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ORIGINAL: NeedToUseYou

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ORIGINAL: DomYngBlk

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ORIGINAL: Fellow

Human robots are for some operations more efficient. Car assembly we see in the first video represents only welding the body frame. In order to install more complex parts using robotics the design of the car must radically change. Otherwise, I agree, the processes can be much more automatized. Arguably, outsourcing to China has seriously repressed the production technology development due to a cheap slave labor. So, they are catching-up as the labor cost increases.  US may at some point in the future buy automated factories from China. (Or, just get them as aid to a remote poor China colony).

I still believe that the source taken from is faulty. The Chinese will not now or in the foreseeable future invest in adavnced production technologies if it means creating unemployment. They run the country on the premise that they can keep the population the quietest if jobs are plentiful. The type of job is immaterial. We keep trying to impose or Western set of ideas on a culture that doesn't view things as we do. If we continue to do this we will be again wrong each time.....sort of like bringing "democracy" to the Arab world.......

This would possibly make sense, if china was the cheapest and only labor market in the world. They are in the same boat as we are, in that automation is a way of downplaying labor costs difference between regions.  The scale of the labor costs is just different, however, as has been happening labor costs in china are rising rather quickly.

US is to China
As
China is to Thailand (not sure, would have to look up the list of poorer countries but there are plenty).


Anyway, as far as it goes, this is a good thing in the long run, and this is by no means even close to what the future holds.

If you think about it, it must evolve this way, if we are going to bring more people out of extreme poverty. As in how much space do we waste facilitating humans in factories? How many gallons of gas are burned transporting people back and forth to factory jobs? How many years of life are wasted doing the most repetitive of tasks?

Alot of resources are wasted in the pursuit of humans doing mind numbing work. Really the world would be able to support more people at a higher standard of living if they were all replaced with robots.

I can't wait, anymore, for a day when no factory has a person it, or I'll go one step further and say when no factories like we know them exist at all.

Eventually, the goal is to simply fabricate as much as possible as near to the point of consumption, and the way that will evolve will probably be nanomachines that fabricate from a set of materials on site. I do think some items will still require old fashioned methods, like steel beams, but the junk we have in our house, well, it's all plastic and computer chips for the most part.

So, assuming that future happens, you will go to "the store", which is one of those fabricating machine, and pick up the item you ordered (or delivered more likely), most likely online, and it will make one just for you to exact specifications. There will be no mall, There will be no mom and pops, there will be no radio shack. The brands will just represent engineering, as MTD won't be a badge on a  physical object, but a set of cad drawings to be fed in a machine for a price for writes to do so.

So, what will there be, there will intellectual property.. As in if you design a Hubcap design that is just ultra cool, you can put it in the "the store catalog", and someone will have to pay you for the rights to "print" it out. What will this mean???????????

Well, it will mean a world, that instead of having 50 couches to select from there very well could be 10000000 designs to select from. TV stands same thing, computer cases same thing, eyeglass frames same thing, brooms, carpets, etc... Same thing.

Now, here's the good part though, there will be "generic" free designs, or open source, or common designs that would be free (as far as licensing), to anyone, and you'd only pay for the raw materials, power, and machine fee to print (most likely eventually that will be very, very, very, small fee, seeing either the town will buy one, or competition would be great).

So, how do the poor get money to buy anything? Well, taxes, on the intellectual property fees, though in the near term, that would mostly likely only afford them generic designs.

So, taken to the logical conclusion, and if done in a rational manner (make items from as much as possible from fully recyclable materials). A fully automated world, or a much more automated world, would require less roads, less construction, less energy consumption, and provide more free time, to pursue what you wanted.

It's really not that far fetched, big companies are working on such things, slowly but surely it will happen.

And then and only then, will I switch from a mostly libertarian position to a socialist. We aren't there yet though. Probably 30 years minimum 100 years max, IMO, some days I'm more optimistic or pessimistic. But it'll get there.

We are already seeing it, I'll be suprised if another format comes out after Blu-ray, or rather if it will matter, as Entertainment in the form of video, music, and games, is obviously going to go entirely internet shortly, there goes a few hundred factories. Newpapers will be dead before long, as in physical form, Magazines, etc...  though admittedly those are the easiest to remove all connection to the physical as possible seeing they are just content objects to begin with. The computer itself, will largely be relegated to the cloud, even, and your "computer" will mostly function as an interface, and be near free.

Anyway, the way I see it, the future, is almost entirely the realm of intellectual property management, and as far as I'm concerned that is a good thing.