19 ms·

Replacing Middle Management with APIs

367 points by gwintrob 12y ago

athenot 12y ago
I would argue that the shift to "Cogs in a giant automated dispatching machine" already happened with living in an industrialized society, except it's software instead of bureaucracy. In either case, the organizational "middleware" is under the control of its owners.
- avn2109 12y ago
  Agreed. It feels like we're merely changing the means, not the ends, ie. the system is doing what it's always done, just now it is more efficient.
- krschultz 12y ago
  This is effectively the industrial revolution of knowledge workers & the mobile workforce. We found things for everyone to do, but if history may be a guide, we could be in for 30-80 years of adjustment.
- smacktoward 12y ago
  It already happens to some degree, when you consider how strongly companies treat their stock price as an indicator of what is and isn't working and how much stock trading is automated these days. The companies dance to tunes increasingly played by algorithms.
a3n 12y ago
Someone needs to make a tshirt: You can be replaced with a small REST API.
- Pxtl 12y ago
  I assume a reference to this:? http://www.kleargear.com/1474.html http://www.kleargear.com/1474.html
  - a3n 12y ago
    Yep. Although I originally saw it as a perl script.
  - ryan-c 12y ago
    Buying anything from that site is probably a bad idea. They fined people for bad reviews and turned them over to collections[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_v._Kleargear.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_v._Kleargear.com
- narrator 12y ago
  Go away or I will replace you with a small sparse autoencoder.
valevk 12y ago
Thank god, we still need somebody to write that API.
- smacktoward 12y ago
  For now.
- cubano 12y ago
  Do we really? And for how long do you think that job may be safe from automation?
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    I was thinking a while back that an obvious AI application would be to replace the entire management structure of a corporation. All of it. All the way up to the C-Suite. This would naturally improve efficiency, and in not a few cases it would probably apply a significant multiplier to overall profitability. That doesn't mean it would be a good idea politically or socially - although depending on the value system and long-term strategic insight of the AI, it might be an improvement there too. You could even have an automated YC, where a model of Paul Graham selects between different business models produced by a selection of AI agents. This could just be a joke, but to be honest I'm not completely sure it's not a serious prediction.
    - gertef 12y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_Autonomous_Organization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_Autonomous_Organi...
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - cooper12 12y ago
    I think people are looking at this too drastically. Machines can only replace humans up to a certain point. They're ideal for easily quantifiable and scripted tasks, but past that there needs to be human contact and judgement involved. At worse, we'll just have new jobs for people to maintain these systems, one level of abstraction higher, and even then there will still be legacy systems and people who are slow to adopt. For this specific example, I haven't been following AI that much, but from the news it doesn't seem to be advancing that far. Sure, we have self-driving cars, but a whole team went into creating them, and before that there were teams involved in image recognition, mapping, navigation, engineering, and more. Natural language processing has advanced pretty far though, I'll give you that. But there's a lot of stuff that happens in between the query "Siri, what's the Weather?" and the response and people will need to be involved in the processes in between.
kcole16 12y ago
While this may lead to a short term increase in unemployment if there is a massive shift from middle managers to a technology layer, it will increase efficiency, and hopefully, job satisfaction. Less middle managers to wonder what value they really add (often very little), and less employees asking the same question (and thinking they are smarter/more qualified than their boss).
- bonaldi 12y ago
  Except the workers will be even more commoditised and have their wages driven to a minimum, leading to lower satisfaction. And the middle-managers losing their jobs will accelerate the destruction of the middle classes, whose spending is what keeps the economy motoring. Not sure where that plays out, short of either guaranteed incomes or new-feudalism
jobu 12y ago
Obligatory link to "Humans Need Not Apply": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU I highly recommend giving it the full 15 minutes if you haven't already seen it. We as a society need to figure out how to handle a future where the majority of people are no longer compatible with the economy.
- sqrt17 12y ago
  There's a thought error in here: "the economy", as an unmovable construct, does not really exist. As an example, a good shirt does not cost thousands of dollars anymore, because we have automated weaving looms and a whole textile industry. We're not poorer from it, though, because we shifted from weaving shirts to doing construction work or working in finance. If we can automate simple manual labor, people will shift to different tasks; the non-beneficial changes is that now the energy needed for that task is consumed directly by the machine, and also the investment that has been done to get the machine there in the first place. Beyond that, people who did simple tasks before may perform tasks that require conscience or risk-awareness (for example, machines injuring or killing humans cannot be fired or fined, so someone has to be responsible), that require empathy and human attention; or people will resort to being burglars or robbers or revolutionaries or salesmen.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - chii 12y ago
    > We're not poorer from it, though, because we shifted from weaving shirts to doing construction work or working in finance. the video specifically has a refutation for the argument you made - that technological improvement is not necessarily always augmented by better jobs that people could do. Their example with the horses and automobiles is quite pertinent. The point about jobs that require human empathy is moot - if the cost of hiring the human is much higher than a machine, the machine will win.
    - sqrt17 12y ago
girmad 12y ago
Yes, scheduling is better done by machines than people, and we as a society will be better for it. Ironically, this will eventually lead to "higher end" shops, which retain the human touch. This process happens over and over as technology improves, it hurts in the short run and opens lots of new doors in the long run.
Animats 12y ago
That's an excellent article. I've been using the phrase "Machines should think, people should work" to describe this for some time. Amazon/Kiva order processing, where the humans are just arms for the computers, is well known. Uber has also been mentioned. Marshall Brain's "Manna" is the SF precursor of this concept. This has been pointed out repeatedly since Adam Smith visited the pin factory in 1776, and wrote, in the Wealth of Nations "One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations." Some people like it that way. Henry Ford, on assembly line labor management: "We shift men whenever they ask to be shifted and we should like regularly to change them—that would be entirely feasible if only the men would have it that way. They do not like changes which they do not themselves suggest. Some of the operations are undoubtedly monotonous—so monotonous that it seems scarcely possible that any man would care to continue long at the same job. Probably the most monotonous task in the whole factory is one in which a man picks up a gear with a steel hook, shakes it in a vat of oil, then turns it into a basket. The motion never varies. The gears come to him always in exactly the same place, he gives each one the same number of shakes, and he drops it into a basket which is always in the same place. No muscular energy is required, no intelligence is required. He does little more than wave his hands gently to and fro—the steel rod is so light. Yet the man on that job has been doing it for eight solid years. He has saved and invested his money until now he has about forty thousand dollars—and he stubbornly resists every attempt to force him into a better job!" The history of auto labor relations indicates that task boredom isn't a big issue for many people. Workers have fought for higher wages, better benefits, shorter working hours, more breaks, and more dwell time between cycles. But not for job rotation. A lot of people seem to be OK with dull, boring jobs, provided they get paid reasonably well for them and have enough time off.
