Categories
Antiwork

The real implications of automation

TL;DR: Bill Gates is going to Terminator us so that we stop breathing his oxygen I'm seeing a lot of people positing one of two extremes, such as “We'll have HALO/40k tech by that time,” or “We're going to Fallout ourselves before then.” I'd like to offer an additional extreme position. Consider what most of our technological advancements have been in the last 50 to 100 years. Cars have been made faster and more comfortable to drive in, but that's not a huge development, particularly when you consider how car-centric countries like America are. Microwave ovens and refrigerators haven't seen much change since they became widely commercially available. Firearms still follow the same principles and mechanisms that they did in the 1920's. Railguns, lasers, flying cars, robots, cybernetics, space flight, and so many other things that were said would be commercially available for civilians have been “just a few years…


TL;DR: Bill Gates is going to Terminator us so that we stop breathing his oxygen

I'm seeing a lot of people positing one of two extremes, such as “We'll have HALO/40k tech by that time,” or “We're going to Fallout ourselves before then.” I'd like to offer an additional extreme position.

Consider what most of our technological advancements have been in the last 50 to 100 years. Cars have been made faster and more comfortable to drive in, but that's not a huge development, particularly when you consider how car-centric countries like America are. Microwave ovens and refrigerators haven't seen much change since they became widely commercially available. Firearms still follow the same principles and mechanisms that they did in the 1920's. Railguns, lasers, flying cars, robots, cybernetics, space flight, and so many other things that were said would be commercially available for civilians have been “just a few years away,” for at least 40 years now.

Our only real technological development in areas that see large-scale manufacturing and use have been computer technology, automation, and plastics. The former two have been contributing to making humans obsolete, while the last has been contributing to poisoning the entire biosphere.

As I've seen it, it seems like the only technology that's being invested in is technology that will help make working-class people unnecessary. Now, some people may attribute an altruistic bend to this, claiming that if all labor is automated, then humans will be free to higher pursuits, but I'm not so optimistic. With how things are going, all of that automation is going to belong to a handful of wealthy elites, who have proven time and time again that they don't want to share anything unless they get tenfold in return.

Once automation reaches a stage where it's self-sustaining, those wealthy elites aren't going to have anything they can get from us that they can’t get from Computers and machines If aliens arrive few centuries from now, they're going to find a few hundred humans living in extravagant luxury on top of the biggest graveyard ever made

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *