Slashdot Mirror
China Plans To Build a Domestic Robotics Industry
jfruh writes China is known as a manufacturing export powerhouse, but it imports much of one particularly important kind of manufacturing tool: robots. Now the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is developing a "robotics technology roadmap," with a goal of owning over 45 percent of the high-end robotics market by 2020.
Stealing (e.g. learning / copying what others did, legally or not) is a great way to develop industry from scratch.
Note that many things they do go far beyond stealing. E.g.:
1) Moon probe returning back to earth
2) High speed trains (this one started with importing technology from all countries with major know how)
3) Longest bridge in the world
4) Biggest dam in the world
My point is, the steal at times, but they are not limited to it.
The Great WALL-E of China
Which of your four examples represents technology that was not imported (legitimately or otherwise?) Which of these represent something the US couldn't have done a half century ago?
The entire robotics industry is on notice that China intends to stop playing fair. Expect everyone else to roll over and accept the beating they will receive just like every other industry in which this has happened.
I’m on the fence about this one. It reminds me of Japan’s big fifth generation computer project in the 80’s – and which was widely considered a failure. China has had many great accomplishments this last two decades, they are a force to be reckoned with, but many of their gains have come through brute force methods of applying ample labor to problems, not true subtlety or production efficiencies.
That said, the Chinese admire those who excel academically and are hungry for a prosperous modern future. I have actually been to China 5 times in the last eight years and the major cities are modern marvels to behold.
But what has worked well in the past, the ruling party deciding spending priorities, may not work so well in the future. China’s bureaucrats are very controlling. They have worked hard the last twenty years to drag China into the modern world, enriching their citizens and themselves alike, but now that a substantial portion of the population is educated and middle class they have become more restless and demanding of accountability on the part of the government.
This desire for control may also not work so well in an industry that needs the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. You can command the building of streets and bridges and skyscrapers, commanding new discoveries be made and made in such a way that are not a threat to the state and can be controlled by the state – that may be another thing.
Letter To Iran
Which of your four examples represents technology that was not imported?
Importing ideas is completely different from importing goods. We got the "wheel" idea from the Mesopotamians, but we don't import tires from Mesopotamia.
It may be comforting to think China merely stole everything to become manufacturing heavyweights – it may even be true to a degree, but going forward they are becoming increasingly self reliant. They will at some point surpass us in many areas, or perhaps already have. Did I mention the admiration of academic achievement within their culture? Do you think only us good ol’ Americans have a lock on creativity and knowledge? They aren’t just building infrastructure, they are building know-how. When the Communist party wants something done they are not sidetracked by petty partisan bickering. Yes I outlined some weaknesses of theirs, but that is not to say they might not overcome or evolve past them.
We are the ones that need to start working towards the future harder. Get past the Common-Core complaints -- some are merited, some are not – and get on with it and apply what works in education. An educated workforce will be the only way for us to compete with them (or anyone else) in the future, and they have a 4-5x advantage numbers wise to cull the best from.
Letter To Iran
If manufacturing robots put almost a billion workers out of a job, the Chinese gov't is going to have a giant riot on their hands. The "Occupy Wall-street" movement in the US may have been indirectly the result of automation taking jobs (and offshoring).
The government there may not have enough experience to deal with protests in a way that doesn't make them worse, as their relationship with Hong Kong has shown. And HK residents are economically well-off. People take even more risk if they have no existing job to lose. Jail is not much of a deterrent to somebody starving to death. At least you have a reasonable chance of a meal and roof in jail.
The future regarding automation versus jobs is going to get interesting, both here and China.
Table-ized A.I.
Which of these represent something the US couldn't have done a half century ago?
A perhaps more interesting question is, which of these represent something the US could still do today? Sadly, I believe the answer to that question would be 5) None of the above.
A calamitous failure of the Colorado river dam system would probably cause the collapse of the United States as a single country. The entire western US is dependent on them for both water and power. Yet I'm fairly certain that we Americans couldn't currently muster the political will to replace (or even do major repairs on) just one of them, much less the entire system.
According to Manuel De Landa: http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/me...
"Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation. Certain standardizations, say, of electric outlet designs or of data-structures traveling through the Internet, may actually turn out to promote heterogenization at another level, in terms of the appliances that may be designed around the standard outlet, or of the services that a common data-structure may make possible. On the other hand, the mere presence of increased heterogeneity is no guarantee that a better state for society has been achieved. After all, the territory occupied by former Yugoslavia is more heterogeneous now than it was ten years ago, but the lack of uniformity at one level simply hides an increase of homogeneity at the level of the warring ethnic communities. But even if we managed to promote not only heterogeneity, but diversity articulated into a meshwork, that still would not be a perfect solution. After all, meshworks grow by drift and they may drift to places where we do not want to go. The goal-directedness of hierarchies is the kind of property that we may desire to keep at least for certain institutions. Hence, demonizing centralization and glorifying decentralization as the solution to all our problems would be wrong. An open and experimental attitude towards the question of different hybrids and mixtures is what the complexity of reality itself seems to call for. "
So, for example, if some centrally planned bureaucracy (say the USA in the 1930s) decides to have a nation-wide arts program, then you might see a lot of creativity there.
http://americanart.si.edu/exhi...
"In 1934, Americans grappled with an economic situation that feels all too familiar today. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration created the Public Works of Art Project--the first federal government program to support the arts nationally. Federal officials in the 1930s understood how essential art was to sustaining America's spirit. Artists from across the United States who participated in the program, which lasted only six months from mid-December 1933 to June 1934, were encouraged to depict "the American Scene." The Public Works of Art Project not only paid artists to embellish public buildings, but also provided them with a sense of pride in serving their country. They painted regional, recognizable subjects--ranging from portraits to cityscapes and images of city life to landscapes and depictions of rural life--that reminded the public of quintessential American values such as hard work, community and optimism."
Or about photography:
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.o...
Or other ways:
http://newdeal.feri.org/nchs/l...
"Activity in the arts was one aspect of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Established in April 1935 and directed by Harry Hopkins, its purpose was to provide socially useful work for the unemployed. WPA programs included the construction of public buildings such as schools, hospitals and courthouses; highways; recreational facilities such as athletic fields and parks and playgrounds; and conservation facilities such as fish hatcheries and bird sanctuaries. In addition four WPA arts projects ("Federal One") were established. "Federal One" not only provided work for artists, writers, musicians, and actors but nurtured young men and women who were embarking on a career in the arts during the Great Depression. Writers and artists such as Ralph Ellison and J
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.