- smacktoward 12y ago
  A dull, boring job beats the hell out of a terrifying, dangerous job.
spiritplumber 12y ago
Basic Idea: In small groups management can be automated. If it can be automated well enough, a hierarchy is not necessary. Small groups need to be able to switch quickly beteween adhocracy and democracy while preserving fairness. The following principles are a first attempt to provide a framework for this. Principle: An operating ageement should be written with a specific purpose, in very simple language or ideally in pseudocode or actual code. Corollary: This document should contain a way to programmatically deal with issues such as "there is no person to do job X", by random selection or by rotation or by whatever other method is agreed upon. Corollary: This document should contain a way to programmatically allocate revenue and split profits. Principle: Job titles are optional. Hats worn are necessary. Everybody should list the jobs they are happy to do in order of expertise. Corollary: Hats needed should be specified as soon as the scope of the project is determined. Corollary: Any hats left unworn by unwillingness should be traded around with some frequency. Principle: Everybody contributes to a common diary or blog, at least once a day, with at least one sentence, explaining what they did during that day. Corollary: Everybody should be able to identify at least one useful thing they did each day they are working. Corollary: Anybody wanting to not work for a time should let everybody know in advance. Principle: Everybody gets one vote. Tie breaks are decided by whoever is wearing the largest hat in that area or as specified by the operating agreement. Corollary: Votes are called when there is a disagreement and resolved as close to immediately as possible. Corollary: Valid vote outputs are yes, no, don't care, don't know enough. Principle: Every rule agreed upon after the starting document is generated should carry an explanation as to in response to what event it was made. Corollary: The reason for the starting document itself is assumed to be "To accomplish our primary goal", which should be specified. Corollary: The more a rule can be automated, the more it should be, but this machine must never override anybody. Principle: Any procedure that gets in the way of the stated goal must be moved out of the way. Corollary: When in doubt between toss and keep, default to keep. Corollary: When in doubt between open and closed, default to open. Principle: Nobody should create emergencies. Everybody should react to emergencies. Corollary: Emergencies should be definied strictly. Corollary: Emergency response is coordinated by anybody who is there and knows what they are doing. (c)mkb2012
- Retra 12y ago
mfringel 12y ago
If all you have is a resource allocation problem (e.g. scheduling, launching jobs, etc.) in a group of people lower than the Dunbar Number (i.e. ~150), then replacing middle management with an API is a reasonable choice, because you don't have an interesting management problem that requires critical thought or leadership.
dm8 12y ago
> The gap in training and social groups above and below could mean that new automation technology causes sudden, large-scale unemployment. This also scares me. I've often wondered, what will happen to people in a largely automated world (which could be reality in next 40-50 years). Will there be riots as employment will be unprecedented? Will it open new industries or entirely new period of creativity for humanity (e.g. industrial age giving birth to age of information)? When we transitioned to industrial age, I believe people had similar concerns but somehow things worked out well. Can we repeat that?
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Not sure full employment is any kind of worthy goal at all. How about: utopia, where we all have what we need and some of what we want, at no personal cost?
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Agreed. But this takes two steps: Step 1) Increase taxes on income above a certain level, create a floor that eliminates poverty (hunger, homelessness, etc). Continue to incentivize progress so that we continue on the path currently forged by science and technology (I don't believe this crowd requires me to expound on this) Step 2) Use renewable energy and technology to provide "what we need and some of what we want, at no personal cost" to everyone. Both transitions are going to be terribly painful.
- eddievb 12y ago
  I enjoy Keynes on this in 1930 -- http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf -- remembering, of course, that unforeseen economic shocks make predicting the course of implementation nearly impossible. In his case, it was WW2.
- glesica 12y ago
  The idea that "work" is somehow good and noble is outdated, and serves only to trap workers into undesirable situations for the profit of the capitalist class. Work isn't noble, it's just something we do so that we can do other stuff (and eat). So preserving work in the face of massive changes in the economy would be an incredibly unfortunate thing to do. Why not simply allocate social resources such that people who are not needed for work simply don't have to work? Allow them to have food, and shelter, and healthcare, and let them explore whatever it is that brings them happiness, without having to worry about spending their days performing some menial task because someone has decided that they must "work" for their meals.
fudged71 12y ago
I have been thinking about this exact thing for a while now. With Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, the resource utilization of a business is simply an algorithm, which can use any number of APIs to return profit and grow the entity. All of these APIs we are creating for various functions may soon replace us. Many APIs already do directly dispatch humans to do certain tasks. The scary part is that when someone is providing a service to you, they may not be aware of whether their superior is a human or an algorithm. A minimum viable autonomous corporation could be a lemonade stand that is managed entirely by an algorithm; with virtual currency it can hire a person to set up a lemonade stand at a certain datetime, and take a cut of earnings. If sales are slow, it could hire someone to design a poster, and another to post them in the area; or even an analyst to decide what the best course of action is. Over time, with many locations and employees, it would be able to learn the best locations and conditions for optimal profit. Perhaps also deciding which employees to continue working with and which ones to fire. These "management algorithms" would likely need to be developed by someone. But what if the algorithm hired the person to write the algorithms, updates, and performance tweaks? There could be a bootstrap algorithm that is simply an idea (these could be automatically generated based on search trends, market fluctuations, etc). These seeds would be open to the public for investment with virtual currency (bitcoin could be used to allocate the cap table as well), the program would be able to hire talent to build out the idea, and the investors would receive dividends. I see this evolving as a kickstarter for viral autonomous businesses. And I don't see why it couldn't be viable with today's technologies and APIs.
- walterbell 12y ago
