When the current generation who grew up on Star Wars go away, will it remain in public memory like paintings or music, or even cinema? And that too at Chicago, home to excellent museums.
Me thinks there is no permanence to Star Wars. Its already looking dated and silly.
Meanwhile '2012 A Space Odyssey' still feels fresh.
I am a web developer, now working on Android.
I use Android Studio (far better than Eclipse). With HAX - hw accelerated execution - enabled and emulator running in fast virtual mode I don't notice much difference between any run/debug on any virtual device and debug/run on a Weblogic/Websphere/Tomcat server on top of some CMS/Commerce Engines.
Both are slow, but not unreasonably slow.
May be when the apps get complex there might be a difference.
I don't see how a simulator will make a huge difference, but I can see how upgrading from my current i3 processor to an i7 and running the whole shebang on some type of RAM DISK might make a difference.
In real life scenario, your produce reaching "another market in another city/town" is remote and you making a profit from all that effort is even more remote.
This is why I said you are spouting nonsense from some text book which makes sense in some make belief world.
Lets not debate on "real world understanding".
The scenario you described is from some text book.
In real life its not usually the above...if there are brokers then they usually collude on price, or fix the price. So any benefit of reaching broker X or broker Y is not there.
The situation will be better if there are no brokers. But that's not going to happen.
Read what I wrote...I did not say it was "not useful"...I said the benefits as far as finding better prices for produce is hyped up.
Of course, better communication is overall better.
Or the African farmers who say that now with cell phones, they have an easier time trying to find better markets for their produce? Etc.
I think the above benefit is overrated.
In practical terms if you have produce to sell, especially perishable items you have to worry about shelf life more than a better price at a market far away from you.
For non-perishable items - I am from a state which is the largest producer of rubber - even before internet and smartphones the farmers used to get the market prices from newspapers. And you don't need to check the prices more than once a day, you are not playing high frequency trading with your crop.
Now, powerpoint presentations from clueless MBAs will always show "farmers fetching higher prices from smartphones" as a reason for technology. I think smartphones are a great way to communicate, but you need not add "better prices for poor farmers" to the mix.
True, but Amazon is getting into an area where it has no core-competency. Its expertise is stocking and selling stuff.
The Amazon E-Reader worked because no other serious electronics company made a decent device - my first E-Reader was a Sony PRS, back in 2005, it sucked, but it sucked less. And E-Readers are for only reading. Still, even if Microsoft took that market seriously - for that you needed someone who is capable of throwing more than chair at the helm - Amazon would have found their Kindle a hard-sell.
A smartphone is a different animal. I understand Amazon needs one of their own, running some flavor of Android, but I don't see any reason they will create something different, a device we want to carry around with us, almost our primary identity as far as devices go. Will it be a good phone, yes. But you need to create a great phone - at least a Xiaomi or a Moto G.
This will be like the Facebook phone or the Facebook home screen...I don't think even the unwashed masses working at Facebook, the true believers themselves cared for that phone.
Marissa Mayer is the same class as Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman and others. They are going to remembered for blowing up their own organizations. What all these nincompoops have in common is a "severe lack of imagination". There is no cure for that.
She's is right about the bubble...she's in one.
The cheapest car in the world - TATA NANO - failed to make a mark. The other bubble car - Mercedes Smart is a failure in every sense of the word.
And the Google bubble car will be as popular as Segway.
Seems Amazon and Google see the writing on the 'internet wall'.
Their core products/services are not going to bring them anymore revenue than what they get now, and can shrink further when nimble competitors or new ideas happen. So the only way is to branch out.
Google thinks it will be driver-less cars, automation, internet balloons, thermostat etc., while Amazon thinks it will be AWS, cloud and so on.
Surprisingly both these behemoths are not branching into life sciences. May be no has made good impressive power points yet.
The one company terribly lost is Apple. They are buying into an arthritic rapper!!!
True, its about desperation, not necessarily an extra layer of 'internet trust'.
The US is unique in developed economies - luxuries are cheap...big screen TV, a car and so on. But necessities are expensive...healthcare, decent education, and to an extent housing.
There is no longer any room for doubt that we are living in a plutocracy, not a democracy. And according to a recent NASA study, that is a prime indicator that we are a society on the brink of collapse.
US might be a plutocracy, but not a society about to collapse.
US has a great middle class, and even with the current crises, they are yet to get into lower class/poor. And even when you are poor, you don't starve.
Unless a huge shift occurs and the current middle class starts starving the collapse you are worried about won't happen.
The Arab spring occurred in countries where the middle class was not really strong - in numbers and social indicators. In Tunisia a man self immolated out of the tragic circumstances of not being able to feed his family. This seminal event kickstarted the uprising.
