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Sadly your point may be correct about automation being used right now more to control people more free them (even as technologists including me had higher hopes

Sadly your point may be correct about automation being used right now more to control people more free them (even as technologists including me had higher hopes decades ago, e.g. Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib / Dream Machines"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines You may find of interest this essay on "The Mythology of Wealth" on economic mythologies used to justify social pyramids and with a small elite at the top: https://web.archive.org/web/2007*/http://conceptualguerilla.com/mythologyofwealth.htm https://web.archive.org/web/2007*/http://conceptualguerilla.... See this online book by Marshall Brain on robots being used to concentrate wealth (see especially the chapter "Robotic Freedom" from which this text comes): https://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation https://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation "The Concentration of Wealth: If you look at our economy as a whole, you can understand why robots have the potential to be so disruptive if we do not handle their arrival properly. ..." And what is often ignored is that as automation -- especially computing -- makes it possible for one person to do more, even if a human is still needed in an economic loop somewhere, it weakens the financial bargaining position of many other humans (assuming demand does not rise as fast as capacity) who must trade their labor for kanban-token-like ration units (i.e. fiat dollars) in order to survive or maybe in some cases thrive. So we don't need full automation for all this to be very disruptive economically. And we are already seeing some of this as people with less tech or other skills are falling by the wayside economically and their marriages and lives are disintegrating (or never happening in the first place) and they turn to drugs to relieve the pain and so on leading to "deaths of despair". That is something we may see greatly accelerate as driving is automated given how important economically driving jobs are to many people with just a high school education. But even highly rewarded skills today can become rapidly obsolete through technology (like a radiologist reading x-rays or a broker trading stocks). And eventually programmers may see that happen to their livelihoods too. Of course, revolutions often turn out to be different then expected, as usually it is the best organized who take power (like in Iran durign the 1970s, the students revolted bu it was the better-organized religious hardliners who ultimately prevailed). Related Zinn: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html "However, the unexpected victories-even temporary ones-of insurgents show the vulnerability of the supposedly powerful. In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communications workers, garbage men and firemen. These people-the employed, the somewhat privileged-are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls. That will happen, I think, only when all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see that we are like the guards in the prison uprising at Attica—expendable; that the Establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain its control, kill us." But when you have robots guards (e.g. in the movie "Elysium"), then who cares about human revolts? Still, there is cause for optimism (also from Zinn): https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/optimism-uncertainty/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/optimism-uncertain... "In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability." See Marshall Brain's novelette "Manna" as a fictionalization of wealth concentration and total surveillance from automation and an social alternative. https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 See James P. Hogan's 1982 sci-fi novel "Voyage from Yesteryear" for an inspiring vision of alternative. https://web.archive.org/web/20120713225646/http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary https://web.archive.org/web/20120713225646/http://www.jamesp... Or Theodore Sturgeons's 1956 "The Skills of Xanadu" about the two-sided coin of freedom/subservience and technology: https://archive.org/details/pra-BB3830.08 https://archive.org/details/pra-BB3830.08 https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v12n03_1956-07/page/n117/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v12n03_1956-07/page/n117/... Or this essay I put together around 2010 mentions lots of alternatives (both good and bad ones): https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html "This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society." Ultimately though this comes down to a need for a change of heart as implied by my sig (amplifying and expanding on what many others like Albert Einstein and Bucky Fuller have said): "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