  The 'Daemon' dream falls down in the fact of fraud and/or entropy. Ask PayPal about their 100% automated fraud detection algorithm (did not work) or Google about driving on umapped roads or through snow. Will humans on the "receiving" side of an API remain unaugmented, i.e. operating at human speeds with a slow touchscreen interface? Or will they develop their own automation, so that millisecond-speed algorithms broker between the "manager" and "worker"? How much ad and click revenue today is actually human? Bookstores did not sit idly by when Amazon decided to take on the entire industry, how is Amazon's publishing imprint doing? Humans do eventually wake up and compete with algorithms.
karlheinz 12y ago
This is a paradox rooted in capitalism itself, as Karl Marx pointed out in 1858: "Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth."
- bduerst 12y ago
  I think that has more to do with striking contrast between the "laissez-faire" makeup of capitalism and the strict power structure of corporations, which has surprisingly changed little since Karl Marx's time. It's not too far fetched to imagine A.I. subsidized corporations competing against each other in an open marketplace.
- Raphael 12y ago
  I wonder if Marx considered that labour could shift to serve new markets.
  - karlheinz 12y ago
    I definitely think he did
    - vidarh 12y ago
      It is specifically mentioned in chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto, a large part of which is talking about the past expansion of capitalism through conquering new market and extending that tendency into the future. Here's one mention: > The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones.
  - mooreds 12y ago
    What he didn't think of was productivity increases. See Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century.
krschultz 12y ago
I'm not dismissing this line of thought, but realize this probably already exists, and has existed for 100+ years. When I graduated college I started out as a mechanical engineer, sometimes going down to the factory to work on new design issues. There was a constant source of friction between the 22 year old mechanical engineers and the 50+ year old factory workers. Here are a bunch of skilled guys that have been building the product for 30+ years, and they in essence often have to report to kids half their age right out of college that don't know a thing. There was a pathway up through the factory, but there was no pathway across to engineering without getting a degree. If you were a smart engineer, you realized that these guys had an enormous amount of knowledge - more than you could ever hope to get out of a simple degree - and that they were worth listening to. If you were a cocky, dumb, engineer you ignored their opinion. The solution in the past to this problem has been unions. The startups are moving a bit too fast for the unions to catch up, but in all of these recent 'What happens when everything is Uber?' posts written by engineers the role of unions, politicians, and large masses of affected people seem to be ignored.
- blfr 12y ago
  Instead of waiting for the unions, startups usually just drop the degree requirement.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    Because it suits them at the time. Not because they are egalitarian endeavors hell-bent on human welfare and equality.
    - blfr 12y ago
      Because it makes sense to ditch an inefficient company structure when starting from scratch. Why would the motive matter anyway?
      - sliverstorm 12y ago
        Why would the motive matter anyway? Because we have absolutely no reason to believe they won't change their minds down the road. Which is exactly what usually happens.
mystique 12y ago
I have been thinking about this for a while now too. I feel more troubled by the fact that folks in non-AI field don't see this as an imminent problem. They don't realize that with current advances in computing power that enables us to store more and more data cheaply, how much can be learnt from it and how much can be automated. There don't seem to be any easy solutions. Training/teaching folks new skills would help but will not solve this for every person affected. I suspect the collateral damage from this will be big.
- SCHiM 12y ago
  There are people who do see this happen. I vaguely remember bill gates saying things about automation encroaching on low-skill jobs, and that many white-collar jobs would not be far behind. [0] I don't think his solution is viable however, since it would only delay the inevitable. Even if you make humans dirt cheap, the power of computers and all the benefits of automation will still be cheaper, only later. He extrapolates that our current take on our economy will soon be very outdated and that it needs to be rethought. Perhaps our star-treck economy will not be the result of space-travel, but automation. Imo this is the best possible outcome I can imagine. [0]: http://bgr.com/2014/03/14/bill-gates-interview-robots/ http://bgr.com/2014/03/14/bill-gates-interview-robots/
cpprototypes 12y ago
There is a potential dark side to this kind of automation: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/starbucks-workers-scheduling-hours.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/starbucks-w... There could be a lot of turmoil in the next few decades as society adapts to this new world of increased automation.
- cortesoft 12y ago
  That is certainly something to worry about, but it isn't a criticism of automated scheduling directly. Both a human and an algorithm can choose to either care about schedule consistency or not. We just have to make sure we choose to include those considerations when designing our AIs.
rsl7 12y ago
The leap to self-driving cars will be a massive and painful and complicated one. Way too much faith in tech in these here parts.
SixSigma 12y ago
The major roles of middle management are 1) Communicate the vision 2) Allocate resources 3) Set criteria for decisions of unequivocal data 4) Make judgement calls on equivocal data 5) Facilitate the voice of the worker being heard Computers can only do 2 & 3
- blumkvist 12y ago
  So much this! Computers will not take over middle management. Any company that does this will suffer. Why? Because smarter companies will keep their management, which will USE the algos to assist their decision making. Will technology cut jobs? Certainly! Especially in the data processing. But right now the top comment is about a lemonade stand run by an algo... Nerd's wet dreams.
- conradfr 12y ago
  6) Producing Excel spreadsheets.
  - SixSigma 12y ago
    If your management isn't doing useful work, then it's because of poor communication from you.
- runarberg 12y ago
  Number 1) could just as easily be done by the top management, and 4) by the workers. That leaves middle management only facilitating the voice of the worker, which is often time only an illusion anyway.
- CmonDev 12y ago
  I felt like a bit of anti-hype is needed: 1) Because engineers need translation 2) Not preventing teams from doing their work 3) A bit of arbitrage, fair 4) Flipping the coin based on the choices well-prepared by underlings 5) Politics, CEO will always only hear the board, which only cares about themselves; I bet anonymous feedback forms and a bit of cheap data mining would be a more sure bet
YesThatTom2 12y ago
This guy should see how a Google datacenter works. Need something done in a datacenter? Open a ticket and people respond. Common tickets become standardized by making them API calls that schedule the people. The most common API calls are eventually automated completely. I saw this for requesting a machine be power cycled (ticket -> API call -> automated). The people that work at the datacenter are great, but I feel sorry for them because their job becomes less and less interesting as time goes on. When Google opened a datacenter in [redacted] there was an article about how local people were signing up for Community College classes on computer science topics. I felt terrible... the skills that datacenter would be hiring for were more akin to a warehouse than a startup. -- Tom -- Ex-Goolger
- timruffles 12y ago
  Automation/systemisation is how productivity & profitability grows. Everyone should be clear on this - and be ready to retrain, ideally before time!
- eldavido 12y ago