Saudi Arabia for all purposes is ripe for spring cleaning, but the middle class gets a lot of handouts from the rulers and they get fat and lazy. So there will be a lot of diabetes and heart attacks, not society collapsing.
Here's why you are wrong on all counts.
First of all, you happen to *know 3 Indian IT* workers and you arrive at a conclusion on how good/bad/patriarchal they are. If this is not *generalization* then I do not know what is !!!
Second, India is a large country, our population is 1 billion. There will be ten or twenty Indian IT programmers for every Russian you can find. Plus, Indian IT companies are majorly into US market, there is no Russian equivalent of an Infosys, TCS, Wipro and so on. With that large pool of talent, you are going to find few who are horribly mediocre. Its simply law of averages.
There are excellent programmers, good and mediocre. They include Indians. And that's all.
And instead of dirty and dangerous manufacturing jobs, people are moving to service and white collar jobs in a big way.
We will not have this conversation if the service and white collar jobs DID offset the loss of manufacturing jobs and any losses due to automation. That was the whole thread/post/page about.
I was only making a larger point. Automation will result in reduction of number of hours, but unless some type of allowance makes up the deficit in income both with reduced number of hours and reduced work opportunities, the existing quality of life might decrease further. I was not contradicting any premise. Its also a complex issue with many possible permutations and combinations as outcome.
That is not something we can adopt, and it solve absolutely nothing.
"Lavish pensions" is only a symptom, not a cause. State will not be able to keep up the benefits unless some new revenue opportunity or tax base comes up. The same time, the automation will reduce existing tax base further. Its sort a double whammy. I have no idea about any solution.
Labor participation rate steadily increased throughout the 20th century despite the supposed decline of the kinds of "mass employment" job categories you imagine.
20th century was an exception...rapid industrialization happened which employed millions. Now that phase is over...no need for more factories to produce widgets, and existing factories are getting automated. Look around yourself.
Whether I pulled my statement out of thin air...lets wait for the future to decide. You can come back here in ten years and decide for yourself.
That is, if automation makes things twice as efficient, it means everybody can work half time and enjoy 20 more hours of leisure a week.
The above can be possible, but you may not get full time work even if you wanted. Not everyone can be retrained for software programming or robotics, and even if they were, you don't need millions and millions of people with such skillset.
That's why a growing acceptance or realization that some type of guaranteed allowance will have to be given to a majority when the jobs vanish. Many countries are already in that path - in US you have social security which kicks in after retirement, what if it kicks in early? (You need political will, and much greater acceptance to the truism "jobs are not there".) In India there is 'Right to Food', which can be the beginning of such programs.
Indian politicians and Chinese have may be a decade of "more growth for prosperity" philosophy to work its charm. US and other developed nations got no such space.
Of course, it's not actually true because people have an amazing capacity to come up with new products and services.
Here is the issue, the new products and services may not generate "mass employment". Amazon, Facebook and Google are great examples. The same with Tesla.
"Mass employment" happens with manufacturing or may be Walmart (not only employment at their stores, but building the stores to the driving the trucks), not with the new products or services you have in mind.
Your question has the answer you are looking for.
First define "standards of living".
The standard of living - even for the lower class - in most of the developed world, and for a decent percent of the developing world is already good. The advances in health care, communication, and transportation has made sure what was available to the upper class or 1% of the early 1900's is now available to the rest. That is indeed progress.
So, the next level of mechanization and automation is not going to push the "standard of living" higher by a greater margin. Here is a car analogy - what matters is you have a car to go from point A to B, you still reach B whether you travel in a 2000$ beat up old car or a new costly luxury version. Another analogy - there was a huge difference between VHS and DVD, but there is no such difference between DVD and BluRay. Good content can be equally enjoyed on both, and both the discs are equally durable.
I almost bought an entry level 3D printer in 2010. And I am glad I did not.
3D printing is way over hyped like Segway or Bluetooth. It has its niche market/uses, but the proponents and true believers claim that will "change the world", everyone will start printing at home, things will be cheaper, more available, better, faster, stronger, wider and so on is pure BS.
Slashdot Mirror
Amazon is the worlds best organization for packing and shipping stuff. If they expect the money they can spend will give them an advantage in creating an exciting phone...its called hubris. A smartphone is a piece of jewelry. Its not like a book reader.
Amazon's smartphone breakfast, lunch and dinner will be eaten by companies like Xiaomi http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-22/the-latest-slick-cheap-smartphone-from-xiaomi-chinas-rising-mobile-power?google_editors_picks=true. They do only one thing...and they do it well.
Not black holes, nor galaxies, but da chicken came first.
When the current generation who grew up on Star Wars go away, will it remain in public memory like paintings or music, or even cinema? And that too at Chicago, home to excellent museums.
