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Lag is probably the wrong word. It's a misconception that adoption should be instant. It took a good 50 years for the electric motor to supplant the steam engin

Lag is probably the wrong word. It's a misconception that adoption should be instant. It took a good 50 years for the electric motor to supplant the steam engine, despite it being superior in virtually every way. Tech adoption takes time, given that many things need to be re-learnt/engineered. It's why i'm positive that there won't be swathes of unemployeed people due to tech. It will happen gradually, as it has always been, and people will have to be shifted into different and more productive employment types. It has always happened this way, and will likely continue to do so.

hateduser2 9y ago
I don’t think “it’s always happened this way so it probably will continue “ (although you explain this further) is a very sophisticated or for that matter accurate analysis. There’s the status quo and then there are major events that upend it. If anything could ever upend the status who like this, it’s tech. It’s like business cycles.. usually things are fine but they aren’t always fine.
starlust2 9y ago
Converting a user operated machine from a steam engine to electric engine doesn't remove the user. Converting to a computer operated or assisted machine does.
- icebraining 9y ago
  If the electric engine can produce the same things ten times faster, you've just removed nine-tenths of the users. Sure, someone is still around, but then again, automatic factories still have some people supervising them - just much fewer.
  - mjburgess 9y ago
    Increasing worker productivity has always lead to fulfilling larger a demand. What is missing from all these discussions is that human wanting is essential infinite. The more productive you can be at making something, the more it will be taken for granted and a new thing wanted. Demand is infinite. Work is created to supply it. There is no amount of labour that will ever exhaust it. All automation does is increase the space of "taken for granted products". The infinite space of potential products/services for human beings to supply still exists. 80% of the UK economy is already services from people to other people.
    - smaddox 9y ago
      Human wanting and economic demand are not identical. In order for human wanting to turn into economic demand, those who want need to have money (in a capitalistic society). If there are limited numbers of jobs and limited forms of need/want-based income redistribution, then demand is limited.
    - djrobstep 9y ago
      This ignores diminishing returns of additional labour and consumption. If we reach the happy situation where robots are providing us with the things we need for a good life almost automatically, why would we continue to work ourselves to the bone for additional goods and services that won't increase our happiness much? Most people would rather just work less. In fact, our current level of economic output is enough to give every household a comfortable life, even if we worked substantially less. Unfortunately the system is structured to maximize labour time, keep us economically insecure, and use us all as grist for the capitalist mill, rather than maximizing leisure time and quality of life.
      - Eridrus 9y ago
        There is a fundamental competition baked into existence in the form of land rights and human attention. Who gets to live where? Who are your friends? Who gets to go to that fancy college? While there are other ways of answering this question than "those who can afford it", it will always exist in some form. While automation of necessities will make it easier to opt out of the capitalist mill, I would expect that to not be a tradeoff-free choice.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      Demand is ultimately limited by human attention. There is only so much time someone can spend buying goods and services, especially if they intend to actually do something with them. And the demand for each individual product is far below that. There are some products virtually everyone will buy, but usually only once in a certain timeframe. Then there are specialized things like combines or milling machines where demand only goes up if some other industry expands. If you improve your factory equipment to produce double the items per employee-hour at a lower unit cost, you likely won't see the demand double in proportion. Most likely you'll just eat into the market share of a competitor. Maybe some new customers will newly be able to afford the product, but once it has "taken for granted" status, even that is impossible. And we are not increasing the number of these "taken for granted products" very quickly. As far as physical products are concerned, I can only think of the smart phone as a recent example; actually that decreased the number of those products, by obsoleting cameras and dumb phones for most people. Among internet services, advertising is the dominant money-maker, and that's a zero-sum game for eyeballs which only employs a relatively small number of people. As more and more products and services are provided by machines, fewer and fewer people become necessary to keep things running in the background. Sure, some of the replaced people can try to come up with new things to offer, but most of them won't succeed, and the vast majority will eventually be unable to cost-effectively provide value to other humans at all. At that point, we'll find out whether it's cheaper to feed them or shoot them.
marcosdumay 9y ago
As long as there are more productive employment types available. Anyway, I disagree. I think the sheer speed of the change will create a disaster much sooner than automation quality will make humans obsolete. It took more than a century for the steam engine to replace animal engines around the world, then the electric engine replaced it in half a century. Things are accelerating, and are already much faster than by that time.
- Chathamization 9y ago
  Productivity growth has actually been relatively low recently[1]. There doesn't seem to be a trend towards acceleration. [1] https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm
methodin 9y ago
It seems the world today the timing is entirely based on the country. In the U.S. the time it took for regular mobile phones to be supplanted by smartphones is ridiculously small yet the same cannot be said for many countries in the world. It seems to me that countries slow to make progress in tech will be the victims of it initially. It won't take that long to do so once the economic and logistical aspects of are ironclad.

