6 ms·

Technical progress would be fantastic if the benefits didn't go mainly to the top. I am pretty sure in the not too far future we will have enough technology tha

Technical progress would be fantastic if the benefits didn't go mainly to the top. I am pretty sure in the not too far future we will have enough technology that you can live off the land somewhere with the help of some robots. Or have them do all your housework. In principle, this is great, but our society is not set up for a lot of people not working while the technology is progressed by a relatively small number of highly qualified people. I am not sure where this is going but there will be some large changes to society needed if technology keeps progressing at current speed.

sterlind 2y ago
I wanted fully-automated luxury communism, but I got fully-automated neo-feudalism instead. It feels bad.
- VladVladikoff 2y ago
  Pretty much every piece of technology we have known so far which had creator restrictions has been jailbroken. Sure the future might be Elon & Bezos androids, but what’s stopping us from jailbreaking them and using them off grid?
  - wahnfrieden 2y ago
    Police and military
  - stego-tech 2y ago
    Police forces protecting the interests of capital first, citizens second, e.g. private police forces (Pinkertons) and strikebreaking. Militaries being used by Governments to protect the interests of capital at the expense of citizens, e.g. the Battle of Blair Mountain. Government legislation enshrining the rights of capital and profit over the rights of citizens, e.g. copyright laws and DRM protections. Centralization of systems and dependency of products on remote compute, e.g. public cloud service providers, social media networks, shifting from wired to wireless home ISPs and networks to reduce stability of private hosting. They made it illegal to break DRM on their devices, send the police to protect their property, leverage the military to annihilate opposition, and now use modern technologies to prohibit end user control by requiring remote dependencies for operation. That's how they stop you.
geysersam 2y ago
> I am pretty sure in the not too far future we will have enough technology that you can live off the land somewhere with the help of some robots. I don't understand, what stops you from doing that today?
- oblio 2y ago
  The fact that those robots don't exist :-)
  - onemoresoop 2y ago
    Those robots want to be all your tools, with subscription and expensive maintenance that you can no longer do it yourself. And with the obvious kill switch. From tractors to other things
    - intrasight 2y ago
      I think this is the part that classic sci-fi didn't get right. It assumed that we would own the robots instead of them being owned by corporations that would rent them out. Having a robot that I don't control that's stronger than me and smarter than me in my house does not sound at all comforting.
- jszymborski 2y ago
  Capital, and its inequal distribution.
- buckle8017 2y ago
  The availability of fertile land.
  - nthingtohide 2y ago
    Vertical farming / hydroponics will solve that.
    - 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ein0p 2y ago
You can live off the land today with no help from robots. I know a couple of folks who had enough of corporate America and now live on a farm in Florida. It's been almost 10 years, they're doing all right. It's not even that much work unless you grow stuff commercially. But I hear what you're saying. More "humane" progress would certainly be very welcome. In fact if neo-feudalism wins, most of us will have to "live off the land", whether we want to or not.
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  If neo-feudalism wins the majority will be working on the goals of the feudal nobility, whatwver that may be.
  - ein0p 2y ago
    Robots will be doing that. There will also be a small workforce to repair the robots. The rest of us will have to learn to grow and preserve food. That is assuming the feudals leave us alone and don't exterminate us instead.
somenameforme 2y ago
There's a simple litmus test for these sort of nearish future dystopias - how long before you have an 'AI plumber' or an 'AI electrician'? I'm not just listing random skilled trades, but listing jobs that are extremely complex, 100% context sensitive in a way that just doesn't generalize well, requires a mixture of high dexterity and high strength, and a million other things. To say nothing of the numerous [oft extremely expensive] task specific tools you also need. And those are only two of the jobs for maintaining households. If those two things aren't automated, we're not having these 'robo households' - period. Instead I think the future holds mostly the present - glorified clappers [1] and ad-tech masquerading as some sort of something that mostly does a mediocre to awful job of whatever it's supposed to be, Alexa. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTNuJXi6UUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTNuJXi6UUk
- luckydata 2y ago
  You need more to maintain a house, drywaller, gardener, carpenter, painter. The most important robotic help though will be cleaner and nurse. As our population ages and shrinks home help will become scarce and we'll desperately need an alternative to take care of ourselves as we age.
  - throw80521 2y ago
    Perhaps in response housing will become even more homogenized so that AI has an easier time maintaining it in a standardized way?
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      But is your house iHouse compatible, or only OpenHouse compatible?
      - mikrl 2y ago
        >not using GNoUse Why do you hate freedom? Wait brb, the ceiling fan I wrote in Lisp is spraying yogurt again
mustyoshi 2y ago
120 years ago 40% of Americans were farmers, today that number is under 2%. That technical progress resulted in a few companies and farm conglomerates becoming incredibly wealthy. But the benefits that we all received was we didn't have to toil in a field, and we get fresh beef on every corner. The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive.
- dragontamer 2y ago
  > The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive. The wealth gap was growing since 1980. Is the median person better today when the median person cannot afford a college education or a house? Both of those were easily afforded in the 80s. Also remember: the average job didn't require a college education back then either. College has become a gatekeeper due to its rising costs and diminishing returns.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Why is “affording a house” the marker of a success? I would say just the opposite. Owning a home decreases mobility and the ability to move to where the jobs are. That being said, the home ownership rate in the US is 65% and almost anyone who wants to go to college can via loans and scholarships. Only around 40% of people in the US have a college education. But that doesn’t mean that the other 60% are homeless and starving. Then cultural, as we see now, there is very much an anti-intellectual anti college bias by a major user of people in the country.
    - OJFord 2y ago
      Ok, 'having that much money (or credit worthiness to borrow it) regardless of what you do with it', then? Many people don't want to be itinerant, they want a settled home to make their own and enjoy for a long time if not life. 'Forever home' is a phrase and a positive one because that is a goal people have.
      - 2y ago
deadbabe 2y ago
I can think of one technology that could easily solve this problem: an ability to “freeze” people into some kind of hibernation indefinitely until they are needed. Potentially, this could even mean going to sleep on Earth and then waking up on some distant planet colony where they need people. Jarring, but somehow people can find a good life this way I bet.
aceazzameen 2y ago
I bet anything that any robots capable of performing any kind of service will be subscription based. It will also purposely be out of reach for anyone not wealthy. Society has to change before humanity has any further technological progress that will benefit everyone. We're simply in the "how to min max wealth growth" stage.
overfeed 2y ago
> I am pretty sure in the not too far future we will have enough technology that you can live off the land somewhere with the help of some robots. If John Deere can help it, those Deerebots will be sealed shut, TPM'd & DRM'd to hell. You'd pay a subscription and have to take them into a service center to get them serviced and have the firmware updated. They basic subscription tier will only work with genuine Monsanto(TM) seedPods(R)
- mindslight 2y ago
  From what I've seen, the small low-HP tractors without particulate filters have a minimum of electronics. It's the computerized emissions controls where they start creeping in. And I assume the big farmers put up with digital restrictions because they want to have their shiny new gear serviced by professionals anyway, whereas homesteads there is going to be a lot more DIY. The real problem is that farming is fucking hard. I bought a vertical tiller somewhat as a hedge against societal collapse from the political movement to destroy America, but I'm under no illusions of that being a straightforward food supply. The main aim is to be able to do food plots for neighbors in trade. Honestly I've got to wonder if we're going this far, why do you even need to live off the land? As in, why turn soil just to get free sun and water? Why not just indoor hydroponics? Or even still using soil, but inside in a much more controlled fashion.
robertlagrant 2y ago
> Technical progress would be fantastic if the benefits didn't go mainly to the top They don't. You live better than Henry VIII in almost all ways (other than you can't establish a new state religion). You have access to painkillers, dentistry, sight correction, and information on a daily basis, along with more chicken than he did. The fact that that's true for hundreds of millions of people is incredible.