Me thinks there is no permanence to Star Wars. Its already looking dated and silly.
Meanwhile '2012 A Space Odyssey' still feels fresh.
I am a web developer, now working on Android.
I use Android Studio (far better than Eclipse). With HAX - hw accelerated execution - enabled and emulator running in fast virtual mode I don't notice much difference between any run/debug on any virtual device and debug/run on a Weblogic/Websphere/Tomcat server on top of some CMS/Commerce Engines.
Both are slow, but not unreasonably slow.
May be when the apps get complex there might be a difference.
I don't see how a simulator will make a huge difference, but I can see how upgrading from my current i3 processor to an i7 and running the whole shebang on some type of RAM DISK might make a difference.
In real life scenario, your produce reaching "another market in another city/town" is remote and you making a profit from all that effort is even more remote.
This is why I said you are spouting nonsense from some text book which makes sense in some make belief world.
Lets not debate on "real world understanding".
The scenario you described is from some text book.
In real life its not usually the above...if there are brokers then they usually collude on price, or fix the price. So any benefit of reaching broker X or broker Y is not there.
The situation will be better if there are no brokers. But that's not going to happen.
Read what I wrote...I did not say it was "not useful"...I said the benefits as far as finding better prices for produce is hyped up.
Of course, better communication is overall better.
Or the African farmers who say that now with cell phones, they have an easier time trying to find better markets for their produce? Etc.
I think the above benefit is overrated.
In practical terms if you have produce to sell, especially perishable items you have to worry about shelf life more than a better price at a market far away from you.
For non-perishable items - I am from a state which is the largest producer of rubber - even before internet and smartphones the farmers used to get the market prices from newspapers. And you don't need to check the prices more than once a day, you are not playing high frequency trading with your crop.
Now, powerpoint presentations from clueless MBAs will always show "farmers fetching higher prices from smartphones" as a reason for technology. I think smartphones are a great way to communicate, but you need not add "better prices for poor farmers" to the mix.
True, but Amazon is getting into an area where it has no core-competency. Its expertise is stocking and selling stuff.
The Amazon E-Reader worked because no other serious electronics company made a decent device - my first E-Reader was a Sony PRS, back in 2005, it sucked, but it sucked less. And E-Readers are for only reading. Still, even if Microsoft took that market seriously - for that you needed someone who is capable of throwing more than chair at the helm - Amazon would have found their Kindle a hard-sell.
A smartphone is a different animal. I understand Amazon needs one of their own, running some flavor of Android, but I don't see any reason they will create something different, a device we want to carry around with us, almost our primary identity as far as devices go. Will it be a good phone, yes. But you need to create a great phone - at least a Xiaomi or a Moto G.
This will be like the Facebook phone or the Facebook home screen...I don't think even the unwashed masses working at Facebook, the true believers themselves cared for that phone.
May not be President, but he deserves the Nobel (way more than most, including your current guy holding one for who knows what!)
Marissa Mayer is the same class as Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman and others. They are going to remembered for blowing up their own organizations. What all these nincompoops have in common is a "severe lack of imagination". There is no cure for that.
She's is right about the bubble...she's in one.
The cheapest car in the world - TATA NANO - failed to make a mark. The other bubble car - Mercedes Smart is a failure in every sense of the word.
And the Google bubble car will be as popular as Segway.
Seems Amazon and Google see the writing on the 'internet wall'.
Their core products/services are not going to bring them anymore revenue than what they get now, and can shrink further when nimble competitors or new ideas happen. So the only way is to branch out.
Google thinks it will be driver-less cars, automation, internet balloons, thermostat etc., while Amazon thinks it will be AWS, cloud and so on.
Surprisingly both these behemoths are not branching into life sciences. May be no has made good impressive power points yet.
The one company terribly lost is Apple. They are buying into an arthritic rapper!!!
True, its about desperation, not necessarily an extra layer of 'internet trust'.
The US is unique in developed economies - luxuries are cheap...big screen TV, a car and so on. But necessities are expensive...healthcare, decent education, and to an extent housing.
There is no longer any room for doubt that we are living in a plutocracy, not a democracy. And according to a recent NASA study, that is a prime indicator that we are a society on the brink of collapse.
US might be a plutocracy, but not a society about to collapse.
US has a great middle class, and even with the current crises, they are yet to get into lower class/poor. And even when you are poor, you don't starve.
Unless a huge shift occurs and the current middle class starts starving the collapse you are worried about won't happen.
The Arab spring occurred in countries where the middle class was not really strong - in numbers and social indicators. In Tunisia a man self immolated out of the tragic circumstances of not being able to feed his family. This seminal event kickstarted the uprising.
