Slashdot Mirror
A US Apple Factory May Be Robot City
dcblogs writes "Apple's planned investment of $100 million next year in a U.S. manufacturing facility is relatively small, but still important. A 2009 Apple video of its unibody manufacturing process has glimpses of highly automated robotic systems shaping the metal. In it, Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice president of design, described it. 'Machining enables a level of precision that is just completely unheard of in this industry,' he said. Apple has had three years to improve its manufacturing technology, and will likely rely heavily on automation to hold down labor costs, say analysts and manufacturers. Larry Sweet, the CTO of Symbotic, which makes autonomous mobile robots for use in warehouse distribution, described a possible scenario for Apple's U.S. factory. First, a robot loads the aluminum block into the robo-machine that has a range of tools for cutting and drilling shapes to produce the complex chassis as a single precision part. A robot then unloads the chassis and sends it down a production line where a series of small, high-precision, high-speed robots insert parts, secured either with snap fit, adhesive bonds, solder, and a few fasteners, such as screws. At the end, layers, such as the display and glass, are added on top and sealed in another automated operation. Finally, the product is packaged and packed into cases for shipping, again with robots. "One of the potentially significant things about the Apple announcement is it could send a message to American companies — you can do this — you can make this work here," said Robert Atkinson, president of The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation."
You're assuming that any person can climb the "ladder" of jobs as long as those jobs exist. In reality, people are forced to stop when they reach a rung beyond their ability. Most people can't be trained to be software engineers. Most people can't be trained to be scientists. Most people can't be trained to be artists of any quality. But while the height a person can climb is limited, there is no fundamental limit to automation. Eventually automation puts the starting rung out of reach of the average person and you are left with a mass of people unable to find employment anywhere in the economy, and limited in their intellectual capacity to be trained to ever get one of the scarce jobs that do exist.
For those people there are three options:
1. Grinding attrition to reduce their numbers through geographic isolation (prisons, slums, ghettos), violent crime (police abandon these areas and leave them to be ruled by gangs), and various poverty related causes of death (famine, malnutrition, lack of healthcare).
2. Revolt and forcefully take enough to survive from those who have surplus resources
3. Get folded into some sort of peaceful wealth redistribution system that provides for their needs and allows them to reach their personal potential, become educated up to their ability, raise a family, and live with dignity.
It's interesting to note that option one is the inevitable result of free-market economics. It's the only end game that can play out once automation really kicks off in a society that completely shuns anything that seems like socialism. It's also, in my opinion, probably the most likely starting point. I think we're going to see all three of those stages in the next 100-200 years. We are already in stage one in many respects.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
All of that is true, more or less. Somehow it works for us, except when it doesn't.
I do envy the progress of Europe, but they face a different set of challenges. Imagine if all the nations of Europe were just states in a Federal Republic. Now imagine that Federal Government extracted billions of dollars each year to fund a military to kick around the world having adventures and spreading a specific political ideology. Imagine trying to sustain a European welfare system with that anchor tied around your neck. And after so many generations spent serving the Federal Government and its military people start really believing that's a better use of money than schools or trains or hospitals.
That's America.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
No, your unsupported claim does not address my rhetorical question.
I've heard a lot of people spout this "poor people live like they're rich" line but I've been poor and I've seen poor people. in fact I'm poor now and I can tell you I'm not eligible for anything but the student loans that keep me alive at a sustenance level and VA health care because I was in the military and honorably discharged. My father is poor and all he gets is the social security he paid into. He's physically incapable of working and if he didn't keep a garden he would starve. My mother is poor and she's eligible for nothing. She works as a nursing assistant. One bad job and she'll literally be out on the street.
My friend is poor, she also physically cannot work. on a good day she manages to clean her house. She gets medicine, a CPAP machine, and 700 dollars per month.
I don 't know where all these poor people living like kings are but I'm pretty damn sure they only exist in the minds of conservatives.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.