Is the advancement in technology directionless?

Replies

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  Ramani Aswath

  In 1860 the snail mail itself was a technological advancement in India.
  I remember an old SciFi story (by Asimov, Clarke or Heinlein). Humans have left the earth and gone off to other planets. Earth is almost forgotten. A space ship's Astro Nav Sphere shows up earth. The crew lands on earth and finds the natives in what they feel is a degenerated state. They live in huts wearing toga like dresses. The big cities are all abandoned. The visitors go to an abandoned building from which the time wrap machine started the original exodus. The local chief is unable to explain the technology. While in the still functioning system the visitor suddenly gets twisted up completely cross eyed. The local chief pulls him out and just presses two spots on the visitors temple and he recovers completely.
  When the visitor quizzes the chief, he tells that if you ask a modern man how a Neanderthal made fire the man would find it difficult to explain an ancient technology. Spacce warp was too old and forgotten. Current technology on earth did not require any machine to travel. They just used their antigrav belt and went by just thinking where to go.
  
  The point I am making is that all new things may look directionless while being developed. Silly, unusable ones fall by the way. Things like www developed by CERN physicists for their local communication span the globe and into space as well.
• 

  Ramani Aswath

  By the way the post master coming from a family which was friends for generations. I still get cards drawn and written by my grand daughter for occasions. They are keepsakes.
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  Ankita Katdare

  #-Link-Snipped-# Completely agree with the point you are putting across here. Did you check out the video embedded in the first post?
  
  When I first saw it, the video rekindled the age -old question that had sparked within me. Many factory workers are left out-of-job when the factory owner decides to replace them with a super-efficient, tirelessly-working machine. Won't same be the case with people who have spent the last 20, 30 or 40 years of their life doing the same job repeatedly day after day when automation eats up their jobs?
  
  When the day comes that manual cars are fully replaced by self driving cars (and that day is coming eventually) what does the 50 year old cab driver who is maybe 10 yrs from retiring do now that his job has been snatched away?
  
  An informed YouTube commentor disagrees with the point made in the video. He/She writes -
  

  The future is often very different to the past.
  In the future there will be no jobs, which means everything will be free. People struggle to understand what jobs actually are, jobs are a method to decrease scarcity. Money only exists due to scarcity. When all the jobs are gone there will be no money, no scarcity, no jobs, everything will be free.

  What is your take on that?
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  Saandeep Sreerambatla

  Watched the video and really a thought provoking one! I agree with it!
  
  Think about anything , CE forum, articles phones anything a robot can do anything! I love machines 😀
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  Divyaprakash KC

  One of the points come to my mind is that automation ultimately brings the population explosion to a standstill, then reduction and ultimately create an equilibrium ( this is not my original idea - read somewhere I can't recollect). This could be the case in the immediate future.
  
  In earlier days more offsprings means more hands to work and earn food. That was the case till 20-30 years back. Now with more automation in everything, we don't need hands and feet.
  
  I think what the youtube commentator said makes sense. The future where everything free might come alarmingly earlier than all of us thought.
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  Smiech

  One can grasp in some way the tendency or change of tendency in developments in technology. But nevertheless, no one can predict the future with 100% accuracy, especially centuries in advance.
  Yes, we are living in a society where everything changes very quickly. We also live in a throw away society, with worn out computers, kettles, fridges and freezers flooding into the waste stream at an unprecedented pace.
  In my opinion, technollogy is not a matter of direction, course or purpose. Speaking about advancement in technology implies placing human beings at the service of economic interests. They are the real compass that drive technological development.
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  Koushal Patel

  Divyaprakash

  automation ultimately brings the population explosion to a standstill, then reduction and ultimately create an equilibrium

  Could you please explain it for me.. Thanks in advance! 😀 #-Link-Snipped-#
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  Koushal Patel

  I do not agree that technology advancement is directionless!
  
  Technology makes life easy. Due to advancement in technology, the cost of various commodity are also decreased. We can take an example of a cell phone here.
  
  I strongly believe, everyone who are working for technology advancements/the firms who are investing money in this field, are working with an aim to make things easier than before, approachable than before.
  
  As #-Link-Snipped-# truely said, with the advent of automatic cars, the driver looses sources of bread. It is just an example of cons of technology advancements.
  But suppose we try to look into the other side of the coin, we can see various boons due to technology advancements. We can take example of various life saving devices hosted in Hospitals. We have cranes and other safety tools using which a laborer can work safely even at 111th floor. We have vehicles with advance ABS. And so many others.
  
  #-Link-Snipped-# - The hand written letter thing is OK and I agree to your points, It feels great when you receive such letters from your peers. They are for some planned occasions. We can send it now as well. Just because we do not want, we do not send it. But as you know, this medium of communication is not the same as it was decade back!
  