Saudi Arabia for all purposes is ripe for spring cleaning, but the middle class gets a lot of handouts from the rulers and they get fat and lazy. So there will be a lot of diabetes and heart attacks, not society collapsing.
Here's why you are wrong on all counts.
First of all, you happen to *know 3 Indian IT* workers and you arrive at a conclusion on how good/bad/patriarchal they are. If this is not *generalization* then I do not know what is !!!
Second, India is a large country, our population is 1 billion. There will be ten or twenty Indian IT programmers for every Russian you can find. Plus, Indian IT companies are majorly into US market, there is no Russian equivalent of an Infosys, TCS, Wipro and so on. With that large pool of talent, you are going to find few who are horribly mediocre. Its simply law of averages.
There are excellent programmers, good and mediocre. They include Indians. And that's all.
Internet is yet to obliterate Asian - especially Indian -magazines.
Caravan - http://www.caravanmagazine.in/
Open - http://www.openthemagazine.com...
The above two are new ventures, here are some older ones...
India Today - http://indiatoday.intoday.in/
Frontline - http://www.frontline.in/
And no one has mentioned New Yorker - probably the best over the years.
If you have the exploit, you can exploit the exploit.
Science Is Running Out of "Great" Things To Discover.
National Geographic is running out of "great" things to discover.
Full circle again, please go back and read all the posts.
And instead of dirty and dangerous manufacturing jobs, people are moving to service and white collar jobs in a big way.
We will not have this conversation if the service and white collar jobs DID offset the loss of manufacturing jobs and any losses due to automation. That was the whole thread/post/page about.
...you are contradicting your own premise.
I was only making a larger point. Automation will result in reduction of number of hours, but unless some type of allowance makes up the deficit in income both with reduced number of hours and reduced work opportunities, the existing quality of life might decrease further. I was not contradicting any premise. Its also a complex issue with many possible permutations and combinations as outcome.
That is not something we can adopt, and it solve absolutely nothing.
"Lavish pensions" is only a symptom, not a cause. State will not be able to keep up the benefits unless some new revenue opportunity or tax base comes up. The same time, the automation will reduce existing tax base further. Its sort a double whammy. I have no idea about any solution.
Labor participation rate steadily increased throughout the 20th century despite the supposed decline of the kinds of "mass employment" job categories you imagine.
20th century was an exception...rapid industrialization happened which employed millions. Now that phase is over...no need for more factories to produce widgets, and existing factories are getting automated. Look around yourself.
Whether I pulled my statement out of thin air...lets wait for the future to decide. You can come back here in ten years and decide for yourself.
That is, if automation makes things twice as efficient, it means everybody can work half time and enjoy 20 more hours of leisure a week.
The above can be possible, but you may not get full time work even if you wanted. Not everyone can be retrained for software programming or robotics, and even if they were, you don't need millions and millions of people with such skillset.
That's why a growing acceptance or realization that some type of guaranteed allowance will have to be given to a majority when the jobs vanish. Many countries are already in that path - in US you have social security which kicks in after retirement, what if it kicks in early? (You need political will, and much greater acceptance to the truism "jobs are not there".) In India there is 'Right to Food', which can be the beginning of such programs.
Indian politicians and Chinese have may be a decade of "more growth for prosperity" philosophy to work its charm. US and other developed nations got no such space.
Of course, it's not actually true because people have an amazing capacity to come up with new products and services.
Here is the issue, the new products and services may not generate "mass employment". Amazon, Facebook and Google are great examples. The same with Tesla.
"Mass employment" happens with manufacturing or may be Walmart (not only employment at their stores, but building the stores to the driving the trucks), not with the new products or services you have in mind.
Your question has the answer you are looking for.
First define "standards of living".
The standard of living - even for the lower class - in most of the developed world, and for a decent percent of the developing world is already good. The advances in health care, communication, and transportation has made sure what was available to the upper class or 1% of the early 1900's is now available to the rest. That is indeed progress.
So, the next level of mechanization and automation is not going to push the "standard of living" higher by a greater margin. Here is a car analogy - what matters is you have a car to go from point A to B, you still reach B whether you travel in a 2000$ beat up old car or a new costly luxury version. Another analogy - there was a huge difference between VHS and DVD, but there is no such difference between DVD and BluRay. Good content can be equally enjoyed on both, and both the discs are equally durable.
I almost bought an entry level 3D printer in 2010. And I am glad I did not.
3D printing is way over hyped like Segway or Bluetooth. It has its niche market/uses, but the proponents and true believers claim that will "change the world", everyone will start printing at home, things will be cheaper, more available, better, faster, stronger, wider and so on is pure BS.
My mother (who is a grandmother to my kids) runs Debian Wheezy with the XFCE desktop environment.
Are you sure its your mother? Me thinks its Linus Torvalds in drag.