5 ms·
Ironies of Automation (1983)
- dang 2y agoRelated: Ironies of Automation (1983) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36638026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36638026 - July 2023 (1 comment) Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505285 - June 2023 (38 comments) Ironies of Automation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33476157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33476157 - Nov 2022 (5 comments) Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23300195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23300195 - May 2020 (11 comments) Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19132724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19132724 - Feb 2019 (27 comments) Ironies of Automation (1983) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230258 - Oct 2018 (3 comments) Ironies of Automation (1983) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17587611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17587611 - July 2018 (1 comment) Ironies of Automation [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12749342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12749342 - Oct 2016 (1 comment) Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9756838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9756838 - June 2015 (2 comments) Ironies of Automation (1983) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7726496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7726496 - May 2014 (5 comments)
- spiritplumber 2y agoVery interesting read, and new to me. Thank you!
- monkeydust 2y agoSo I guess there is benefit to allowing these reposts, kudos to the HN way. For me its a seminal piece that I come back to and refer time again as I am in the enterprise automation space.
- nonrandomstring 2y agoNew to me as well. Awesome density of well formulated common-sense ideas and references. Adding this to my arsenal in defence of humanity alongside Gall's Systemantics, Demings 14 points and Forrester/Meadows. Can we ever stop the cult of making insane machines and cruel systems - while believing we're "making the world a better place" - even when science tells us we're wrong?
- bob1029 2y agoI like to imagine semiconductor manufacturing is the most extreme case of automation we have today. One shift supervisor can oversee thousands of wafers per hour. Humans aren't even in the factory anymore due to defect rates. Many employees are asleep at home with tool alarms and/or statistical triggers over metrology data that will page them out of slumber if something goes wrong. It feels like something exponential starts to happen once you get into automation rates exceeding 99%. There isn't a single tool in a modern fab that isn't on the automated material handling system. They build dedicated bridges just for these robots to travel between the fab buildings.
- bwestergard 2y agoCan you suggest any resources for learning about how these advanced modern fabs work? What jobs remain, and what's the division of labor?
- bob1029 2y agohttps://semiconductor.samsung.com/us/about-us/careers/jobs/ https://semiconductor.samsung.com/us/about-us/careers/jobs/
- a_c 2y agoIf automation is something that get done, but not by me. Then management is automation, globalization is automation, using other people's code is automation, LLM is also automation. The central theme to me is that, what to do when things go wrong, how often and how badly. Clueless management don't know what actual progress is, covid, single point of failure due to no longer maintained software, hallucination, etc
- debarshri 2y agoI think automation is like recursion, more you automate, more there is to be automated.
- FredPret 2y agoSo true. Then the economy grows for a while, and a plethora of new niches in the ecosystem come out. Legions of small companies turn into new industries, and a whole new set of activity can be automated.
- hamilyon2 2y agoWritten before Chernobyl and it stands out.