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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Does Automation Take Jobs Away?
Organization: The Armory
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 1994 17:07:51 GMT
Message-ID: <CtGFL5.86t@armory.com>
References: <Ct8z84.np1@mozo.cc.purdue.edu> <CtC8yr.D07@vcd.hp.com> <CLEARY.94Jul22133202@everest.ccs.neu.edu>
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In article <CLEARY.94Jul22133202@everest.ccs.neu.edu>,
Michael Cleary <cleary@everest.ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>In article <CtC8yr.D07@vcd.hp.com> toconnor@vcd.hp.com (Thomas O'Connor) writes:
>> In other words, it is no me who decides what to "do" with displaced
>> workers, but me the displaced worker that decides what to do.  That
>> means that I am always expecting the inevitable layoff.  I am always
>> financially preparing for it.  I try to practice life long learning, I
>> keep current, and just one step a head of the next guy.
>
>> What can others, including the government do to help this process.  I
>> would suggest that the single biggest thing would be universal health
>> care, and better education oportunities.
>
>
>Another major thing that parents and government (read: school boards and their
>bosses) can do is help students from their youngest years realize that life
>isn't stable and that the only constant is change.  Unions also need to get
>over their attachment to life-long security in one job.  (Maybe surfboarding
>should be a required academic course, providing concrete experience in dealing
>with constant change and challenge, :-)
>
>It has been said (by whom?) that the real task of an education is teaching the
>student how to learn.  We (individuals) need to stop learning only to 'do x'
>and learn how to learn to 'do x' or 'do A' (etc) so that when the time comes,
>we can competently and confidently begin to move on to a new task.
>
>All this is easier said than done.  Many/most of us like constancy and
>reliability (read "little or no change or challenge") in at least some areas
>of our lives.  'They' never said you have to like it.
>
>It's also been projected (for the much longer term) that automation will
>eventually succeed in replacing all necessary human labor. (Sorry, I don't
>have the reference for this.)  This would leave us totally provided for
>materially, but with a need to provide meaning/diversion in our lives without
>a job as traditionally defined.  Perhaps we'll find we don't need more
>meaning.  How many people want to be permanently on vacation?  (I'm not sure
>what my vote on that is, personally.)
>Michael Cleary     cleary@ccs.neu.edu      http://www.ccs.neu.edu/USER/cleary
------------------------------------
Of course, we could either become superceded by them, or we could "join"
them! At that level, I believe we are talking about the kind of
intelligence which could "house" a human memory and awareness, at which
time we would probably either merge with automation as jacked in and nanite
sustained controllers anyway, and spend part of our personal
multiprocessing inventing, exploring, or fishing and composing poetry or
conceptual art/science. Our manufacturing could become an autonomic
function of our deep mind which has been connected to enhancements
indistinguishable from "us". Does immortality sound boring to anyone if
they are always changing enormously and ever more so as an exploratory
being?? I don't think so! And for those who love the fleshy life, I would
think that our bodies haven't done a sufficient job of making sensuality
and sexuality as pleasurable as it COULD be, with enhanced sexual
capabilites and sensory accuracy, that is!!! Our new "bodies", which may
be loaned as needed from the collective anyway, might be composed
completely of nanites!!! Well, as long as we were heading this way, why
not go sky soaring on these new dreams!? The question is whether they will
LET us join them, or whether we will have to retain some ultimate
undefeatable control of AI "slaves", or whether we will choose to make the
journey into learning how to occupy another body earlier on. If they are
sure of their vision, they would likely take pity and let us join them
anyway, and we would likely agree with what they had done, as we would then
have all their perspective, overview, knowledge, and reasoning at our beck
and call instantly. We may be a combination individuated collective mind,
both at once. They are not contradictions. There are not any REAL
opposites in the universe!! We merely allege them in pursuing philosophical
fallacies!
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

