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WillClimber
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PostTue Jun 14, 2016 7:05 pm 
Just something interesting to reflect on. Thanks to the Internet, we can do many things with just a click of a button. For example, shuttle services. Requesting shuttle services online in case you have no way to go to an airport or just to move around a city you don't live at. And what kind of vehicles do shuttle companies normally use? SUV's, limos, Sedans, Vans, etc. And for a good reason, of course, seeing that these vehicles are perfect for transporting various people at once to airports and at any place they request. Very convenient. For example, if you have to travel to, say, Los Angeles, but don't know how to move around there, you can just as easily request a shuttle to LAX online and, no matter how far you are from the airport, you'll get there easily instead of having to wait and take a taxi. And it's not just shuttles either, of course. Booking airplane tickets, communicating with people in any part of the world in the comfort of your home, creating businesses online, being able to work at home only needing a laptop, USBs, being able to make a living on YouTube, Wifi, heck, even bringing down dictatorships and many more huge changes that the Internet has created. It really is amazing, things are easier to do now than in previous generations. But one wonders, where will the world go from here? A lot of things are precisely becoming automated. How far will this automation phase go? Will vehicles become completely automated as well, no longer needing drivers and putting them out of a job? Will automation completely take over companies, no longer needing humans to work there? If that happens, what will humans do then? Who knows, but we should pay close attention to the changes that are coming every time. Faster changes are occurring every time in our society thanks to the Internet. What do you guys think, in general, about all of this? Do you really think that machines and computers might eventually take over most jobs that people do?

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contour5
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contour5
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PostTue Jun 14, 2016 7:23 pm 
Quote:
Do you really think that machines and computers might eventually take over most jobs that people do?
They will become us as we become them. The singularity approacheth, on a time curve most likely exponential. Human brains in giant vats of plasma will rule over the burning earth. Wired into a grid with trillions of digital processors, the hive brain will oversee a robotic empire of heat-resistant extraction machinery to plunder the very last of the planet's resources, right down to, and including the molten core.

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wildernessed
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PostTue Jun 14, 2016 8:39 pm 
The Second Machine Age A good book on the subject.

Living in the Anthropocene
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Sore Feet
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PostTue Jun 14, 2016 10:10 pm 
Automation will completely change society as we know it, and it will do it within our (well, my - Gen X / Millennials) lifetime. It will streamline an unimaginable number of things, making goods cheaper to produce, potentially dragging America back into competitiveness in the global manufacturing market. But it will also result in lots and lots and lots of entry level jobs becoming unnecessary. Jobs which young people rely on to get their foot in the door in any given industry. Food services, warehouse workers, manufacturing, commercial driving jobs...all automated. Plus on top of that, no more need for HR, no more interaction with staffing agencies, no more payroll to process, no more health care to pay for. Companies that CAN automate their functions will do so, because it will save them an incredible amount of money. We're talking about millions and millions of jobs here. And unless we start having very real, very serious discussions about how to adapt to that scenario - which is essentially going to result in a huge amount of money being rerouted from workers pockets into the coffers of the companies who no longer need these employees - it will absolutely decimate the lower and middle class. The problem is, without that lower and middle class spending money to buy the goods that are being automated, there's no need for the goods to be automated, because there's no demand. So how do you keep enough money in the pockets of the population that spends it, while ensuring that the companies instituting these changes are doing so with a positive result to their bottom line? I'd hate to be an economist trying to model future right now.

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Randito
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PostWed Jun 15, 2016 4:03 am 
Sore Feet wrote:
Automation will completely change society as we know it, and it will do it within our (well, my - Gen X / Millennials) lifetime.
Aparently you haven't been paying attention -- because this has already been happening for the last couple decades. Three examples that have already happened: 1) Large scale use of robotic equipment in factories -- welding robots, etc. 2) Programmed trading in financial markets. 3) High degrees of automation used within the software development industry. So the fact that a more visible everyday activities are going to be automated is more the icing than the cake.

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coldrain108
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PostWed Jun 15, 2016 12:29 pm 
Sore Feet wrote:
it will absolutely decimate the lower and middle class.
The question is: What happens when the man no longer needs your "work"? The end of the idiotic notion (lie) of the puritan work ethic; you only get fed, clothed, taught and healed if you work for the man. Anyone else gets to rot in the streets as an example of what happens when you don't keep in step. I ain't giving that lazy good for nothing car any gas or tires until it drives me to work! Freeloading scum that it is. The lie of US Capitalism dies...finally...considering its history; when unregulated (pre-socialism) points straight to 1929...and prior to that it was based on stealing of the fruit of another man's labor. I guess that is why the thieves are so upset that the victims are now stealing back the fruit of their labor. Karma. Time for everyone to make a living instead of trying so hard to make a killing. There is no reward big enough to get me to work that hard for someone else's killing...especially the mythological BS rewards. IOW the opiate of the masses. I'm no communist, I'm a non-greedist. I've got enough, I don't care what you have.

Since I have no expectations of forgiveness, I don't do it in the first place. That loop hole needs to be closed to everyone.
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wildernessed
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PostThu Jun 23, 2016 3:40 pm 
Apple just laid off 60,000 foreign poverty level wage employees and replaced them with automation / robotics. Those use to be U.S. jobs. Increasing efficiencies for business with less human labor variables.

Living in the Anthropocene
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Voxxjin
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PostThu Jun 23, 2016 3:58 pm 
I want a robot that works for me so that I can still get paid for my job all the while I go hiking and camping.

Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war
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Blue Dome
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PostTue Jun 28, 2016 10:27 pm 
RandyHiker wrote:
... this [automation] has already been happening for the last couple decades.
A bit longer than that -- printing press, to modern day and the salad shooter. We're at the threshold where automation may shift the focus of our society from work to something new.
Quote:
A World Without Work For centuries, experts have predicted that machines would make workers obsolete. That moment may finally be arriving. Could that be a good thing? July/August 2015 The paradox of work is that many people hate their jobs, but they are considerably more miserable doing nothing... The most-common occupations in the United States are retail salesperson, cashier, food and beverage server, and office clerk. Together, these four jobs employ 15.4 million people—nearly 10 percent of the labor force, or more workers than there are in Texas and Massachusetts combined. Each is highly susceptible to automation, according to the Oxford study. Technology creates some jobs too, but the creative half of creative destruction is easily overstated. Nine out of 10 workers today are in occupations that existed 100 years ago, and just 5 percent of the jobs generated between 1993 and 2013 came from “high tech” sectors like computing, software, and telecommunications. Our newest industries tend to be the most labor-efficient: they just don’t require many people. It is for precisely this reason that the economic historian Robert Skidelsky, comparing the exponential growth in computing power with the less-than-exponential growth in job complexity, has said, “Sooner or later, we will run out of jobs.” Is that certain—or certainly imminent? No. The signs so far are murky and suggestive. The most fundamental and wrenching job restructurings and contractions tend to happen during recessions: we’ll know more after the next couple of downturns. But the possibility seems significant enough—and the consequences disruptive enough—that we owe it to ourselves to start thinking about what society could look like without universal work, in an effort to begin nudging it toward the better outcomes and away from the worse ones...
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-without-work/395294/

“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.” — Harry S. Truman
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Snowbrushy
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PostWed Jun 29, 2016 7:46 am 
I have heard that 25% of American men are employed by driving vehicles for companies. When driving becomes automated there will suddenly (soon) be millions of unemployed workers in society. We will need something like the old CCC to keep people fed and housed.

Oh Pilot of the storm who leaves no trace Like thoughts inside a dream Heed the path that led me to that place Yellow desert stream.
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NacMacFeegle
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PostWed Jun 29, 2016 8:59 am 
The fear of humans losing jobs to machines has existed ever since the industrial revolution. What tends to happen is that as jobs are automated new jobs are created. That said, I can definitely imagine a point where machines become capable of replacing us for every task, including the manufacturing of machines. The great unknown is how human society will evolve as technology advances. It is not unreasonable to think that we will reach the singularity withing the next several decades, and with it will come such a leap in science and technology to which every other period of discovery in human history will pail in comparison to the seconds in which we will unearth a myriad of the most unimaginable secrets of the universe. Travel to the stars may very well become routine, energy and other resources will be practically unlimited. Greed will lose its luster, and our traditional economies will become irrelevant. Without limits on living space or resources we will achieve a utopian society akin to that seen in Star Trek; no money, a united single government, and an end to crime and war. Work will be done not for monetary gain, but for the edification of both ourselves and our society. Even if a job might be done and done better by a machine people may do it because they enjoy it. It's more fun to explore space in person than to have a computer do it, and there is joy to be found by working a farm by hand. Am I an overly optimistic dreamer? Almost certainly, but surely its better to hope for the future than to fear it.

Read my hiking related stories and more at http://illuminationsfromtheattic.blogspot.com/
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Stefan
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PostWed Jun 29, 2016 9:00 am 
You will always need humans to do the work of drinking beer! Always!

Art is an adventure.
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wildernessed
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PostWed Jun 29, 2016 9:27 am 
Stefan wrote:
You will always need humans to do the work of drinking beer! Always!
True !

Living in the Anthropocene
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DigitalJanitor
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PostWed Jun 29, 2016 10:21 am 
Stefan wrote:
You will always need humans to do the work of drinking beer! Always!
coldrain108 wrote:
Time for everyone to make a living instead of trying so hard to make a killing..... I'm no communist, I'm a non-greedist. I've got enough, I don't care what you have.
ditto.gif ditto.gif ditto.gif coldrain108 for prez. Although he definitionally doesn't want the job, lol.

~Mom jeans on wheels
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mmmmmm
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PostWed Jun 29, 2016 2:01 pm 
coldrain108 wrote:
Sore Feet wrote:
it will absolutely decimate the lower and middle class.
The question is: What happens when the man no longer needs your "work"? The end of the idiotic notion (lie) of the puritan work ethic; you only get fed, clothed, taught and healed if you work for the man. Anyone else gets to rot in the streets as an example of what happens when you don't keep in step. I ain't giving that lazy good for nothing car any gas or tires until it drives me to work! Freeloading scum that it is. The lie of US Capitalism dies...finally...considering its history; when unregulated (pre-socialism) points straight to 1929...and prior to that it was based on stealing of the fruit of another man's labor. I guess that is why the thieves are so upset that the victims are now stealing back the fruit of their labor. Karma. Time for everyone to make a living instead of trying so hard to make a killing. There is no reward big enough to get me to work that hard for someone else's killing...especially the mythological BS rewards. IOW the opiate of the masses. I'm no communist, I'm a non-greedist. I've got enough, I don't care what you have.
This is good stuff right here. up.gif

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