the robots are coming...
Oct. 7th, 2004 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_e...and they've been coming for a long time. At the beginning of the industrial revolution a guy named Ludd destroyed automated looms in anger at craftsmen being replaced with more efficient machines. A lot of other people did the same, and they came to be called luddites. The verb 'loom' (as in something bad looms on the horizon) probably comes from the fear instilled by these robotic weaving machines.
The fear was, in a way, justified. There was no way that ordinary craftspeople could produce enough fabric for the current population... even if veritable armies of people were pressed into mind-numbing, human-powered mass production instead of the machines. However the machines brought cheap, high quality clothing, bedding, carpeting, and upholstery for all, including the poor. In the process a lot of jobs were lost (though other jobs were created) and society went through a lot of painful change. But that time of social upheaval will be nothing compared to the next revolution that the new robots will bring. Assembly line workers, cleaners, delivery drivers, cooks, sales clerks, shelf restockers... all the menial jobs are candidates for replacement by robots. This time it won't be relatively small numbers of people who'll be out of work, but around half of society. We need to fix this before it happens instead of patching it afterward.
Marshall Brain, noted computer science teacher in the US, has written about the problem and how a universal income could solve it and has written an online science fiction story to visualise that future. He shows how easy it would be to give everybody in the US a basic income, whether or not they work, and in addition to whatever else they earn. This is quite a brilliant solution because it would also produce a boom in the economy as everybody also would have more disposable income. It would also mean people would be able to painlessly retrain for fresh opportunities in the newly blossoming economy. Others would choose to use the money to help pay off home debts, start other businesses, travel, write that book they always wanted to, focus on their music, employ more people in their current business...
I think his solution is a very neat one. Unfortunately I think the very rich, the religious puritans, and the politicians will resist this and prevent it happening. Strangely they will think that giving people 'money for nothing' is an immoral thing, and will prefer a massively damaged society.
But I think money will start to lose its meaning and power soon anyway. I'm just hoping it will have done so before too much damage is done to society.
Is there anything you think can be done to fix the future? ...any solutions I haven't seen?
The fear was, in a way, justified. There was no way that ordinary craftspeople could produce enough fabric for the current population... even if veritable armies of people were pressed into mind-numbing, human-powered mass production instead of the machines. However the machines brought cheap, high quality clothing, bedding, carpeting, and upholstery for all, including the poor. In the process a lot of jobs were lost (though other jobs were created) and society went through a lot of painful change. But that time of social upheaval will be nothing compared to the next revolution that the new robots will bring. Assembly line workers, cleaners, delivery drivers, cooks, sales clerks, shelf restockers... all the menial jobs are candidates for replacement by robots. This time it won't be relatively small numbers of people who'll be out of work, but around half of society. We need to fix this before it happens instead of patching it afterward.
Marshall Brain, noted computer science teacher in the US, has written about the problem and how a universal income could solve it and has written an online science fiction story to visualise that future. He shows how easy it would be to give everybody in the US a basic income, whether or not they work, and in addition to whatever else they earn. This is quite a brilliant solution because it would also produce a boom in the economy as everybody also would have more disposable income. It would also mean people would be able to painlessly retrain for fresh opportunities in the newly blossoming economy. Others would choose to use the money to help pay off home debts, start other businesses, travel, write that book they always wanted to, focus on their music, employ more people in their current business...
I think his solution is a very neat one. Unfortunately I think the very rich, the religious puritans, and the politicians will resist this and prevent it happening. Strangely they will think that giving people 'money for nothing' is an immoral thing, and will prefer a massively damaged society.
But I think money will start to lose its meaning and power soon anyway. I'm just hoping it will have done so before too much damage is done to society.
Is there anything you think can be done to fix the future? ...any solutions I haven't seen?