  There isn't a lot going on creativity-wise but there is a lot operations-wise. Tightly measuring, controlling, and iterating on critical systems to eke out the last 1 or 2% is really important in mature industries like grocery stores or datacenter management! I feel like it's too easy to ignore how hard it is to get things under statistical control, and how important a role that plays in many industries.
SmallBets 12y ago
What doesn't get brought up enough in these discussions is the degree to which the advances in AI and resource distribution bring down costs and increase the accessibility of having your needs met. For example, as Uber has advanced to UberX and now UberPool, the possibility of being car-free is much more feasible and potentially cheaper than ownership. So the labor hours required to own a car are cut out as a need for those workers. Similarly, craigslist, AirBNB etc. are impacting the renting vs. buying scenario and reducing costs in those areas. Will this increase in accessibility happen at the same rate of labor loss? Probably not and there will be some turbulence, but I think the net result will be a realization of excess in western culture and an adjustment to more reasonable standards of living. Sure, there will be 'above the api' haves, but there is reason to believe the accessibility of meeting basic needs will scale up as a long term net result after short/mid term turbulence.
- lucaspiller 12y ago
  > Similarly, craigslist, AirBNB etc. are impacting the renting vs. buying scenario and reducing costs in those areas. If anything AirBnB has caused the price of property to go up. Where I live you could easily make enough to cover rent or a mortgage from letting a property on AirBnB for one or two weekends a month. The rest of the time it is empty, which means the demand for housing in the local area is higher, which means rents go up. In my 200 unit building I think around 5% of the properties are vacation rentals. Really AirBnB isn't much different to holiday homes / timeshares, but what they have done is bring it to the masses. It will be interesting if / when they introduce surge pricing to combat this - right now the control is still with landlords, but eventually they'll just be another pawn in the game.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
addicted44 12y ago
Getting more stuff done with less human effort is a good thing. However, combining that with an economic system which sets your ability to feed yourself and your families based on the effort you put in is a bad thing. Capitalism which was a great 2th century economic system, is not suited for the 21st century where there really aren't any jobs left for humans to do. The benefits of automation only accrue to the owners of capital, while everyone else gets completely left out. Since the owners of capital are an increasingly smaller number of people (not surprising since capital accrues capital exponentially while labor only accrues it linearly) our economic systems are headed for collapse.
- plextoria 12y ago
  Then what would be the right way forward? We've known capitalism is broken since at least the times of Karl Marx.
  - kybernetikos 12y ago
    There are a few ideas, such as basic income that can be tried. Personally I think that there is a need for extremely well funded organisations with a mission to acquire money now against the problem of actually creating a humane society in the future when this stuff really kicks off. The key problem is what was mentioned above - capital accrues capital exponentially, labour accrues capital linearly. The only way to fix this is to give everyone significant stakes in capital (or for the Marxists, the 'means of production'). The Norwegian pension fund, which owns about 1% of global equity is exactly the kind of thing that will be required to create any kind of future. Governments aren't the only organisations that can do this kind of work though. Any organisation that is giving workers the same kind of leverage that capital gets or sees that as part of its long term mission is part of the solution. I see this as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity over the next few decades.
  - fulafel 12y ago
    Tax proceeds of capitalism & redistribute.
  - fsloth 12y ago
jordwest 12y ago
I, for one, welcome our new algorithm overlords. Option A - Work for a system run by an algorithm that hires, fires, and judges you based purely on the work you do. Option B - Work for a system run by irrational humans that hires, fires, and judges you based on their own prejudices and ego.
- striking 12y ago
  "Garbage in, garbage out" tells us that since the algorithms are made by irrational humans, the algorithms will too be irrational.
smithy44 12y ago
Does anyone think that our whole economic meta-model might be overcome by 3D printing, permaculture and sufficiently efficient solar, etc.? (combined with sufficiently efficient energy use.) Has anyone read Clifford Simaks' City? There are technologies that automatically accrue the power to live in the other direction, or at least more widely and uniformly. Perhaps it's time to focus on those. We can have a economy in which the true currency is only ideas. And the money economy is only for luxuries. And in which we are all a lot more free.
smithy44 12y ago
Does anyone think that our whole economic meta-model might be overcome by 3D printing, permaculture and sufficiently efficient solar, etc.? (combined with sufficiently efficient energy use.) Has anyone read Clifford Simaks' City? There are technologies that automatically accrue the power to live in the other direction, or at least more widely and uniformly. Perhaps it's time to focus on those. We can have a economy in which the true currency is only ideas. And the money economy is only for luxuries. And in which we are all a lot more free.
georgeecollins 12y ago
This has been going on for over fifty years. McDonalds replaced diners with standardized food and processes. WallMart replaces smaller stores, often locally privately owned. Through efficiency and standardization they decrease the amount of labor needed and in particular the skill of labor needed. The mobile web lets you standardize mobile services (like delivery and taxis) and replace small companies owned by middle class people with leaner, larger, public ones.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Well, that describes a dream I have - to make all services function calls. I should be able to order a pizza by just issuing a POST request to some API endpoint, preferably without caring about anything else than the size and list of ingredients. I definitely should be able to install a local print shop as a system printer, so that instead of calling them and sending them e-mails and wiring money I could just do File->Print, change few options, click Print and have it at my doorstep the next day. Come to think of it, a lot of services are but glorified function calls - it's just the API (i.e. having to talk to people) that's messy and too broken for any automated use.
dberlind 12y ago
Amazing conversation that really provokes us to think about who of us has it right? Those of us who are ambitious about creating opportunity, climbing the corporate ladder, etc? Or those of us who consciously decide to opt for autonomy and convenience (potentially undermining the structure of our capitalist system!). I've written a more detailed response and posted it to ProgrammableWeb since any conversation about APIs are so near and dear to our hearts http://www.programmableweb.com/news/do-apis-eliminate-middle-management-or-improve-quality-life/analysis/2015/02/04 http://www.programmableweb.com/news/do-apis-eliminate-middle...
AnonJ 12y ago
This article makes no sense. All those services mentioned are pretty much third-party marketplace-style thing. What’s the point in insisting a “path upwards” or whatsoever when in all manners the marketplace just exists to connect customers with service providers? I don’t think it’s the marketplace’s duty to cater to the service providers who simply use the marketplace, just like it’s not an office space's duty to ensure that the companies which loan a space live long and prosper. And anyways I don’t see normal taxi drivers having a clear “path upwards” either. The arguments are quite invalid and TBH a bit sensational.

