many years and enjoyed the work thoroughly. The problem is that currently robots are so limited and costly that their applications are only in those tasks where special situations (environmental, hazard, precision and quality, uptime) justify their greater cost over people. Otherwise, if you want to cut overhead and costs for people, ship the jobs offshore. You get all the benefits of getting rid of expensive domestic employees without requiring any of the precious investment in robotics.

Ultimately they will be more commonplace but that will require a major re-ordering of financial priorities. Right now there is no need whatsoever to invest in real physical assets when playing games with derivatives earns huge multiples more profit with no real cost whatsoever. Further, robots require highly trained personnel to build, operate, and maintain them. The US neglect of and refusal to fund education means that there will be no pipeline of people to do such work, at least here. With the departure of the boomers, most US technical experience will be gone, having been replaced by college grads trained in business because finance was where it was at and ... to quote a short lived Barbie doll, "Math is hard, let's go shopping"

Yes, robots will eventually replace most manual labor. When they do, they will bring about all the social complications everybody discussed, but it is not coming anytime soon. I compare the current prediction of extensive robotics with the old prediction of personal jet packs as the tantalizing idea of the future ... nobody thought of computers back then but jet packs ... those are cool!!!!

Instead, the proliferation of an endless variety of short lived mass produced products to feed an artificially segmented and personalized market will be replaced with more efficient, less resource intensive, higher quality products as shortages of materials make waste unprofitable. Appliances will return to those days of yesteryear when they were kept forever, instead of being fashion statements for the thoroughly stylish kitchen. Those products might be made with robots, but more likely with traditional methods and automation. Energy limitations will upset the works for a good while until wind, solar, nuclear, and other alternatives get established. The focus of investment for energy infrastructure, which will be done almost too late in the game, will divert money from high tech to infrastructure tech until the pain is relieved. If a shortage of fossil fuels causes the projected pull-back of globalization then maybe the US may experience a rebirth of manufacturing. THEN, maybe robots will proliferate, only if somebody figures out what to do with all the idle workers who need money to buy the products if the robots are ever to be paid off.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

Yes they are, and yes it is. I worked in robotics and automation a good many years and enjoyed the work thoroughly.

If that's the case, then I'm surprised you're not more familiar with Kiva systems. You might want to look them up, they have quite a few interesting blurbs from IEEE, history channel, and many others on You Tube I think.

The idea that innovation needs to come from the US here seems a bit much. I could see Japan leading the way here quite easily.

[c1ue]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

I would just point out that automation does not itself guarantee either greater economic social good.

One example I've referred to before is the 'putting out' system - interestingly enough one factor in the historical Luddite movement.

In the dawn of the machine age - the mechanical loom was seen as a great way to make cloth cheaper than the previous largely artisanal method (artisanal meaning women at home).

But rather than the loom increasing productivity and therefore prosperity of those women, in fact it served to make it worse.

Because the capital cost of a loom was far beyond what any typical artisan could afford. The banksters of that era thus conceived of a system where they would 'loan' out the machine at a high rate of interest and which included a fixed price for what would be paid for the cost of the cloth thus produced.

Effectively the machines were used to disintermediate all of the productivity and economic gains into the hands of Capital.

Robots could be used exactly the same way.

The point again isn't that progress is automatically bad. But equally, it is not automatically good.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the increase in productivity due to automation or whatever cannot be assumed to also benefit human society.

[Rajiv]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

The net of the two presentations -- without empathy, there is no trust, and without trust there is no social interaction, and without social interaction, there is no civilization

[Rajiv]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

[QUOTE=ThePythonicCow;163747]

Score - 0 mouse actions for Linear, 12 mouse actions for Hybrid.

That's why I work in Linear Mode :cool:.

But at the cost of losing context. Context is more than just the precise sentence one is replying to. TPC your logic is flawed IMO

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

your logic is flawed

No. There is more context than only and just what is written literally in the current post.

Usually my memory provides more context, once I have the clue of the sentence or phrase being replied to (just as your memory did now, when reading my reply that quoted only four words of your post.)

And if my memory is inadequate, a search for that phrase earlier in the thread will suffice.

Which reminds me of another aspect of this matter. Often, someone is responding (in their mind) to some particular phrase or few words (as I just did above, with my "no".) Unless I had provided the exact phrase to which I was reacting, you might not have been able to figure out what my "no" meant -- to exactly what part of your reply I was dissenting. Sometimes, without that bit of context, posted replies become fatally ambiguous or quite incomprehensible.

[marvenger]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

without empathy there is no civilisation. In the absense of Milton Friedman I'd like to hear EJ's rebuttal to the previous sentence.

[Jay]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

[QUOTE=Rajiv;163860]

But at the cost of losing context. Context is more than just the precise sentence one is replying to. TPC your logic is flawed IMO

I use hybrid and look for orange. This may be more appropriate for me because I am only able to check the site intermittently due to time constraints, so I would lose valuable context otherwise. If I was able to spend more time here I might take more use of the linear mode as it involves much less clicking. On the very long threads (like anything Finster puts out) I end up clicking and scrolling a ton to see what is new. I guess I could use linear there as the conversation on those threads usually ends up on one tree branch over time.

[Serge_Tomiko]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

If it doesn't destroy us in the transition its awesome. You don't need money. Everything can eventually almost be 100% automated from production to distribution. Demand will drive everything.

You have but to look at the American Idol "poor" who have all their basic needs met. They look and act like monsters.

Man requires productive work in addition to belonging to a community in which mutual survival is the goal. Man freed from want or the necessity of work is at best a prisoner and at worst ceases to be a man entirely.

[Serge_Tomiko]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

In general, materialism has little to do with human society or culture. Slave strata may be easily influenced by propaganda such that they willingly participate in such a system, but that is only due to a failure of leadership, which both capitalism and communism explicitly reject so as to further their own respective fantastic egalitarian states.

False consciousness as well, as a basis of post modernism, tends to result in an incomprehensible worldview that being thoroughly rejected by the world at large now largely exists in the minds of a few university professors. Beliefs and shared understandings are fundamental to human society and our understanding of the world, if at least to have a common language so that we can communicate. Everyone must agree that the color of the sky is blue, even if that isn't the case. Conversely, the primary error of early communism and which continues to be perpetuated by modern liberalism, is the desire to eliminate religion and transcendent ideals of the community. One need look at some of the modern atheists like Dawkins to see how simplistic and pointless such discourse has become.