http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robopocalypse
Image: farconville / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The novel, written by a guy with a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, postulates a day when robots --- or at least one master robot --- become smarter than people, revolt and try to wipe out the human race.
A half century ago Kurt Vonnegut's first novel presented a more benign image of American society after the machines triumphed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano
PLAYER PIANO postulates a world in which managers and other folks with "real" jobs all hold PhDs. They oversee the machines and do the important things that machines can't do. The rest of the US population works in make-work jobs, such as road crews, are provided housing, food, health care, recreational facilities, and live what Thoreau might have called "lives of quiet desperation."
Neither image is very appealing. Is there a better view?
I can imagine a paradise in which employees own the corporations where they work; robots do the boring, unpleasant, and repetitive, as well as the dangerous work; people only need to work, let's say, 10 or 15 or 20 hours a week... but because they own the firms, they make comfortable livings. Our education system teaches our citizens not only how to fit productively into these organizations, but also how to play an active part in their society and its government/legal system, and how to use their leisure time in fulfilling fashion.
Now there's a Utopia.
Technologically, it might soon be possible in the US, Europe, some other places on the planet.
Realistically, human nature won't let it happen. The rich will hold onto their wealth as tightly as they can. Most of the rest of us will also look out for number one. And the poor will go right on being poor. Those of us in the beleaguered middle class, who can't cut it or fall on hard times through no fault of our own, will join their swelling ranks.
Meanwhile, the machines will keep getting smarter and stealing more of our jobs. Our species will keep growing in raw numbers, so that more and more minds and hands will be redundant... surplus.
The rich have gotten richer partly due to globalization, changes in the tax rates, the inevitable decline of organized labor. But the two most significant reasons are population growth and proliferation of technology.
Control the first and spread the benefits of the second across a society, and that society can be the Utopia I suggest.
But I don't think that's likely to happen here in America. Do you?
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