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Construction Firm Balfour Beatty Considers Drone Workers
cagraham writes "International engineering and construction firm Balfour Beatty is considering using drones in order to construct walls and monitor work sites, among other things. Beatty CIO Danny Reeves, speaking at the Fujitsu Forum, said drones could improve efficiency and safety on sites. He also talked of implementing sensors that would monitor worker's stress levels and bodily functions, and notify management when they became less effective, or mistake-prone, on the job."
The bigger question is how long are we gonna keep this broken system we call capitalism? Like it or not Star Trek had it right in that once the tech reaches a certain point capitalism doesn't work and I'd argue that for the majority we are already there.
Lets face facts, the entire basis of capitalism, trading labor for capital, is already dead. Like it or not the true moral of John Henry was that you could work yourself into a grave and still not beat the machine because it never gets tired, never hurts or gets sick, doesn't take bathroom breaks, it will work 24/7. Its quite obvious that we are already reaching the point that the majority simply isn't required to work as their labor is worthless when compared to the machine. Hell we are already at the point that corps like Walmart and Mickey D's have their wages paid by the government in the form of aid, why? Because if they had to pay a living wage they could just replace the workers with machines and end up better off, less errors, better performance, the human will always be at a disadvantage compared to the machine. You could replace the entire staff at a Mickey D with a modern computer controlled assembly line and it would run like Swiss watch, the people just aren't needed.
We have already seen the "just educate the masses herpa de derp" is a failure, the massive student loan defaults drive a stake through that particular lie, so what to do? I would argue the only thing one CAN do without having massive revolts is to simply pay the masses not to work, just as we pay farmers not to grow, because like it or not we are quickly reaching a point where the tech has made us humans obsolete.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Except that if you look closer at it, the utopia isn't a real utopia. If you don't follow the rules, you get re-educated ... where did I hear something like this, again? Ah, right, from communist countries. Where people really did not enjoy their re-education. And you get an operation which essentially gives the system complete control over you (the system can control your body for you, cut off your sensory perception and inject arbitrary artificial perceptions. And it is installed operatively, so you cannot just remove it. And apart from the word of a single person (who itself has that system implanted, so how can you trust that person, or even that you are really speaking to the person herself, for which you also have nothing but her word), you have no guarantee that it really will work for your best.
So why would this be set up? Well, to deal with the potential trouble makers, of course. The narrator of the story has several times tried to leave the zone she has to remain in. She's clearly someone who might cause serious trouble sooner or later. So she gets the control system implanted. Like all the other potential trouble makers. And to make sure they don't resist it, they get told this nice story about the Australian paradise. When they notice that they have been tricked, it is too late: They already have that system implanted in their head (and also, they have to remove something from the brain to install it; what function does this removed part normally perform? Maybe something related to critical thinking?).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.