Real Cooker ! Will this be heaven or hell?

A

Thread Starter

Anand Iyer

Hello list members,

If Automation makes it possible for a few humans to produce for entire humanity, will earth become heaven or will it be hell?

Anand
 
Jim Pinto responds :
Before the advent of farm automation, some 40-50%
of humanity was involved in farming - growing food to
feed the rest of humanity. Now, in the US, that
ratio is less than 2%, and they produce a surplus.
Indeed, some farmers are subsidized by the government
to produce nothing (grass, to keep the land fertile).

In the US, about 30-40% of the population was
involved in manufacturing of goods at the start of this
century. That has dropped to about 12-15% today
(because of automation, and manufacturing off-shore) and
the ratio continues to decline rapidly.

Dick Morley relates the half-joke that in the future factory
there will be just one man and a dog; the man will represent
the human unions, and the dog to assure that the man doesn't
touch anything.

Indeed, Automation WILL make it possible for VERY FEW
humans to produce good for the rest of humanity. That will
allow humanity to focus on other, more rewarding things,
we hope. What we do then will make it either heaven,
or hell.....

I have just returned from Futurescope 2001, the annual
conference of the World Future Society, in Minneapolis, MN.
(July 29-31, 2001) These very ideas and projections were
discussed from all standpoints and perspectives :
Technological, Societal, Legal, Philosophical, etc.

More specific discussions if anyone is interested.

To see the Futurescope 2001 Agenda, browse :
http://www.wfs.org/2001progfrmmain.htm
Cheers:
jim
----------/
Jim Pinto
email : [email protected]
web: www.JimPinto.com
San Diego, CA., USA
----------/
 
W
Anand,

If the past is any indication (yes, there are a few doubters out there), it will still have elements of both for a long time to come.

Regards,

Willy Smith
(speaking only for myself, as a somewhat autonomous humanoid)
 
R

Ramer-1, Carl

No change in status will occur.
The producers will spend endless hours in meetings to predict what the
masses want.
The masses will spend their time whimsically chasing trendy products
announced by advertisers.
Advertisers will spend fortunes announcing products which can't perform as
advertised since they didn't talk to the producers.
Then producers will spend endless hours in meetings to predict what the
masses want....


...and after a while Carl said, "There are parts of our culture that stink
with phoniness. But we can do some wonderful things too. "

-- As recounted by Murray Morgan in the
book The Dam


Carl Ramer, Engineer
Controls & Protective Systems Design
Space Gateway Support, Inc.
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
(V) 321-867-1812
(F) 321-867-1495

Unsponsored personal comment
 
M

Mike Johnson

1. Automation will never replace the good old farmer
2. Humanity ( or western civilization ) will always depend on the farmer

Mike Johnson
 
R

Rick Jafrate

> Anand:
> If Automation makes it possible for a few humans to produce for entire
> humanity, will earth become heaven or will it be hell?

Your question makes a couple of presumptions that I do not accept:

1. You presume that humanity's appetite for consumption can be
satisfied.

2. You presume that a large portion of humanity would be willing
sit idly by and do nothing.

3. You presume that humanity would continue to use production methods
that cause a net loss the humsanity's material well being.

IMHO it will never be possible for a few humans to produce for entire
humanity because humanity will never be satisfied and will always
want more. Humanity's consumption is limited by it's production
capacity.

Humanity has a consistent record of becomming more efficent in it's
production of goods and service, through innovation and automation,
going back as far as 10,000 years. This has consistently improved
the material state of humanity through the ages.

I don't know of any instance where a method, that uses fewer humans
than was previusly required, was employed to produce a particular
product or service and that caused humanity to suffer a net loss
in it's material well being. Do you?

This not to deny that individuals are temporaily displaced when
changes occur. When the wheeled carriage was invented the guys
who used to carry people around with "a chair and poles" had to
find something else to do. Your question, however, spoke of
heaven, hell, earth, and humanity and not of individuals.

What did you have in mind? Well, I have to get back to work!


Regards

Rick Jafrate
 
J

Joe Jansen/ENGR/HQ/KEMET/US

Maybe not entirely, but mostly.....

I was involved with an automated dairy farm that had nearly 300 head,
milked twice per day, and was all done with 1 person. The milkers were
attached by the "operator", the cows rode around a carousel, the milker
automatically detached when finished, and the cow was directed off the
carousel and back to pasture automatically. It was pretty significant.
Plus, the capacity was there for expanding to at least twice as many cows
without any significant increase in workload...


--Joe Jansen
 
G

Greg Goodman

Neither.

Heaven is where everything works the way you think it should. Nothing
in my experience makes me think Automation will ever accomplish that.

Hell is where you have no power to affect the world around you, where
the exercise of skill or reason has no bearing on your fate. For us
technocrats, Automation has the opposite effect; it empowers us, it's
part of how we affect the world. For those who feel disenfranchised and
insulated by Automation, there are ways around it. Nothing in my
experience makes me think Automation will ever be proof against those
who wish to ignore or destroy it.