  So far, it has not become directionless, that's all I have to say! All the products which are produced are created with an aim of making something easier and I guess, the motto will remain the same. Please let me know if I am going wrong anytime. Thanks. 😀
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  Divyaprakash KC

  Koushal Patel

  Could you please explain it for me.. Thanks in advance! 😀 #-Link-Snipped-#

  I read that long back. Anyway, one of the reasons families ( earlier farmers or hunter-gatherers ) to have more children was the requirement of many working hands. A trait that continue in modern age as well , even though industrialization made manual labor redundant if not eliminated almost completely.
  
  I think that is what the author meant.
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  Koushal Patel

  Divyaprakash

  I read that long back. Anyway, one of the reasons families ( earlier farmers or hunter-gatherers ) to have more children was the requirement of many working hands. A trait that continue in modern age as well , even though industrialization made manual labor redundant if not eliminated almost completely.
  
  I think that is what the author meant.

  Do you agree with that author in current scene? 😀
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  Divyaprakash KC

  Koushal Patel

  Do you agree with that author in current scene? 😀

  Hmm.. Looking at the economics of manual labor, I think it is possible.
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  Shashank Moghe

  The advancement in technology is never directionless. Its like playing Age Of Empires with blind maps. Unless you go to a place, you don't know if there are resources worth your foray. In other words, unless you go someplace, you will never realize the worthiness of that place. There are millions of people advancing technology on all fronts. What might seem directionless to you, might be the purpose of somebody's life. We cannot judge since we are restricted to understand a fraction of the science/technology that's making progress around us.
  
  As #-Link-Snipped-# Sir rightly said, things that are not useful fall off the ladder eventually. But that doesn't make their invention/discovery useless. We have to invent/discover them in the first place to find them useless.
  
  I don't intend to sound heartless, but with every passing generation, humanity is moving towards applied brainwork than manual labour. Yes automation is replacing manpower, but that is only because of the increased levels of education (in general) and human brains are dominating physical labour. That is the pursuit of knowledge. I feel sad to see people losing jobs they did and are great at, for decades. But I do not blame technology for that. Robots can never (not in the foreseeable future) think as humans do, not at least at their level. Human brains will still be irreplaceable. In a way, technological leaps are forcing humanity to attain greater levels of education for the masses.
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  Ankita Katdare

  Couldn't agree more to what you've written here, but think about the questions that are being raised through such videos. Do you agree that humans who toil their brains the whole day are a fraction of the masses that engage in daily manual labour as a source of living? Not every human on earth today is capable of employing applied brainwork, as you mentioned, that is needed far above simple, robotic, repeated, manual labor. Surely you agree that there are billions who do work that can be easily automated. What about them? It would be great to discuss what would these people be doing when their jobs are taken away by automation. It shouldn't be a negative picture as painted in that video, but it would be important to think where they will land, what work they will do, how would they make a living? Or would the phrase 'making a living' be obsolete by then?
  
  What do you people think?
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  Shashank Moghe

  Well, I do agree automation is taking manual labour out of the picture. But as these videos usually do, they try to embellish facts and bring them to sound alarming! It is like writing in CAPS LOCK! Just imagine the state of the industry 50 years before today. Sure automation was just beginning to grow, people had the same fears. The fraction of the population engaged in brain-application jobs was much smaller than it is today - most of the working population was on physical labour. And automation was just beginning to threaten that security. Many lost their jobs, and since then, automation has only increased. But at any point in these 50 years, has there been a point where all the people engaged in physical labour went jobless because of automation? No. And that is the whole point. Automation will replace manual labour, but not suddenly. The rise of automation goes hand in hand with our progress to invest that surplus labour in more enriching jobs. Older people with no such skills retire over time, having done their share of manual labour all their lives, respect for that. But their children and grandchildren choose mental labour for a career. This is automation in the society. We adapt.
  
  The whole point of my really messy statement was that these videos show this problem as if tomorrow we wake up and machines have taken over, with all the labour sitting jobless. It is a gradual process, and ample time is available to adapt.
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  Ankita Katdare

  Here is an interesting take by Peter Diamandis. Peter is the author of the book 'Abundance: The Future Might Be Better Than You Think'
  
  Those who don't have time to read the book can go through his TED Talk titled 'Abundance is our future' -
  
  
  
  In line with some of the more optimistic responses on this discussion, here's something to feed our brains with - The belief that we'll invent, innovate and create ways to solve the challenges that loom over us.
  
  Quoting Peter -
  

  "I'm not saying we don't have our set of problems; we surely do. But ultimately, we knock them down."

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  Ramani Aswath

  Quote: With fears of automation-induced mass employment growing we need to act now to shape a robotic future that works for us and not against us write Prof Noel Sharkey and Dr Aimee van Wynsberghe. Endquote
  #-Link-Snipped-#
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  Kaustubh Katdare

  Yes, jobs are already being snatched away by computers and it's inevitable. I'm not sure about the dignity though. The problem is, there's no global policy in place to handle.
  
  We already have a discussion. I'm clubbing these two.