sterlind 2y ago

I wanted fully-automated luxury communism, but I got fully-automated neo-feudalism instead. It feels bad.

VladVladikoff 2y ago
Pretty much every piece of technology we have known so far which had creator restrictions has been jailbroken. Sure the future might be Elon & Bezos androids, but what’s stopping us from jailbreaking them and using them off grid?
- wahnfrieden 2y ago
  Police and military
- stego-tech 2y ago
  Police forces protecting the interests of capital first, citizens second, e.g. private police forces (Pinkertons) and strikebreaking. Militaries being used by Governments to protect the interests of capital at the expense of citizens, e.g. the Battle of Blair Mountain. Government legislation enshrining the rights of capital and profit over the rights of citizens, e.g. copyright laws and DRM protections. Centralization of systems and dependency of products on remote compute, e.g. public cloud service providers, social media networks, shifting from wired to wireless home ISPs and networks to reduce stability of private hosting. They made it illegal to break DRM on their devices, send the police to protect their property, leverage the military to annihilate opposition, and now use modern technologies to prohibit end user control by requiring remote dependencies for operation. That's how they stop you.

geysersam 2y ago

> I am pretty sure in the not too far future we will have enough technology that you can live off the land somewhere with the help of some robots. I don't understand, what stops you from doing that today?

oblio 2y ago
The fact that those robots don't exist :-)
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  Those robots want to be all your tools, with subscription and expensive maintenance that you can no longer do it yourself. And with the obvious kill switch. From tractors to other things
  - intrasight 2y ago
    I think this is the part that classic sci-fi didn't get right. It assumed that we would own the robots instead of them being owned by corporations that would rent them out. Having a robot that I don't control that's stronger than me and smarter than me in my house does not sound at all comforting.
jszymborski 2y ago
Capital, and its inequal distribution.
buckle8017 2y ago
The availability of fertile land.
- nthingtohide 2y ago
  Vertical farming / hydroponics will solve that.
  - 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ein0p 2y ago

You can live off the land today with no help from robots. I know a couple of folks who had enough of corporate America and now live on a farm in Florida. It's been almost 10 years, they're doing all right. It's not even that much work unless you grow stuff commercially. But I hear what you're saying. More "humane" progress would certainly be very welcome. In fact if neo-feudalism wins, most of us will have to "live off the land", whether we want to or not.

