What I have often found in discussions involving robot labor is that people dismiss the suggestions on the grounds of impracticality. However, when pressed, the financial capability to mass-produce the things or for people to get them isn't questioned - it's whether or not humans would just become lazy and uninspired all the time.

People actually seem to ENJOY the idea that they'll do all kinds of useless and pointless work because they're too worried about robots doing it for them, freeing them up to do whatever they want.

Dr. Asimov put forth the idea, in his essay, titled "Future Fantastic" in his anthology Robot Visions that humans, given the chance to unleash creative impulses not just by the thousands or even hundreds of thousands, but by the millions and hundreds of millions, will seize on that chance to create a society more beautiful than any of our present-day imaginings could possibly capture.

He points to past eras in history where, when people have been able to get others to do the work for them, and gain leisure time as a result, a flourishing of arts, sciences, literature and beauty results. But until now, people always had to get other humans to do the work for them. Now we can make machines, that is, robots, to do this. All humans, therefore, now stand to be able to pursue whatever mind-and-life-enriching things they want to do, and to do whatever they want with it.

Who could not want such a society?

They are hardy buggers too. As an experiment, I've tried just about everything to stop their work, but even after scouring the floor and eliminating all food sources, dusting their refueling/replication depot with boiling water and a follow up with "comet" cleanser, and using a chemical "off" switch for these bio-units, they still insist on assisting me in keeping the floor clean.

I seem to effect their numbers only temporarily, and they seem to have a complex program that allows them to learn-- they avoid the chemical off switches now.

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However, when pressed, the financial capability to mass-produce the things or for people to get them isn't questioned ...

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It is by me. Also the sources of the energy and raw materials needed to produce the silly things, the ecological effects of manufacturing them, the practicality of disposing of them when they're inevitably junqued ... (we can't even, you'll notice, dispose properly of more than a fraction of the obsolete computers that go out of service every year).

And furthermore, I've come to believe that there's not really any such thing as a labour-saving device. Labour is conserved; it's only converted from one form to another.

[ July 31, 2002: Message edited by: 'lance ]

At work we keep records on everything, collect data that no one will ever look at, and even when we do look at data there's so much of it that no one can really understand it.

We, as a (North American) society, have consistently shown that we are far more interested in consuming simple fluff such as most television, video games, fast food etc. than in enriching ourselves and the world. If we had more spare time we would just be creating a larger market for all the *stuff* we'd need to fill in the time.

Besides, as 'lance said, there are no real labor saving devices. Many of our inventions up to this point have been made with the goal of making life easier or reducing work load yet we certainly haven't become less harried as a society. As our machines produce faster and more efficiently, we are expected to either keep up or be replaced. Computers in office places haven't reduced the work loads, they've just increased the amount of paper that gets shuffled around.

P.S. I want to hang that in my kitchen! Hee hee.

[ July 31, 2002: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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It is by me. Also the sources of the energy and raw materials needed to produce the silly things, the ecological effects of manufacturing them, the practicality of disposing of them when they're inevitably junqued ... (we can't even, you'll notice, dispose properly of more than a fraction of the obsolete computers that go out of service every year).

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Assume for the moment that we actually get this recycling business straightened out.

One thing that has generally been true since 1973 is that the emount of energy needed to produce one dollar of GDP has been dropping steadily. This would imply that with the right energy base and with deliberate choice of easily recyclable materials (hardened plastics, ceramics, light metals, et cetera), robots could be produced with relatively little ecological impact.

As an aside, one of the greatest uses for robotic labor would be environmental clean-up of toxic waste sites.

Would you want you or a machine standing in the muck guaranteed to give you ten colon cancers by the time you're 40?

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Besides, as 'lance said, there are no real labor saving devices. Many of our inventions up to this point have been made with the goal of making life easier or reducing work load yet we certainly haven't become less harried as a society. As our machines produce faster and more efficiently, we are expected to either keep up or be replaced. Computers in office places haven't reduced the work loads, they've just increased the amount of paper that gets shuffled around.

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This is only because the amount of leisure time has remained steady since the 1970s, an anomaly in industrial civilization. Please recall that as recently as the 1930s and 1940s, people regularly worked 10 to 12 hours a day, sometimes 6 days a week.

That has fallen off to the 8-hour day, and should, if trends in the 1960s had continued, have fallen off to the 3 or 4 hour day.

Thus we cannot blame "labor-saving" devices per se for the lack of leisure time; instead we have to look to structural issues with our economy and our society that combine the inculcation of a sense of self that only comes from labor with a rising chronic unemployment rate due to the lack of political will to force reductions in work hours to increase employment.

The lack of political will, of course, combines with a cost of living that virtually mandates that someone work about 35 to 40 hours a week or even more just to stay alive.

In short, we have been shoved into a trap by people who have little interest in bettering the lives of workers and thus creates a situation which prompts exactly the sort of responses I've seen here:

1. "There's not going to be any more leisure time". Asked and answered above.
2. "We wouldn't make use of it." People who feel that their lives have no meaning generally get this way because their work doesn't let them get anywhere, and their mental energy is drained off by this futility, so they take refuge in the idiot box or the playstation instead of a good book.

Remember when I rhetorically asked what happens to a human who doesn't dream?

[ August 04, 2002: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

Listen up good people -- we now, find ourselves, standing low upon the very edge of destruction...

So let's get started on our space elevator.

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"With the space elevator you could easily have an operating tourist system and a small city up there," Edwards said. "The space elevator would essentially allow the world to participate."

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wired news

Food. Shelter. Medicine.

[ 04 February 2003: Message edited by: flotsom ]

Actually, we have plenty of robots already, such as our washing machine, dishwasher, garage door opener... even our pool cleaner (if you have a pool). The only problem is that they aren't Anthropomorphic robots, like on the Jetsons. That's what people really want: human shaped robots with artificial intelligence, capable of doing any task that we can. Don't hold your breath waiting, mind you. Honda set the world of robotics on its ear a few years back with a two-legged robot that can climb stairs without falling on it's metal ass. Needless to say, washing the car or darning a sock is a ways away.

On the other hand, moving sidewalks like they have at Spadina station would make Toronto considerably more Jetson-esque, no?

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Remember how computers were going to make us a "paperless" society?

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Should I buy a generator? We cannot move. We simply cannot. What does it take to hook up one's own generator?

How to Survive the Post Human Era

If you want to look to science fiction for a vision of the future, put down Asimov and read the Dune series. In Herbert's universe, the 11th commandment was "Thou shalt not make a machine in the image of a man's mind". Computers are outlawed, and humans trained to perform their functions.

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He had dozed through most of them, but he remembered the Settler economists and how they had blathered on about supply and demand, how no Spacer world had experienced a labor shortage in thousands of years. How unlimited free labor had in turn eroded the value of raw materials down to nothing. The lecturers had said something about the law of supply and demand. and how with supply of everything essentially infinite, demand--and price--had dropped to zero.

Robots completely overturned any concept of a market economy. The use, and even the concept, of money had evaporated away almost entirely.

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(Emphasis mine)

"We are the Robots..."

Edited to add: Is there anyway we can correct the spelling of Labour in the title?

[ 17 March 2004: Message edited by: HalfAnHourLater ]

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Originally posted by HalfAnHourLater:
Edited to add: Is there anyway we can correct the spelling of Labour in the title?

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