Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan
Well think back to 1980 and consider how far things have come since then ..
In 1980 (something) I owned my first computer which had 16kb of RAM and couldn't do a heck of a lot (I wrote a fair few Fighting Fantasy style games on it and played various other peoples games), my mobile phone was a landline which resided in my house, our high streets (in the UK) had a huge diversity of local shops and most people worked 'locally' to where they lived.
Today computers are hugely more powerful, my mobile phone is 1,000,000 more powerful than that first computer I owned and many people telecommute using technology to allow them to work from many miles away from where their office is located (4,000 in my case), the diversity of shops is decreasing as economies of scales increase etc.
Think about all the jobs which have been largely replaced by technology since then, then consider those which will disappear when retail is fully automated.
In 30 years time I expect cars to drive themselves (its beginning now with cars 'auto parking) - that takes out all taxi drivers, bus drivers, truck drivers, I expect nearly all retail positions to be replaced (inc. restocking, cooking and suchlike), in Florida a lot of people are employed cutting grass and suchlike - I actually have considered purchasing an 'automated mower' recently which would just go and cut the grass by itself ..... finally I'd be amazed if many current 'profesional' positions aren't at least partially replaced - for instance an intelligent agent diagnosing illness and then only being followed up with by a human doctor as required etc. and already within software engineering a lot of the more technical skills (ie. assembly language, intimate understanding of processors etc.) are only required by a small subset of programmers .... effectively simplifying what was originally a complex task, meaning more can be done by fewer people (same process as has happened in other areas, things will continually improve in this way until very few jobs exist imho).
PS - Theres 'no way cities will have built enough of them' ? - like theres no way that they could have built more mobile phones then there are people on the planet in the last 30 years?  |
A mobile phone is a lot different than a machine that can perform manual labor. I agree about retail positions, but I'm not convinced that self-driving cars are that close. There is a big difference between parallel parking a car vs actually navigating roads with other moving vehicles, pedestrians, etc.
I can't imagine that spending money on any kind of automated lawn mower would be a good idea right now. I have a roomba that sits unused because it can't handle a few obstacles and is a pain to clean. It's easier to just vacuum myself. I can't see how current technology would do a very good job with any yard that isn't a totally flat rectangle.
I don't know, it just seems to me that there is a massive leap from passive technologies like bar code scanners to things that need to operate and navigate within the actual environment we live in.