367 points by gwintrob 12y ago

I would argue that the shift to "Cogs in a giant automated dispatching machine" already happened with living in an industrialized society, except it's software instead of bureaucracy. In either case, the organizational "middleware" is under the control of its owners.

avn2109 12y ago
Agreed. It feels like we're merely changing the means, not the ends, ie. the system is doing what it's always done, just now it is more efficient.
krschultz 12y ago
This is effectively the industrial revolution of knowledge workers & the mobile workforce. We found things for everyone to do, but if history may be a guide, we could be in for 30-80 years of adjustment.
smacktoward 12y ago
It already happens to some degree, when you consider how strongly companies treat their stock price as an indicator of what is and isn't working and how much stock trading is automated these days. The companies dance to tunes increasingly played by algorithms.

a3n 12y ago

Someone needs to make a tshirt: You can be replaced with a small REST API.

Pxtl 12y ago
I assume a reference to this:? http://www.kleargear.com/1474.html http://www.kleargear.com/1474.html
- a3n 12y ago
  Yep. Although I originally saw it as a perl script.
- ryan-c 12y ago
  Buying anything from that site is probably a bad idea. They fined people for bad reviews and turned them over to collections[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_v._Kleargear.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_v._Kleargear.com
narrator 12y ago
Go away or I will replace you with a small sparse autoencoder.

valevk 12y ago

Thank god, we still need somebody to write that API.

smacktoward 12y ago
For now.
cubano 12y ago
Do we really? And for how long do you think that job may be safe from automation?
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  I was thinking a while back that an obvious AI application would be to replace the entire management structure of a corporation. All of it. All the way up to the C-Suite. This would naturally improve efficiency, and in not a few cases it would probably apply a significant multiplier to overall profitability. That doesn't mean it would be a good idea politically or socially - although depending on the value system and long-term strategic insight of the AI, it might be an improvement there too. You could even have an automated YC, where a model of Paul Graham selects between different business models produced by a selection of AI agents. This could just be a joke, but to be honest I'm not completely sure it's not a serious prediction.
  - gertef 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_Autonomous_Organization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_Autonomous_Organi...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- cooper12 12y ago
  I think people are looking at this too drastically. Machines can only replace humans up to a certain point. They're ideal for easily quantifiable and scripted tasks, but past that there needs to be human contact and judgement involved. At worse, we'll just have new jobs for people to maintain these systems, one level of abstraction higher, and even then there will still be legacy systems and people who are slow to adopt. For this specific example, I haven't been following AI that much, but from the news it doesn't seem to be advancing that far. Sure, we have self-driving cars, but a whole team went into creating them, and before that there were teams involved in image recognition, mapping, navigation, engineering, and more. Natural language processing has advanced pretty far though, I'll give you that. But there's a lot of stuff that happens in between the query "Siri, what's the Weather?" and the response and people will need to be involved in the processes in between.

kcole16 12y ago

While this may lead to a short term increase in unemployment if there is a massive shift from middle managers to a technology layer, it will increase efficiency, and hopefully, job satisfaction. Less middle managers to wonder what value they really add (often very little), and less employees asking the same question (and thinking they are smarter/more qualified than their boss).

bonaldi 12y ago
Except the workers will be even more commoditised and have their wages driven to a minimum, leading to lower satisfaction. And the middle-managers losing their jobs will accelerate the destruction of the middle classes, whose spending is what keeps the economy motoring. Not sure where that plays out, short of either guaranteed incomes or new-feudalism

jobu 12y ago

Obligatory link to "Humans Need Not Apply": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU I highly recommend giving it the full 15 minutes if you haven't already seen it. We as a society need to figure out how to handle a future where the majority of people are no longer compatible with the economy.

sqrt17 12y ago
There's a thought error in here: "the economy", as an unmovable construct, does not really exist. As an example, a good shirt does not cost thousands of dollars anymore, because we have automated weaving looms and a whole textile industry. We're not poorer from it, though, because we shifted from weaving shirts to doing construction work or working in finance. If we can automate simple manual labor, people will shift to different tasks; the non-beneficial changes is that now the energy needed for that task is consumed directly by the machine, and also the investment that has been done to get the machine there in the first place. Beyond that, people who did simple tasks before may perform tasks that require conscience or risk-awareness (for example, machines injuring or killing humans cannot be fired or fined, so someone has to be responsible), that require empathy and human attention; or people will resort to being burglars or robbers or revolutionaries or salesmen.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- chii 12y ago
  > We're not poorer from it, though, because we shifted from weaving shirts to doing construction work or working in finance. the video specifically has a refutation for the argument you made - that technological improvement is not necessarily always augmented by better jobs that people could do. Their example with the horses and automobiles is quite pertinent. The point about jobs that require human empathy is moot - if the cost of hiring the human is much higher than a machine, the machine will win.
  - sqrt17 12y ago

girmad 12y ago

Yes, scheduling is better done by machines than people, and we as a society will be better for it. Ironically, this will eventually lead to "higher end" shops, which retain the human touch. This process happens over and over as technology improves, it hurts in the short run and opens lots of new doors in the long run.