kkfx 5y ago
Work automation even if linked to war automation is a slightly different beast with IMVHO not much a tech issue but a human one, while war automation is also a tech issue alone: take for instance construction tools like elevators, excavators, hammers, drills, augers, ... yes they deeply cut the number of needed workers per construction site and hyper-slash construction time itself, BUT workers now have far less fatigue than before, so work automation is double edged, on one side help humans, on another might be weaponized against humans. The issue here is much in social terms: we are trained by most dictatorships that we live to work, with a purpose, we have to struggle to do something for a far future etc the refrain is the same from Chinese workers to Franklin idea of a cannon in every street to force people out of the bed earlier in the morning. That's make automation an issue because less work is needed so less workers are needed. However if we change mindset, we work to live, not the opposite and our target is arriving at a sufficiently automated point that we can just work for our own pleasure because work to live will not be needed anymore, than automation is not an issue: we work less, in a society not based on infinite growth, and live more still having all the products we need and like. War automation is another game: war is a classic way cohort of humans act against other cohort to gain advantages, or just to survive, so war MUST be a human thing in the social sense, have war automated that means some parts of the society can ignore to a certain extent the war and so they might be more interesting in approving wars not just to survive but for mere advantage gain, witch is a very bad idea if we want evolve. If a war touch a whole society than the whole society think much before accepting war, is not they just can do like stadium fan inciting a team, sitting in comfy setups because war is just a show. In that case when things go bad no one can revolt, because automation makes those few who control and know it fully armed and the rest of the society powerless. That's why for instance, as a pacifist, I do like the classic Swiss model: mandatory conscription 1 month per year for 18-28 years old with guerrilla training an weapons/ammo at home. That's the classic si vis pacem para bellum, or the perfect balance of power: a country organized like that is very protected against invasions but not much good at invading others, a small permanent army hold the big war gear and represent the State, while all Citizens are mostly armed and trained so if the State derail try to pushing from Democracy to dictatorship Citizens know very well and have all the means to ensure such a bad bloodbath for all party that no one want to try moving toward ad dictatorship. Giving weapons ONLY after proper training and evaluation ensure social safety. On contrary I fear society where very few control basic tech we need, especially if those few are private non public bodies. Just imaging what can happen in a modern city in case of a real unrest against an oppressive move: - closing the city is normally easy, people inside in modern world have less and less private transport means and those are more and more connected and controllable by the OEM, not by the formal owner, so basically locking few roads suffice to lock down many many many humans; - since water is pushed with few centralized networks typically coming from the outside of the city, so electricity etc is easy to disrupt any of those service; - it's also easy to leave people starving since in a city all eat but essentially there is no food production, just a small transformation. Essentially a prison. While in a Swiss like scenario, in a more spread country it's impossible to lock down peoples, they know how to revolt, they can do so, they have infra explicitly built for guerrilla (against exterior invaders, but that does not change much the game) and they are trained in their own territory. Those are the main difference I see: - automation is good as long as the society is in control, witch means for instance that research is public so anyone can know how to build any tool of use, there is no private oligarchy/monopoly on infra etc; - automation is extremely dangerous if only few have&know it. Witch can be summarized: if we are all almost on-par we are cooperative friend and casual litigates does not harm much the society, we there is a significant imbalance in power than we are doomed to end up really badly.

kkfx 5y ago

Work automation even if linked to war automation is a slightly different beast with IMVHO not much a tech issue but a human one, while war automation is also a tech issue alone: take for instance construction tools like elevators, excavators, hammers, drills, augers, ... yes they deeply cut the number of needed workers per construction site and hyper-slash construction time itself, BUT workers now have far less fatigue than before, so work automation is double edged, on one side help humans, on another might be weaponized against humans. The issue here is much in social terms: we are trained by most dictatorships that we live to work, with a purpose, we have to struggle to do something for a far future etc the refrain is the same from Chinese workers to Franklin idea of a cannon in every street to force people out of the bed earlier in the morning. That's make automation an issue because less work is needed so less workers are needed. However if we change mindset, we work to live, not the opposite and our target is arriving at a sufficiently automated point that we can just work for our own pleasure because work to live will not be needed anymore, than automation is not an issue: we work less, in a society not based on infinite growth, and live more still having all the products we need and like. War automation is another game: war is a classic way cohort of humans act against other cohort to gain advantages, or just to survive, so war MUST be a human thing in the social sense, have war automated that means some parts of the society can ignore to a certain extent the war and so they might be more interesting in approving wars not just to survive but for mere advantage gain, witch is a very bad idea if we want evolve. If a war touch a whole society than the whole society think much before accepting war, is not they just can do like stadium fan inciting a team, sitting in comfy setups because war is just a show. In that case when things go bad no one can revolt, because automation makes those few who control and know it fully armed and the rest of the society powerless. That's why for instance, as a pacifist, I do like the classic Swiss model: mandatory conscription 1 month per year for 18-28 years old with guerrilla training an weapons/ammo at home. That's the classic si vis pacem para bellum, or the perfect balance of power: a country organized like that is very protected against invasions but not much good at invading others, a small permanent army hold the big war gear and represent the State, while all Citizens are mostly armed and trained so if the State derail try to pushing from Democracy to dictatorship Citizens know very well and have all the means to ensure such a bad bloodbath for all party that no one want to try moving toward ad dictatorship. Giving weapons ONLY after proper training and evaluation ensure social safety. On contrary I fear society where very few control basic tech we need, especially if those few are private non public bodies. Just imaging what can happen in a modern city in case of a real unrest against an oppressive move: - closing the city is normally easy, people inside in modern world have less and less private transport means and those are more and more connected and controllable by the OEM, not by the formal owner, so basically locking few roads suffice to lock down many many many humans; - since water is pushed with few centralized networks typically coming from the outside of the city, so electricity etc is easy to disrupt any of those service; - it's also easy to leave people starving since in a city all eat but essentially there is no food production, just a small transformation. Essentially a prison. While in a Swiss like scenario, in a more spread country it's impossible to lock down peoples, they know how to revolt, they can do so, they have infra explicitly built for guerrilla (against exterior invaders, but that does not change much the game) and they are trained in their own territory. Those are the main difference I see: - automation is good as long as the society is in control, witch means for instance that research is public so anyone can know how to build any tool of use, there is no private oligarchy/monopoly on infra etc; - automation is extremely dangerous if only few have&know it. Witch can be summarized: if we are all almost on-par we are cooperative friend and casual litigates does not harm much the society, we there is a significant imbalance in power than we are doomed to end up really badly.