4 ms·

"The future will now be produced by cheap and abundant labour, not by mysterious oriental tech-wizardry (NB I am trying to describe an imaginary, not a reality!

by poutine 16y ago

"The future will now be produced by cheap and abundant labour, not by mysterious oriental tech-wizardry (NB I am trying to describe an imaginary, not a reality!). " This is an artefact of today, not the future. As has happened in the developed world the developing world will eventually see automation and robotics become cheaper than human labour. Possibly within the next decade or two. Once this point is reached and those countries haven't lifted themselves up they're screwed. They'll have a massive number of undereducated, illiterate and underemployed people. This is not China's century as many people are saying. Robotics will turn vast numbers of people in to a liability, not an asset.

eru 16y ago
> ... and underemployed people. Depends. If they can keep labour cheap enough, they won't be underemployed. I don't worry about future under-education in the now-developing countries. Education is all the rage in most places.
michaelchisari 16y ago
On the flip side, if robotics are taking care of mass production with very little human input, 3d printing and other emergent home technologies will create an explosion in artisan production. We're about to see a shift in the material world similar to the way the open source world changed software.
- Retric 16y ago
  I don't see how "open source" had all that big of an impact on software. IMO, "open source" software fills the same roll as government spending on infrastructure. Basically, contributing a small amount of energy for a share of a public good has a net positive result. But, little changes from the perspective of a user or a developer.
  - kingofspain 16y ago
    More or less the entire web?
    - Retric 16y ago
      Plenty of people use open source software, but when it comes to writing drivers for the next generation of GPU or the Ignition Timing software for the 2012 Honda civic the Open Source revolution has more or less fallen flat.
      - michaelchisari 16y ago
        Are you sure that either of those aren't compiled or linked using GNU tools?
        Retric 16y ago
        Are you sure being GNU matters for such users?
        r00fus 16y ago
        Sure, in that if GNU tools didn't exist, some software would not exist, and others would be prohibitively expensive. GNU has impacted users lives.
        Retric 16y ago
        You could get fairly high quality IDE's at low cost ex:Borland Pascal long before GNU became an issue.
        huherto 16y ago
        Before GNU Linux, only corporation had access to Unix systems like HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, etc.
        Retric 16y ago
  - treeface 16y ago
    "Little changes" from the perspective of a developer? I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. If I'm not mistaken (please correct me if I am), a plurality (if not an outright majority) of web servers are run using an open source OS. jQuery/Prototype/MooTools together hold an obscenely high share of the JavaScript library market. The great majority of websites on the internet run some combination of PHP, Python, Ruby, many of those running open-source frameworks like Pylons, RoR, CodeIgniter, Kohana, web2py, Django, etc. A great number of developers code using Vim, Eclipse, or some other open source text editor. And from the perspective of the user? It's hard to quantify this just by saying "Firefox" or "Chrome" or the "V8 JavaScript Engine". I think open source projects (like jQuery) benefit hugely from crowd sourcing their problems. By making their bug reports and code public, they allow someone like me to fork the project on GitHub, fix the bugs, and issue a pull request back to the master branch. They're basically fine-tuning their product without doing nearly as much work as closed-source shops without paying the person for fixing the problem. To the user, it looks like things get done quickly and bugs tend to come far less often (if the crowd sourcing is done right). In my humble estimation, these are rather important considerations when judging the success of open source...and these are only web technologies.
    - Retric 16y ago
      After many years of software development I have briefly used Eclipse which sucked (IMO) and VIM which was slightly better than good old vanilla VI and nothing else on your list. (Note: as a developer.) Granted, I don't do a lot of web development but my point is just because there are some popular tools for your nitch does not mean there has been a fundamental shift in software.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - huherto 16y ago
        Open source is way bigger than that. But, if you didn't like Eclipse or vim. What did you like?
russell 16y ago
I've seen some curious robotics demonstrations out of Japan driven by a labor shortage and a stance against immigration. And a reluctance for young people to become salarymen. One was a human washing machine, which looked very much like a regular washing machine with the user's head poking out through a hole in the top. It had wheelchair access. IIRC the target market was care homes for the elderly. Another was a robotic fast food takeout place (tiny in comparison to a typical US fast food joint).

by poutine 16y ago

eru 16y ago

> ... and underemployed people. Depends. If they can keep labour cheap enough, they won't be underemployed. I don't worry about future under-education in the now-developing countries. Education is all the rage in most places.

michaelchisari 16y ago

On the flip side, if robotics are taking care of mass production with very little human input, 3d printing and other emergent home technologies will create an explosion in artisan production. We're about to see a shift in the material world similar to the way the open source world changed software.

Retric 16y ago
I don't see how "open source" had all that big of an impact on software. IMO, "open source" software fills the same roll as government spending on infrastructure. Basically, contributing a small amount of energy for a share of a public good has a net positive result. But, little changes from the perspective of a user or a developer.
- kingofspain 16y ago
  More or less the entire web?
  - Retric 16y ago
    Plenty of people use open source software, but when it comes to writing drivers for the next generation of GPU or the Ignition Timing software for the 2012 Honda civic the Open Source revolution has more or less fallen flat.
    - michaelchisari 16y ago
      Are you sure that either of those aren't compiled or linked using GNU tools?
      - Retric 16y ago
        Are you sure being GNU matters for such users?
        r00fus 16y ago
        Sure, in that if GNU tools didn't exist, some software would not exist, and others would be prohibitively expensive. GNU has impacted users lives.
        Retric 16y ago
        You could get fairly high quality IDE's at low cost ex:Borland Pascal long before GNU became an issue.
        huherto 16y ago
        Before GNU Linux, only corporation had access to Unix systems like HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, etc.
        Retric 16y ago
- treeface 16y ago
  "Little changes" from the perspective of a developer? I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. If I'm not mistaken (please correct me if I am), a plurality (if not an outright majority) of web servers are run using an open source OS. jQuery/Prototype/MooTools together hold an obscenely high share of the JavaScript library market. The great majority of websites on the internet run some combination of PHP, Python, Ruby, many of those running open-source frameworks like Pylons, RoR, CodeIgniter, Kohana, web2py, Django, etc. A great number of developers code using Vim, Eclipse, or some other open source text editor. And from the perspective of the user? It's hard to quantify this just by saying "Firefox" or "Chrome" or the "V8 JavaScript Engine". I think open source projects (like jQuery) benefit hugely from crowd sourcing their problems. By making their bug reports and code public, they allow someone like me to fork the project on GitHub, fix the bugs, and issue a pull request back to the master branch. They're basically fine-tuning their product without doing nearly as much work as closed-source shops without paying the person for fixing the problem. To the user, it looks like things get done quickly and bugs tend to come far less often (if the crowd sourcing is done right). In my humble estimation, these are rather important considerations when judging the success of open source...and these are only web technologies.
  - Retric 16y ago
    After many years of software development I have briefly used Eclipse which sucked (IMO) and VIM which was slightly better than good old vanilla VI and nothing else on your list. (Note: as a developer.) Granted, I don't do a lot of web development but my point is just because there are some popular tools for your nitch does not mean there has been a fundamental shift in software.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - huherto 16y ago
      Open source is way bigger than that. But, if you didn't like Eclipse or vim. What did you like?

russell 16y ago

I've seen some curious robotics demonstrations out of Japan driven by a labor shortage and a stance against immigration. And a reluctance for young people to become salarymen. One was a human washing machine, which looked very much like a regular washing machine with the user's head poking out through a hole in the top. It had wheelchair access. IIRC the target market was care homes for the elderly. Another was a robotic fast food takeout place (tiny in comparison to a typical US fast food joint).