Animats 12y ago

That's an excellent article. I've been using the phrase "Machines should think, people should work" to describe this for some time. Amazon/Kiva order processing, where the humans are just arms for the computers, is well known. Uber has also been mentioned. Marshall Brain's "Manna" is the SF precursor of this concept. This has been pointed out repeatedly since Adam Smith visited the pin factory in 1776, and wrote, in the Wealth of Nations "One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations." Some people like it that way. Henry Ford, on assembly line labor management: "We shift men whenever they ask to be shifted and we should like regularly to change them—that would be entirely feasible if only the men would have it that way. They do not like changes which they do not themselves suggest. Some of the operations are undoubtedly monotonous—so monotonous that it seems scarcely possible that any man would care to continue long at the same job. Probably the most monotonous task in the whole factory is one in which a man picks up a gear with a steel hook, shakes it in a vat of oil, then turns it into a basket. The motion never varies. The gears come to him always in exactly the same place, he gives each one the same number of shakes, and he drops it into a basket which is always in the same place. No muscular energy is required, no intelligence is required. He does little more than wave his hands gently to and fro—the steel rod is so light. Yet the man on that job has been doing it for eight solid years. He has saved and invested his money until now he has about forty thousand dollars—and he stubbornly resists every attempt to force him into a better job!" The history of auto labor relations indicates that task boredom isn't a big issue for many people. Workers have fought for higher wages, better benefits, shorter working hours, more breaks, and more dwell time between cycles. But not for job rotation. A lot of people seem to be OK with dull, boring jobs, provided they get paid reasonably well for them and have enough time off.

smacktoward 12y ago
A dull, boring job beats the hell out of a terrifying, dangerous job.

spiritplumber 12y ago

Basic Idea: In small groups management can be automated. If it can be automated well enough, a hierarchy is not necessary. Small groups need to be able to switch quickly beteween adhocracy and democracy while preserving fairness. The following principles are a first attempt to provide a framework for this. Principle: An operating ageement should be written with a specific purpose, in very simple language or ideally in pseudocode or actual code. Corollary: This document should contain a way to programmatically deal with issues such as "there is no person to do job X", by random selection or by rotation or by whatever other method is agreed upon. Corollary: This document should contain a way to programmatically allocate revenue and split profits. Principle: Job titles are optional. Hats worn are necessary. Everybody should list the jobs they are happy to do in order of expertise. Corollary: Hats needed should be specified as soon as the scope of the project is determined. Corollary: Any hats left unworn by unwillingness should be traded around with some frequency. Principle: Everybody contributes to a common diary or blog, at least once a day, with at least one sentence, explaining what they did during that day. Corollary: Everybody should be able to identify at least one useful thing they did each day they are working. Corollary: Anybody wanting to not work for a time should let everybody know in advance. Principle: Everybody gets one vote. Tie breaks are decided by whoever is wearing the largest hat in that area or as specified by the operating agreement. Corollary: Votes are called when there is a disagreement and resolved as close to immediately as possible. Corollary: Valid vote outputs are yes, no, don't care, don't know enough. Principle: Every rule agreed upon after the starting document is generated should carry an explanation as to in response to what event it was made. Corollary: The reason for the starting document itself is assumed to be "To accomplish our primary goal", which should be specified. Corollary: The more a rule can be automated, the more it should be, but this machine must never override anybody. Principle: Any procedure that gets in the way of the stated goal must be moved out of the way. Corollary: When in doubt between toss and keep, default to keep. Corollary: When in doubt between open and closed, default to open. Principle: Nobody should create emergencies. Everybody should react to emergencies. Corollary: Emergencies should be definied strictly. Corollary: Emergency response is coordinated by anybody who is there and knows what they are doing. (c)mkb2012

Retra 12y ago

mfringel 12y ago

If all you have is a resource allocation problem (e.g. scheduling, launching jobs, etc.) in a group of people lower than the Dunbar Number (i.e. ~150), then replacing middle management with an API is a reasonable choice, because you don't have an interesting management problem that requires critical thought or leadership.

dm8 12y ago

> The gap in training and social groups above and below could mean that new automation technology causes sudden, large-scale unemployment. This also scares me. I've often wondered, what will happen to people in a largely automated world (which could be reality in next 40-50 years). Will there be riots as employment will be unprecedented? Will it open new industries or entirely new period of creativity for humanity (e.g. industrial age giving birth to age of information)? When we transitioned to industrial age, I believe people had similar concerns but somehow things worked out well. Can we repeat that?

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Not sure full employment is any kind of worthy goal at all. How about: utopia, where we all have what we need and some of what we want, at no personal cost?
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Agreed. But this takes two steps: Step 1) Increase taxes on income above a certain level, create a floor that eliminates poverty (hunger, homelessness, etc). Continue to incentivize progress so that we continue on the path currently forged by science and technology (I don't believe this crowd requires me to expound on this) Step 2) Use renewable energy and technology to provide "what we need and some of what we want, at no personal cost" to everyone. Both transitions are going to be terribly painful.
eddievb 12y ago
I enjoy Keynes on this in 1930 -- http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf -- remembering, of course, that unforeseen economic shocks make predicting the course of implementation nearly impossible. In his case, it was WW2.
glesica 12y ago
The idea that "work" is somehow good and noble is outdated, and serves only to trap workers into undesirable situations for the profit of the capitalist class. Work isn't noble, it's just something we do so that we can do other stuff (and eat). So preserving work in the face of massive changes in the economy would be an incredibly unfortunate thing to do. Why not simply allocate social resources such that people who are not needed for work simply don't have to work? Allow them to have food, and shelter, and healthcare, and let them explore whatever it is that brings them happiness, without having to worry about spending their days performing some menial task because someone has decided that they must "work" for their meals.

fudged71 12y ago

I have been thinking about this exact thing for a while now. With Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, the resource utilization of a business is simply an algorithm, which can use any number of APIs to return profit and grow the entity. All of these APIs we are creating for various functions may soon replace us. Many APIs already do directly dispatch humans to do certain tasks. The scary part is that when someone is providing a service to you, they may not be aware of whether their superior is a human or an algorithm. A minimum viable autonomous corporation could be a lemonade stand that is managed entirely by an algorithm; with virtual currency it can hire a person to set up a lemonade stand at a certain datetime, and take a cut of earnings. If sales are slow, it could hire someone to design a poster, and another to post them in the area; or even an analyst to decide what the best course of action is. Over time, with many locations and employees, it would be able to learn the best locations and conditions for optimal profit. Perhaps also deciding which employees to continue working with and which ones to fire. These "management algorithms" would likely need to be developed by someone. But what if the algorithm hired the person to write the algorithms, updates, and performance tweaks? There could be a bootstrap algorithm that is simply an idea (these could be automatically generated based on search trends, market fluctuations, etc). These seeds would be open to the public for investment with virtual currency (bitcoin could be used to allocate the cap table as well), the program would be able to hire talent to build out the idea, and the investors would receive dividends. I see this evolving as a kickstarter for viral autonomous businesses. And I don't see why it couldn't be viable with today's technologies and APIs.

