Slashdot Mirror

How long before something like the Vertebrane system solves this problem completely? Honestly - how long before truly "embedded" (as in "embedded in the human body") technology is available?

The ultimate name for a smart kid: Marshall Brain

Since noone here has linked it, I think that Marshal Brains take one things is interesting, as it directly relates to this. He has two papers, one is a fiction called MANNA and another more fact based look at robotic automation called Robotic Nation That deals with some of this stuff. Good read either way.

Since noone here has linked it, I think that Marshal Brains take one things is interesting, as it directly relates to this. He has two papers, one is a fiction called MANNA and another more fact based look at robotic automation called Robotic Nation That deals with some of this stuff. Good read either way.

This sounds like the MANNA story by Marshall Brain. It's a good read.

Allow me to recommend Manna, a short story by Marshall Brain that explores some interesting ideas about technology and technology interfaces for the near, and not so near future.

1. Keep your McJob, but put up with biometrics in the workplace, or...
2. Keep your privacy, but put up with your new robotic replacements :)

--

I guess letting companies having biometric information could be the beginning of a long and slippery slope, but I can't really see a worst case scenario... someone care to visualize it for me?

You didn't hear it from me, but Wal-Mart is in secret talks with Sony to produce walking Greeter Robots, Checkout Clerk Robots, Stockboy Robots, Cleanup Robots, and Union-Buster Robots! In related news, McDonalds is laying off 95% of their human resource grunts to be replaced by Burger Flipping Bots, and Spit-in-a-Cops-Burger Bots.

Getting rid of all those pesky human employees means much, much lower prices for... for... hey, where did all the customers go? Waiting in breadlines?

--

Correct me if I am wrong, my western history is a bit rusty. What was so bad about the fall of rome? It took about 1000 years and simply split or dissolved over time. Considering is spanned the whole of the known world, its not too hard to see why. It didn't just collapse one day did it?

I don't think the grandparent is taking into consideration the global nature of corporation. If america is indeed run by corporations, these corps. are all multnational, with investors from all countries in the world.
All countries in the world have an interest in the American economy, because our economy effects all other economies. I can't find any evidence to the fact that USA could collapse without bringing down the global economy also.

In two generations, corporations will be even more ubiquitous, and economically, country borders will hardly matter. Of course there will still be patriotism and border defense. The USA will not collapse, but we will be less important then we have been in the twentieth century. And there will still be large gaps between rich and poor. Of course this could all be wrong if Marshal Brain is correct

You take, for instance, a different view of what Jesus meant than the apostles did.

That's news to me. In what way do you think so?

You assert that we should believe that you are correct, while ``everyone else is being fooled''

Certainly not. The people doing the fooling, with whom the top-heavy wealth of the U.S. is being densely concentrated, aren't being fooled. Most people are apathetic, and don't vote, so they also don't qualify as being fooled, for whatever that's worth. But the people doing the fooling are unlikely to spend much more than they think they need to in order to remain in control of their destiny -- at the expense of those one-in-fifteen single mothers who can't afford food (or a car!) -- which means they only try to fool only a comfortable majority of the body politic, and certainly not everyone.

Here's an essay about the concentration of wealth in the U.S., couched in an argument to steeply increase the minimum wage, with which I generally agree. The facts pertaining to the concentration of wealth, rising CEO salaries, etc., are as indisputable as the pointless growth of the U.S. prison population -- and very fundamentally related, I think.

such basic errors as confusing per capita GDP with mean income, or asserting that US gubernatorial elections are held in March, merely heightens the absurdity of the situation

At least I admitted all the errors you caught as soon as you pointed them out. I am tempted to post my enumeration of your own obvious errors in this thread. Even if I were to give you the benefit of the doubt and count only my corrections that you didn't contest, I think I would be able to come up with several more than you might be comfortable with.

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to explain your views, especially those that I had the opportunity to correct. Without this discussion I would not know, as I do now, how to respond to someone who says that the poor in the U.S. drive automobiles and have no "internationally meaningful" form of poverty. I should have not been caught off guard by that, because I remember when Reagan said there were no hungry people in the U.S. The image of the poor wearing designer clothing that has been painted so vividly through the decades (in Reagan's day it was $100 tennis shoes, IIRC) is truly very powerful, and I will endeavor to remember and respect its potency. I was relieved that you merely countered the contradiction from UNICEF's child poverty rankings with numbers from the USDA, and glad we didn't have to delve further into, say, the proportion of homeless in the U.S., which I find quite depressing.