onemoresoop 2y ago
If neo-feudalism wins the majority will be working on the goals of the feudal nobility, whatwver that may be.
- ein0p 2y ago
  Robots will be doing that. There will also be a small workforce to repair the robots. The rest of us will have to learn to grow and preserve food. That is assuming the feudals leave us alone and don't exterminate us instead.

somenameforme 2y ago

There's a simple litmus test for these sort of nearish future dystopias - how long before you have an 'AI plumber' or an 'AI electrician'? I'm not just listing random skilled trades, but listing jobs that are extremely complex, 100% context sensitive in a way that just doesn't generalize well, requires a mixture of high dexterity and high strength, and a million other things. To say nothing of the numerous [oft extremely expensive] task specific tools you also need. And those are only two of the jobs for maintaining households. If those two things aren't automated, we're not having these 'robo households' - period. Instead I think the future holds mostly the present - glorified clappers [1] and ad-tech masquerading as some sort of something that mostly does a mediocre to awful job of whatever it's supposed to be, Alexa. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTNuJXi6UUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTNuJXi6UUk

luckydata 2y ago
You need more to maintain a house, drywaller, gardener, carpenter, painter. The most important robotic help though will be cleaner and nurse. As our population ages and shrinks home help will become scarce and we'll desperately need an alternative to take care of ourselves as we age.
- throw80521 2y ago
  Perhaps in response housing will become even more homogenized so that AI has an easier time maintaining it in a standardized way?
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    But is your house iHouse compatible, or only OpenHouse compatible?
    - mikrl 2y ago
      >not using GNoUse Why do you hate freedom? Wait brb, the ceiling fan I wrote in Lisp is spraying yogurt again

mustyoshi 2y ago

120 years ago 40% of Americans were farmers, today that number is under 2%. That technical progress resulted in a few companies and farm conglomerates becoming incredibly wealthy. But the benefits that we all received was we didn't have to toil in a field, and we get fresh beef on every corner. The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive.

dragontamer 2y ago
> The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive. The wealth gap was growing since 1980. Is the median person better today when the median person cannot afford a college education or a house? Both of those were easily afforded in the 80s. Also remember: the average job didn't require a college education back then either. College has become a gatekeeper due to its rising costs and diminishing returns.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Why is “affording a house” the marker of a success? I would say just the opposite. Owning a home decreases mobility and the ability to move to where the jobs are. That being said, the home ownership rate in the US is 65% and almost anyone who wants to go to college can via loans and scholarships. Only around 40% of people in the US have a college education. But that doesn’t mean that the other 60% are homeless and starving. Then cultural, as we see now, there is very much an anti-intellectual anti college bias by a major user of people in the country.
  - OJFord 2y ago
    Ok, 'having that much money (or credit worthiness to borrow it) regardless of what you do with it', then? Many people don't want to be itinerant, they want a settled home to make their own and enjoy for a long time if not life. 'Forever home' is a phrase and a positive one because that is a goal people have.
    - 2y ago

deadbabe 2y ago

I can think of one technology that could easily solve this problem: an ability to “freeze” people into some kind of hibernation indefinitely until they are needed. Potentially, this could even mean going to sleep on Earth and then waking up on some distant planet colony where they need people. Jarring, but somehow people can find a good life this way I bet.

aceazzameen 2y ago

I bet anything that any robots capable of performing any kind of service will be subscription based. It will also purposely be out of reach for anyone not wealthy. Society has to change before humanity has any further technological progress that will benefit everyone. We're simply in the "how to min max wealth growth" stage.

overfeed 2y ago

> I am pretty sure in the not too far future we will have enough technology that you can live off the land somewhere with the help of some robots. If John Deere can help it, those Deerebots will be sealed shut, TPM'd & DRM'd to hell. You'd pay a subscription and have to take them into a service center to get them serviced and have the firmware updated. They basic subscription tier will only work with genuine Monsanto(TM) seedPods(R)

mindslight 2y ago
From what I've seen, the small low-HP tractors without particulate filters have a minimum of electronics. It's the computerized emissions controls where they start creeping in. And I assume the big farmers put up with digital restrictions because they want to have their shiny new gear serviced by professionals anyway, whereas homesteads there is going to be a lot more DIY. The real problem is that farming is fucking hard. I bought a vertical tiller somewhat as a hedge against societal collapse from the political movement to destroy America, but I'm under no illusions of that being a straightforward food supply. The main aim is to be able to do food plots for neighbors in trade. Honestly I've got to wonder if we're going this far, why do you even need to live off the land? As in, why turn soil just to get free sun and water? Why not just indoor hydroponics? Or even still using soil, but inside in a much more controlled fashion.

robertlagrant 2y ago

> Technical progress would be fantastic if the benefits didn't go mainly to the top They don't. You live better than Henry VIII in almost all ways (other than you can't establish a new state religion). You have access to painkillers, dentistry, sight correction, and information on a daily basis, along with more chicken than he did. The fact that that's true for hundreds of millions of people is incredible.