walterbell 12y ago
The 'Daemon' dream falls down in the fact of fraud and/or entropy. Ask PayPal about their 100% automated fraud detection algorithm (did not work) or Google about driving on umapped roads or through snow. Will humans on the "receiving" side of an API remain unaugmented, i.e. operating at human speeds with a slow touchscreen interface? Or will they develop their own automation, so that millisecond-speed algorithms broker between the "manager" and "worker"? How much ad and click revenue today is actually human? Bookstores did not sit idly by when Amazon decided to take on the entire industry, how is Amazon's publishing imprint doing? Humans do eventually wake up and compete with algorithms.

karlheinz 12y ago

This is a paradox rooted in capitalism itself, as Karl Marx pointed out in 1858: "Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth."

bduerst 12y ago
I think that has more to do with striking contrast between the "laissez-faire" makeup of capitalism and the strict power structure of corporations, which has surprisingly changed little since Karl Marx's time. It's not too far fetched to imagine A.I. subsidized corporations competing against each other in an open marketplace.
Raphael 12y ago
I wonder if Marx considered that labour could shift to serve new markets.
- karlheinz 12y ago
  I definitely think he did
  - vidarh 12y ago
    It is specifically mentioned in chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto, a large part of which is talking about the past expansion of capitalism through conquering new market and extending that tendency into the future. Here's one mention: > The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones.
- mooreds 12y ago
  What he didn't think of was productivity increases. See Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century.

krschultz 12y ago

I'm not dismissing this line of thought, but realize this probably already exists, and has existed for 100+ years. When I graduated college I started out as a mechanical engineer, sometimes going down to the factory to work on new design issues. There was a constant source of friction between the 22 year old mechanical engineers and the 50+ year old factory workers. Here are a bunch of skilled guys that have been building the product for 30+ years, and they in essence often have to report to kids half their age right out of college that don't know a thing. There was a pathway up through the factory, but there was no pathway across to engineering without getting a degree. If you were a smart engineer, you realized that these guys had an enormous amount of knowledge - more than you could ever hope to get out of a simple degree - and that they were worth listening to. If you were a cocky, dumb, engineer you ignored their opinion. The solution in the past to this problem has been unions. The startups are moving a bit too fast for the unions to catch up, but in all of these recent 'What happens when everything is Uber?' posts written by engineers the role of unions, politicians, and large masses of affected people seem to be ignored.

blfr 12y ago
Instead of waiting for the unions, startups usually just drop the degree requirement.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  Because it suits them at the time. Not because they are egalitarian endeavors hell-bent on human welfare and equality.
  - blfr 12y ago
    Because it makes sense to ditch an inefficient company structure when starting from scratch. Why would the motive matter anyway?
    - sliverstorm 12y ago
      Why would the motive matter anyway? Because we have absolutely no reason to believe they won't change their minds down the road. Which is exactly what usually happens.

mystique 12y ago

I have been thinking about this for a while now too. I feel more troubled by the fact that folks in non-AI field don't see this as an imminent problem. They don't realize that with current advances in computing power that enables us to store more and more data cheaply, how much can be learnt from it and how much can be automated. There don't seem to be any easy solutions. Training/teaching folks new skills would help but will not solve this for every person affected. I suspect the collateral damage from this will be big.

SCHiM 12y ago
There are people who do see this happen. I vaguely remember bill gates saying things about automation encroaching on low-skill jobs, and that many white-collar jobs would not be far behind. [0] I don't think his solution is viable however, since it would only delay the inevitable. Even if you make humans dirt cheap, the power of computers and all the benefits of automation will still be cheaper, only later. He extrapolates that our current take on our economy will soon be very outdated and that it needs to be rethought. Perhaps our star-treck economy will not be the result of space-travel, but automation. Imo this is the best possible outcome I can imagine. [0]: http://bgr.com/2014/03/14/bill-gates-interview-robots/ http://bgr.com/2014/03/14/bill-gates-interview-robots/

cpprototypes 12y ago

There is a potential dark side to this kind of automation: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/starbucks-workers-scheduling-hours.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/starbucks-w... There could be a lot of turmoil in the next few decades as society adapts to this new world of increased automation.

cortesoft 12y ago
That is certainly something to worry about, but it isn't a criticism of automated scheduling directly. Both a human and an algorithm can choose to either care about schedule consistency or not. We just have to make sure we choose to include those considerations when designing our AIs.

rsl7 12y ago

The leap to self-driving cars will be a massive and painful and complicated one. Way too much faith in tech in these here parts.

SixSigma 12y ago

The major roles of middle management are 1) Communicate the vision 2) Allocate resources 3) Set criteria for decisions of unequivocal data 4) Make judgement calls on equivocal data 5) Facilitate the voice of the worker being heard Computers can only do 2 & 3

blumkvist 12y ago
So much this! Computers will not take over middle management. Any company that does this will suffer. Why? Because smarter companies will keep their management, which will USE the algos to assist their decision making. Will technology cut jobs? Certainly! Especially in the data processing. But right now the top comment is about a lemonade stand run by an algo... Nerd's wet dreams.
conradfr 12y ago
6) Producing Excel spreadsheets.
- SixSigma 12y ago
  If your management isn't doing useful work, then it's because of poor communication from you.
runarberg 12y ago
Number 1) could just as easily be done by the top management, and 4) by the workers. That leaves middle management only facilitating the voice of the worker, which is often time only an illusion anyway.
CmonDev 12y ago
I felt like a bit of anti-hype is needed: 1) Because engineers need translation 2) Not preventing teams from doing their work 3) A bit of arbitrage, fair 4) Flipping the coin based on the choices well-prepared by underlings 5) Politics, CEO will always only hear the board, which only cares about themselves; I bet anonymous feedback forms and a bit of cheap data mining would be a more sure bet

YesThatTom2 12y ago

This guy should see how a Google datacenter works. Need something done in a datacenter? Open a ticket and people respond. Common tickets become standardized by making them API calls that schedule the people. The most common API calls are eventually automated completely. I saw this for requesting a machine be power cycled (ticket -> API call -> automated). The people that work at the datacenter are great, but I feel sorry for them because their job becomes less and less interesting as time goes on. When Google opened a datacenter in [redacted] there was an article about how local people were signing up for Community College classes on computer science topics. I felt terrible... the skills that datacenter would be hiring for were more akin to a warehouse than a startup. -- Tom -- Ex-Goolger

timruffles 12y ago
Automation/systemisation is how productivity & profitability grows. Everyone should be clear on this - and be ready to retrain, ideally before time!
eldavido 12y ago
There isn't a lot going on creativity-wise but there is a lot operations-wise. Tightly measuring, controlling, and iterating on critical systems to eke out the last 1 or 2% is really important in mature industries like grocery stores or datacenter management! I feel like it's too easy to ignore how hard it is to get things under statistical control, and how important a role that plays in many industries.