hateduser2 9y ago

I don’t think “it’s always happened this way so it probably will continue “ (although you explain this further) is a very sophisticated or for that matter accurate analysis. There’s the status quo and then there are major events that upend it. If anything could ever upend the status who like this, it’s tech. It’s like business cycles.. usually things are fine but they aren’t always fine.

starlust2 9y ago

Converting a user operated machine from a steam engine to electric engine doesn't remove the user. Converting to a computer operated or assisted machine does.

icebraining 9y ago
If the electric engine can produce the same things ten times faster, you've just removed nine-tenths of the users. Sure, someone is still around, but then again, automatic factories still have some people supervising them - just much fewer.
- mjburgess 9y ago
  Increasing worker productivity has always lead to fulfilling larger a demand. What is missing from all these discussions is that human wanting is essential infinite. The more productive you can be at making something, the more it will be taken for granted and a new thing wanted. Demand is infinite. Work is created to supply it. There is no amount of labour that will ever exhaust it. All automation does is increase the space of "taken for granted products". The infinite space of potential products/services for human beings to supply still exists. 80% of the UK economy is already services from people to other people.
  - smaddox 9y ago
    Human wanting and economic demand are not identical. In order for human wanting to turn into economic demand, those who want need to have money (in a capitalistic society). If there are limited numbers of jobs and limited forms of need/want-based income redistribution, then demand is limited.
  - djrobstep 9y ago
    This ignores diminishing returns of additional labour and consumption. If we reach the happy situation where robots are providing us with the things we need for a good life almost automatically, why would we continue to work ourselves to the bone for additional goods and services that won't increase our happiness much? Most people would rather just work less. In fact, our current level of economic output is enough to give every household a comfortable life, even if we worked substantially less. Unfortunately the system is structured to maximize labour time, keep us economically insecure, and use us all as grist for the capitalist mill, rather than maximizing leisure time and quality of life.
    - Eridrus 9y ago
      There is a fundamental competition baked into existence in the form of land rights and human attention. Who gets to live where? Who are your friends? Who gets to go to that fancy college? While there are other ways of answering this question than "those who can afford it", it will always exist in some form. While automation of necessities will make it easier to opt out of the capitalist mill, I would expect that to not be a tradeoff-free choice.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    Demand is ultimately limited by human attention. There is only so much time someone can spend buying goods and services, especially if they intend to actually do something with them. And the demand for each individual product is far below that. There are some products virtually everyone will buy, but usually only once in a certain timeframe. Then there are specialized things like combines or milling machines where demand only goes up if some other industry expands. If you improve your factory equipment to produce double the items per employee-hour at a lower unit cost, you likely won't see the demand double in proportion. Most likely you'll just eat into the market share of a competitor. Maybe some new customers will newly be able to afford the product, but once it has "taken for granted" status, even that is impossible. And we are not increasing the number of these "taken for granted products" very quickly. As far as physical products are concerned, I can only think of the smart phone as a recent example; actually that decreased the number of those products, by obsoleting cameras and dumb phones for most people. Among internet services, advertising is the dominant money-maker, and that's a zero-sum game for eyeballs which only employs a relatively small number of people. As more and more products and services are provided by machines, fewer and fewer people become necessary to keep things running in the background. Sure, some of the replaced people can try to come up with new things to offer, but most of them won't succeed, and the vast majority will eventually be unable to cost-effectively provide value to other humans at all. At that point, we'll find out whether it's cheaper to feed them or shoot them.

marcosdumay 9y ago

As long as there are more productive employment types available. Anyway, I disagree. I think the sheer speed of the change will create a disaster much sooner than automation quality will make humans obsolete. It took more than a century for the steam engine to replace animal engines around the world, then the electric engine replaced it in half a century. Things are accelerating, and are already much faster than by that time.

Chathamization 9y ago
Productivity growth has actually been relatively low recently[1]. There doesn't seem to be a trend towards acceleration. [1] https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm

methodin 9y ago

It seems the world today the timing is entirely based on the country. In the U.S. the time it took for regular mobile phones to be supplanted by smartphones is ridiculously small yet the same cannot be said for many countries in the world. It seems to me that countries slow to make progress in tech will be the victims of it initially. It won't take that long to do so once the economic and logistical aspects of are ironclad.