Will Discovery promote the natural sciences?
- Thread starter INACTIVEUSS Einstein
- Start date
my god...
Automation will probably eliminate most jobs, so millions of lives, including people on this forum, will be effected, I think. Previous industrial revolutions were labor intensive, but I'm not sure new industry will arise to replace jobs as this one isn't labor intensive.
Shows like BSG basically seem to condemn humanity to their fate, whenever a major societal problem like this emerges - whereas an optimistic and rational show like Star Trek would point out that while we are by no means guaranteed to navigate a crisis rightly, we do always have a choice to do the rational thing, and find a common ground. That was also the attitude of The Martian - solve your way out of problems.
Shows like BSG basically seem to condemn humanity to their fate, whenever a major societal problem like this emerges - whereas an optimistic and rational show like Star Trek would point out that while we are by no means guaranteed to navigate a crisis rightly, we do always have a choice to do the rational thing, and find a common ground. That was also the attitude of The Martian - solve your way out of problems.
I suggest you fully read up on that sham going down in Wisconsin and get back to us.
Yeah and the trouble will come when alot of people don't make any money anymore.......who is going to buy their stuff then?? Automated or not...
There are new industries and new jobs created every year. Automation itself is actually going to be creating a substantial amount of jobs in the coming decade when manufacturing returns to North America and Europe to a large extent. You will need people managing these facilities, working in HR, marketing, that sort of thing.
I work in a very dynamic industry (which didn't exist as recently as the 90's) and we face these issues on an almost quarterly basis. That is, our skills are being substituted by some kind of an automation, which we, ourselves, are responsible for creating/organizing, but then a new area opens up that requires a human touch. It's an interesting race, frightening, but interesting. Just two years ago I was part of a team that devised a system that made what 90% of my previous job was obsolete.
Whatever you do, if you're a driver of any sorts, get retrained asap. There will not be drivers of any sorts in the near future.
I work in a very dynamic industry (which didn't exist as recently as the 90's) and we face these issues on an almost quarterly basis. That is, our skills are being substituted by some kind of an automation, which we, ourselves, are responsible for creating/organizing, but then a new area opens up that requires a human touch. It's an interesting race, frightening, but interesting. Just two years ago I was part of a team that devised a system that made what 90% of my previous job was obsolete.
Whatever you do, if you're a driver of any sorts, get retrained asap. There will not be drivers of any sorts in the near future.
See, this is why they don't use money in the Federation!
I kill a little time up here - if it weren't for all the non-Trek fun down below in TNZ you'd rarely see my curvy backside.
You think i'm here because I'm "intrigued and inspired" by Trek's make-believe tech? That was the subject of the post, in case you missed that.
Last edited:
So you balance out the effects of automation within your own company whilst happily working towards wiping an entire labour segment employing millions of people out of society?
Not anyone's fault, just how capitalism works. It's an issue that has the potential to be really depressing - systemic unemployment, and being demonized by the political class for being unemployed, will continue until the sons and daughters of politicians start being effected seriously - probably well after the lives of millions have been ruined by depression and suicide. Until then, the political class here in Britain at least like to paint the unemployed as the villain; the language during the last 5 years was incredible in it's viciousness, even whilst more middle class degree graduates fell into permanent unemployment. I'm almost certain that people on this forum I'm speaking to now will die or suffer serious illness due to this lack of forethought or willingness to face the issue. But I'm also confident that a solution can be found if people are willing, because one thing recent history does spell out is that things we once thought of as acceptable slowly became seen as barbaric - and letting someone stew in mental illness on the dole, whilst a robot renders them a redundant component, may one day be seen as the barbarism that it is. The world does not necessarily have to become the stratified dystopia of Elysium - Star Trek posited that a moneyless post-scarcity society would emerge eventually, just as countries like Finland experiment with universal income - but it also depicted that things like the Bell Riots would come first.