SmallBets 12y ago

What doesn't get brought up enough in these discussions is the degree to which the advances in AI and resource distribution bring down costs and increase the accessibility of having your needs met. For example, as Uber has advanced to UberX and now UberPool, the possibility of being car-free is much more feasible and potentially cheaper than ownership. So the labor hours required to own a car are cut out as a need for those workers. Similarly, craigslist, AirBNB etc. are impacting the renting vs. buying scenario and reducing costs in those areas. Will this increase in accessibility happen at the same rate of labor loss? Probably not and there will be some turbulence, but I think the net result will be a realization of excess in western culture and an adjustment to more reasonable standards of living. Sure, there will be 'above the api' haves, but there is reason to believe the accessibility of meeting basic needs will scale up as a long term net result after short/mid term turbulence.

lucaspiller 12y ago
> Similarly, craigslist, AirBNB etc. are impacting the renting vs. buying scenario and reducing costs in those areas. If anything AirBnB has caused the price of property to go up. Where I live you could easily make enough to cover rent or a mortgage from letting a property on AirBnB for one or two weekends a month. The rest of the time it is empty, which means the demand for housing in the local area is higher, which means rents go up. In my 200 unit building I think around 5% of the properties are vacation rentals. Really AirBnB isn't much different to holiday homes / timeshares, but what they have done is bring it to the masses. It will be interesting if / when they introduce surge pricing to combat this - right now the control is still with landlords, but eventually they'll just be another pawn in the game.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

addicted44 12y ago

Getting more stuff done with less human effort is a good thing. However, combining that with an economic system which sets your ability to feed yourself and your families based on the effort you put in is a bad thing. Capitalism which was a great 2th century economic system, is not suited for the 21st century where there really aren't any jobs left for humans to do. The benefits of automation only accrue to the owners of capital, while everyone else gets completely left out. Since the owners of capital are an increasingly smaller number of people (not surprising since capital accrues capital exponentially while labor only accrues it linearly) our economic systems are headed for collapse.

plextoria 12y ago
Then what would be the right way forward? We've known capitalism is broken since at least the times of Karl Marx.
- kybernetikos 12y ago
  There are a few ideas, such as basic income that can be tried. Personally I think that there is a need for extremely well funded organisations with a mission to acquire money now against the problem of actually creating a humane society in the future when this stuff really kicks off. The key problem is what was mentioned above - capital accrues capital exponentially, labour accrues capital linearly. The only way to fix this is to give everyone significant stakes in capital (or for the Marxists, the 'means of production'). The Norwegian pension fund, which owns about 1% of global equity is exactly the kind of thing that will be required to create any kind of future. Governments aren't the only organisations that can do this kind of work though. Any organisation that is giving workers the same kind of leverage that capital gets or sees that as part of its long term mission is part of the solution. I see this as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity over the next few decades.
- fulafel 12y ago
  Tax proceeds of capitalism & redistribute.
- fsloth 12y ago

jordwest 12y ago

I, for one, welcome our new algorithm overlords. Option A - Work for a system run by an algorithm that hires, fires, and judges you based purely on the work you do. Option B - Work for a system run by irrational humans that hires, fires, and judges you based on their own prejudices and ego.

striking 12y ago
"Garbage in, garbage out" tells us that since the algorithms are made by irrational humans, the algorithms will too be irrational.

smithy44 12y ago

Does anyone think that our whole economic meta-model might be overcome by 3D printing, permaculture and sufficiently efficient solar, etc.? (combined with sufficiently efficient energy use.) Has anyone read Clifford Simaks' City? There are technologies that automatically accrue the power to live in the other direction, or at least more widely and uniformly. Perhaps it's time to focus on those. We can have a economy in which the true currency is only ideas. And the money economy is only for luxuries. And in which we are all a lot more free.

smithy44 12y ago

georgeecollins 12y ago

This has been going on for over fifty years. McDonalds replaced diners with standardized food and processes. WallMart replaces smaller stores, often locally privately owned. Through efficiency and standardization they decrease the amount of labor needed and in particular the skill of labor needed. The mobile web lets you standardize mobile services (like delivery and taxis) and replace small companies owned by middle class people with leaner, larger, public ones.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Well, that describes a dream I have - to make all services function calls. I should be able to order a pizza by just issuing a POST request to some API endpoint, preferably without caring about anything else than the size and list of ingredients. I definitely should be able to install a local print shop as a system printer, so that instead of calling them and sending them e-mails and wiring money I could just do File->Print, change few options, click Print and have it at my doorstep the next day. Come to think of it, a lot of services are but glorified function calls - it's just the API (i.e. having to talk to people) that's messy and too broken for any automated use.

dberlind 12y ago

Amazing conversation that really provokes us to think about who of us has it right? Those of us who are ambitious about creating opportunity, climbing the corporate ladder, etc? Or those of us who consciously decide to opt for autonomy and convenience (potentially undermining the structure of our capitalist system!). I've written a more detailed response and posted it to ProgrammableWeb since any conversation about APIs are so near and dear to our hearts http://www.programmableweb.com/news/do-apis-eliminate-middle-management-or-improve-quality-life/analysis/2015/02/04 http://www.programmableweb.com/news/do-apis-eliminate-middle...

AnonJ 12y ago

This article makes no sense. All those services mentioned are pretty much third-party marketplace-style thing. What’s the point in insisting a “path upwards” or whatsoever when in all manners the marketplace just exists to connect customers with service providers? I don’t think it’s the marketplace’s duty to cater to the service providers who simply use the marketplace, just like it’s not an office space's duty to ensure that the companies which loan a space live long and prosper. And anyways I don’t see normal taxi drivers having a clear “path upwards” either. The arguments are quite invalid and TBH a bit sensational.