On a positive note, I hope that your agreement -- recognizing the utility of at least some tax-based entitlements, which took a few days for you to admit -- will help you explore more about the optimum extent and parameters of such programs, in light of your newfound knowledge of the child hunger levels. It is good to know that you don't really want the kind of pure capitalism where the orphaned, disabled, and elderly are forced to depend solely on chairity, because you know as well as I that there's not enough chairity to go around, and even if every single person tithed and those working at chairities volunteered or lived like paupers, there would still not be enough to prevent widespread hunger, homelessness, and the prevalence of associated diseases that affect us all.

And I pray that we will both strive to be more like Jesus without distraction from the apologists of any age.

I think you're right in saying capitalism is doomed and you're right about what will cause it's doom. Only a bit more is needed to trigger it's fall: robots. Read this story if you're interested in such things; it gives a good indication of what will happen once robots become good enough to replace most jobs (which imho is inevitable) and describes a few scenarios which we might expect. The conclusion is: capitalism is doomed but it might take a few decades.

Marshall Brain wrote about this in his online novel Manna. The later chapters concerning the "Australia Project" bear a striking resemblance to the never-implemented 1930s-era theory of Technocracy (The actual main Technocracy site is rather ill-organized).

Marshall Brain wrote about this in his online novel Manna. The later chapters concerning the "Australia Project" bear a striking resemblance to the never-implemented 1930s-era theory of Technocracy (The actual main Technocracy site is rather ill-organized).

Jobs in many industries will go unmanned.

Personally I think it would be nice if when our experienced Air Force pilots get displaced by unmanned craft, that these guys can find jobs in the space program.

Have you read the Robotic Nation or manna articles by Marshall Brian.? Btw... MarshallBrain is the founder of howstuffworks.com. They descibe a possible future where robots may eliminate most horrible minimum wage jobs... and more. I think this could be a problem, but you judge for yourself. It's only one prespecitve.

Have you read the Robotic Nation or manna articles by Marshall Brian.? Btw... MarshallBrain is the founder of howstuffworks.com. They descibe a possible future where robots may eliminate most horrible minimum wage jobs... and more. I think this could be a problem, but you judge for yourself. It's only one prespecitve.

Interesting this topic came up, as earlier I stumbled across a 'story' (prediction?) by Marshall Brain, the guy who started 'HowStuffWorks.com', all about a future where robots ruled all. It reads like this stuff actually happened, although it's set about twenty years into the future. You can read it online here. It's called "Manna."

It starts out talking about a computer program called "Manna" that companies start to use to run their processes. Each version gets better and better, and it eventually becomes smart enough to fire idle workers, and outsource. The steps from there to the incarceration of humankind are presented well.

The main character is then offered an 'escape' to a world where robots are slaves, as opposed to humans, and where the concept of money does not exist. Anyway, all great mind stretching stuff, and still a work in progress, as the next "installment" isn't out till October 15th.

This sounds a lot like This story.

Actually this sounds a lot like Gramatica. Gramatica was the grammer checker that was an optional component with WordPerfect for DOS and later a standard component with the Windows version. It was written by a team comprised of both computer scientists and professors of English. One of the interesting features was the scoring feature which would give you a rough estimate of the grade level of your writing. It would also give you statistics and compare them to a selection of famous works.