Greg Goodman
Chiron Consulting
 
B
If innovation was still a factor and humanity could see beyond money, I fail to see how it would be bad. It's important to remember that there's more to life and no matter what, it's never going to be easy. The answer is NEITHER heaven nor hell.
 
J
If you are looking at one man's vision of an autonomous world, might I suggest reading Kurt Voneguit's <sp?> "Player Piano." It gives some fascinating insite as to what the world would look like.
However, I do not think that this is a viable scenario, with the exception that technology comes to a complete standstill. For as long as technology changes, man will continue to do so as well. While it is possible for one man (or woman) to replace many, with the aid of machines, the rest of the population will find new lines of work.
 
D
Wow, are there some assumptions built into that or what?

I think of hell as our current reality with all the "good" (from God's
perspective, not ours) removed. Automation cannot accomplish that (unless
God himself designed it), but if you make life infinitely simple for the
masses of the world with no effort required, what will they do with
themselves? I doubt that ultimate freedom to do good would lead to perfect
selflessness and expect the contrary. The masses would indulge in whatever
brings as much personal pleasure as possible and consider it to be
heaven. I loath the thought of this as I expect it would actually be
closer to hell despite the moment by moment perception otherwise.
 
M

Michael Griffin

This is the classic problem known to economists as the "lump of
labour" fallacy. The amount of work to be done in the world is not fixed.
Needs are infinite. It is only the resources (including labour) to fulfill
them which are limited.


**********************
Michael Griffin
London, Ont. Canada
**********************
 
C

Curt Wuollet

Don't worry about it.

Between the luddites who will always be enamored with relays and
the progressives who build elaborate systems on a broken foundation
and the vendors who want to prevent their stuff from working with
anything else and the lack of cooperation everywhere, there is no
basis for that type of advancement. Instead of standing on the
shoulders of giants, everyone imagines themselves a giant and wants
to stand toe to toe and fight about how to communicate without a
common language. Ironically, they can't parse each others insults.
But, they swing the clubs anyway.

We will be doing much the same in twenty years if nothing changes.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which
destination that most resembles, although there is a large
contingent that believes it to be Heaven as to change is Hell.

Regards

cww
 
J

Jeffrey Eggenberger

Well, They had the same argument back when the automated textile industry
started out. There were many reports that said that widespread unemployment
and famine would result. What really happened was that textiles became more
affordable, and more jobs were created. I am now in a maintenance trade,
formerly from an assembly job. Do I miss my old job? No.

Jeff
 
K

Kirk S. Hegwood

Not to say "Greed is good" by any means, but what is wrong with making money
through innovation? How many products and/or services do people today
actually use that were "designed for the good of the people"? Sounds like
socialism to me. Ever read Atlas Shrugged?


Kirk S. Hegwood
President
Signing for Hegwood Electric Service, Inc.
[email protected]
 
S
Rick Jafrate wrote;

I agree with many of your points, but I would like
to add to the following.

>I don't know of any instance where a method, that
>uses fewer humans than was previously required, was
>employed to produce a particular product or service
>and that caused humanity to suffer a net loss in it's
>material well being. Do you?

Yes I think I do. When you talk about product or
service, some can be mere convenience, others
are necessities.

In Ireland, it was discovered that the potato supplied
more nutrition on poor land, and thus the population
grew significantly. When the crop failed, thousands
starved.

As health care and farming methodes continue to swell
the world population, the system starts to become
unstable. While I don't predict the end of the world,
I can see the potential for a lot of misery and death.
 
A

Anthony Kerstens

What!
Purgatory isn't an option???

:)



It's interesting that people are so wound up that they are taking this thread seriously.

Anthony Kerstens P.Eng.
 
H

Hakan Ozevin

This is science fiction and several (also scientist) writers like I. Asimov, C.Sagan had tried to answer it. The common answer is:
In such a technology level, the humanity will be able to have space journeys, therefore the ones that believe world is a hell will leave by constructing new colonies (in Mars?, in the asteroid belt?, in the Earth's orbit?), and the rest will think that the Earth is now less crowded and they will have lots of time to invent new technologies that we cannot imagine now.
A heaven for both groups, I believe. But I will be in the group to leave the world, if time permits.

Hakan Ozevin
 
Anand:
> >If Automation makes it possible for a few humans to produce for entire
> >humanity, will earth become heaven or will it be hell?

Michael:
> This is the classic problem known to economists as the "lump of labour"
> fallacy. The amount of work to be done in the world is not fixed. Needs
> are infinite.

Actually, needs are fairly limited... wants less so, but even there no-one
can consume infinitely.

> It is only the resources (including labour) to fulfill them which are
> limited.

Once the available resources exceed the needs, and again when they exceed
the wants, the economics changes qualitatively.

The assumption that "needs (wants) are inifinite" is fair enough as long as
the resources can't match them; but once the balance shifts, it will be the
resources that will be effectively infinite.


Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]>
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jiribvisit the MAT LinuxPLC project at http://mat.sf.net
 
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