Last edited:
There is a guy on YouTube who does some pretty nice videos on hard-science-fiction concepts - he seems to have a military background, and is very scientifically literate - I've just been watching over some of his stuff again and thought it might be something others here would be interested in - mainly because it would be amazing to see this kind of detail reflected on Star Trek (which has in the past often thrown out things like this in casual exposition, to great effect):
Which would also be true. I'm not one for blaming people for social systems they were born into. Not a popular opinion, but I stand by in anyway.
No, I don't balance them out, it happens on it's own - new opportunities arise for humans as something more menial becomes automated. This has generally been true over the course of the last 200 years of automation. The jobs money people were doing 100 years ago wouldn't be attractive to people now and yet with these easier jobs people have more wealth and personal freedom thanks to progress. My own industry is just a more extreme example of this transition because everything changes every 6-12 months but no one is fired due to being obsolete as a result of automation, instead they fill more creative niches.
Yay....happy future to us all...just get retrained...you fucking dog, learn new tricks!
Well maybe we just obsolete ourselves...if we do not die from all the shit we dump in everything first!
Maybe we should retrain ourselves to eat plastic and such....
The world of boxes.....I hope I die before this "glorious" new future hits us at warp 90.
Well maybe we just obsolete ourselves...if we do not die from all the shit we dump in everything first!
Maybe we should retrain ourselves to eat plastic and such....
The world of boxes.....I hope I die before this "glorious" new future hits us at warp 90.
There is serious doubt cast on the idea that things balance out. The industrial revolution was labor intensive, it actually created new jobs and industries. People moved from the countryside into cities. The digital revolution however may not necessarily follow the same pattern, because history is not cyclical - it happens differently every time. Quite a lot of people suspect that 'balance out' thesis is like the 'trickle down' thesis - an urban myth that makes executives feel better about their industries, and the public more content.
Thats not to say that we should be luddite or anything - robots are great tools, but as Spock said in The Original Series, I wouldn't want to serve one - in this context, a system that existed only to maximise profit, run increasingly by algorithm, that expects humans to retrain into more and more stressful roles.
Thats not to say that we should be luddite or anything - robots are great tools, but as Spock said in The Original Series, I wouldn't want to serve one - in this context, a system that existed only to maximise profit, run increasingly by algorithm, that expects humans to retrain into more and more stressful roles.
Just as an addendum, from my understanding of history, this rule has always applied:
"Whenever labour is in short supply, it has gained more negotiation-power."
Thus, the black death, which wiped out 33%-50% of Europe's population is sometimes seen as a transformation-point, because land owners had to pay higher wages to those who survived, drastically reducing inequality (albiet by a means we would never want), and the ratio of land to peasants increased, lowering food prices, etc.
The robot revolution does the opposite for the former; labour is in abundance, although goods prices may drop. I can only see some kind of universal income as the answer - but it has to be global, or it won't work.
"Whenever labour is in short supply, it has gained more negotiation-power."
Thus, the black death, which wiped out 33%-50% of Europe's population is sometimes seen as a transformation-point, because land owners had to pay higher wages to those who survived, drastically reducing inequality (albiet by a means we would never want), and the ratio of land to peasants increased, lowering food prices, etc.
The robot revolution does the opposite for the former; labour is in abundance, although goods prices may drop. I can only see some kind of universal income as the answer - but it has to be global, or it won't work.
Yes, within the industry, but from what you are saying at the cost of millions of professional driver's jobs?
Yes, just like in Star Trek, people don't stay on Earth while machines go forth into the galaxy. So the two shows are very much like each other.
If we're going to spread though the galaxy, that will involve not staying here on Earth. And this is what Star Trek shows, adventurers, miners, explorers, colonists and Starfleet.
Humanity growing and expanding, that's Star Trek.
The Expanse's Belters = TOS: Mudd's Women Dilithuim Miners.
Or more why they don't use automation for everything in the Federation, in Star Trek we see people doing things, making thing, making the decisions.
Similar threads
