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Yes, that's an understandable idea, but constructing and maintaining the technological means to the end requires at least as much work as ever, though it is wor

• sp332 10y ago
  requires at least as much work as ever It really doesn't. Machines have been putting people out of work for ages. We could survive it for a while by growing the economy pretty fast, but any time it slows down, things get bad. Look at truck driving alone - it's the most common job in most states, and when that gets even partially automated, it's not going to create that many new problems to be "solved".
  • randyrand 10y ago
    Yet employment has not changed over the ages.
    • sp332 10y ago
      Labor participation has changed radically. http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_LNS11300000_1948_2016_all_period_M05_data.gif http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_... from http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
    • lawpoop 10y ago
      Oh it has radically. The amount of work done, and the ages of those working, has change significantly since we moved from a pre-industrial agraian society to an informational one. Why, these days, it's not uncommon for someone not to be employed for the first /twenty years/ of their life!
    • ThomPete 10y ago
      It actually have plus income have also changed with few jobs paying insane salaries and the rest fighting for the scrapes. Plus cost of living is going up adding to the issues.
  • jwatte 10y ago
    Machines can, ultimately, make for a "two hour work week" (or more like "two year career") But with our current system, someone owns the machines, and the sources of minerals to make then, and make a profit. In the end, this will lead to the ultimate in income inequality. We have to start thinking about the post-work world, at least for non-knowledge workers, and what we want that world to actually look like. Basic income might be a reasonable component of that.
  • jrapdx3 10y ago
    Interesting. As a creator, user and perpetual student of technologies, I've hardly suggested we not have them, yet whenever anyone brings up limitations of technologies, inevitably negative reactions follow, as though it's not OK to reconsider unquestioned faith in the infinite benefits of tech development. Like most here, I have great enthusiasm for new technologies, but we aren't served by uncritical belief while ignoring potential or actual limits and unanticipated effects. IOW we shouldn't be consumed by our biases. Health care is an example of work hugely impacted by technological innovation. Look at imaging, automation of clinical testing, robotics, and pharmaceutical development to name a few. Believe me, these tools are quite astonishing achievements and enormously useful. Yet with all these marvelous advances, the number and proportion of people needing care hasn't decreased, if anything, there are more. One factor is the improvements granted by technologies enable finding more cases, and finer gradations of illness. More patients and findings means there's more work to be done. It follows that greater number and type of treatment options also requires more work to parse and apply treatments. Also worth considering is that technologies might actually produce illness, one familiar example is RSI, "carpal tunnel" problems are common in programmers. Consider the evidence that developed nations have much higher incidence of autoimmune and other conditions vs. developing nations, technological differences being one factor. Currently research is looking at adverse effects of circadian out-of-phase exposure to blue light via LED illumination of devices as a source of metabolic disturbance, etc. Again, the issue isn't whether we'll continue to develop technologies, certainly we will and should. It's equally important to consider unanticipated effects which are inescapable. Sorry to say, but history shows solving one problem more often than not exposes others, and the cycle goes on. That's in no way a criticism of technology or its developers, merely a fact of life.
• coldtea 10y ago
  >Yes, that's an understandable idea, but constructing and maintaining the technological means to the end requires at least as much work as ever, though it is work of different kinds. But the point of automation is that it doesn't really. One computer software can eliminate 10,000,000 clerical jobs, and that just needs 100 people to write it, deploy it, etc. You don't suddenly need new and expected jobs to create/deploy that software, and those you do are an order of magnitude less than what where needed before.
• sliverstorm 10y ago
  Not to mention, if we stop development today and focus on automating what we have, we: 1) Fall victim to the problems of our own creation- e.g. climate change 2) Never attain the further advancements around the corner Suppose, for example, we decided we had come "far enough" and halted technological advancement just before obtaining the vaccine, or the antibiotic, and never developed that technology. We might be able to automate construction, agriculture, manufacturing- but we are still a fair ways from automating science, research, and development.
• ThomPete 10y ago
  No actually not. It requires less and less. If you want to see proof of this look into how many people are doing software development vs. other industries yet thats where most of the growth is these days. Technology is not just a tool it's very soon a competitor.