• Augmented Reality. Quake2025 will be played outdoors.
• Robots take over Work. Marshall Brain talks a lot about this. So, when your job goes to the robots, what are you going to do while you retrain for one of the few jobs not done by robots? Would you rather give up the notion that you must work for money and housing, or would you have us place you in an enormous welfare dormatory? Something to think about, the next time you self-check-out at the grocery store.
• Community Networks. You and your neighbors are well connected. You've got your own currency, and you've got things you want to share (for a small exchange of some form currency) tagged with RFID, for easy registration on the local network. Does every single resident in an apartment really need to have their own vacuum cleaner? Does someone need a couch, when you're throwing yours away?
• Micropayments. I already use BitKeeper because I keep up with Scott McCloud and Patrick Farley. I will probably pay for some OpenSource dev's book one day for a quarter or two.
• Semantic Web. Your computer will have the intelligence of the Internet. When you read someone's review of a movie, your computer will be gathering local showtimes and listings. This is a major destabilizing technology. Markets will be cut and dry, not something that you have to deduce. It doesn't matter if you're a 16 year old that wants to cut lawns, or Sony- this will change your life.
• Genetic Engineering. This will take a little longer to figure out, but we'll get there. In response, humanity will fragment into hoards of species.
• Visual Language. Comics, notations, shorthands, schematics, visual explanation boxes. Write in one notation, read in another. You'll be able to learn two semesters of Chem in half a semester, with the properly coded books.
• Programming is Easy, incidentally. Programming gets easier and easier, every year, if you haven't noticed.
• Big Education Changes. Something big will happen in education, but I don't know what. I believe it will have to do with self-education, the certification process, and canonicalization. This is on top of the changes coming via Visual Language.

One of the most exciting things happening now is Aggregators. There was a slashdot story on them just a day ago. They really change everything about the web, wiki, etc.,. Everything becomes real-time.

Robots will be taking over services...

Date: 2003-08-31

hi Marshall Brain,

i have always enjoyed your howstuffworks.com tremendously.

recently in the past month i started to read your online diary and also your Robitc Nations series of essays. I cannot help but get a sense of a crank.

i have read many of your social or financial related articles from howstuffworks.com, such as the basic workings of banking, advertisement, money, stocks, leadership etc. So, i'm certain that you as an engineering geek is familiar with the basics of economics and corporations, as in contrast to the vast scientist type who are totally ignorant of social sciences.

however, your articles comes across as by an inciting crank. Your robotic nations series, for example, in general has the tone of an alarmist, as if you would benefit from an ensuing panic.

yours reads like a sophistry. An article on the surface seems to call for awareness of a potential problem, a problem that nobody can be sure of. But the content and style has many subtle flaws and imbued properganda.

as an example, i quote from your latest article:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm

--begin quote

[best seller Harry Potter's author J K Rowling had problems subsisting and the book was rejected multiple times.] ... Society as it is designed today wastes an unbelievable amount of human potential through mechanisms just like these.

At the very least, Rowling's story shows us that the economic theory underpinning our world contains an element of dysfunction. It should not be the case that highly creative people sitting on top of billion dollar ideas have to go on welfare (and reach "one of the lowest points" in their lives by doing so) in order to express themselves. By removing this dysfunction,...
--end quote

The situation of J K Rowling is an unfortunate one, and i would like to see our society change for this. However, your statement "Society as it is designed today wastes an unbelievable amount of human potential through mechanisms just like these." is outrageous and absurd.

Societies are not designed. And, it doesn't "waste" things. Waste implies a crition. Throwig away a burger is wasting. But taking my burger and drive to nearest city to give to a homeless is more wasteful. And, what you mean by the lurid "unbelievable amount of human potential"? It is said that all humans are unique and has vast potential. By your implication, no society could ever not waste an "unbelievable amount of human potential" .

The situation where people involved with non-profit oriented artifacts (such as artists, writers, historians...) will often have a problem subsisting is indeed an unfortunate one. Artisans being artisan because they have not choosen to be a businessman, and probably not much interested in making money, and for these obvious reasons they are poor. This is just how things are, which we may call it "social physics". If we don't like it that way, we could then be aware of it and change our society. However, it is harmful to propergate the implication that there is an evil doer or collection of greedy businessman forcing artisans to their sorry condition.

In your last article you also mentioned Linux.

--Begin quote
The Linux phenomenon specifically, and the open source phenomenon in general, point in the same direction. Linux is one of the best operating systems on the planet, and it is free. It has been created by thousands of programmers who have donated their time and skills to the creation of Linux. What if we create an economy that encourages the creation of things like Linux? If people could make a living without being employees, we could unlock an unimaginable ocean of human creativity and human potential.
--end quote

This i find ridiculous. Linux is perhaps one of the best operating system on the planet for a computing professional who love free things, but it

Be more careful when you're plagiarizing. :)

It's a facinating essay.