Are we seeing the type of doomsday scenario for the workforce that this article implies?
No. In this situation, robots are taking over specialized jobs that require a great deal of accuracy. Other than the guy on the street corner who wrote my name on that grain of rice, humans can't fab chips by hand. Car manufacturing also requires a great deal of precision.
This article makes the falacy of applying Moore's Law to algorithm development. There are still no linear time sorting algorithms despite decades of research. Processing speed alone won't guarantee a reliable algorithm for visual simulation. (Of course, there does seem to be a real correlation between Moore's Law and code bloat.)
Another mistake Mr. Brain makes is to imply that the hurdles to overcome to mass produce cars and make airplanes fly were realatively as easy to overcome as building robots to replace half the jobs in the economy. Robots may be capable of performing hard labor, but the barriers to overcome in order to make a robot successful in the service sector are much greater. Will a robotic smile ever replace the geriatric one greeting you at Wal-mart?
that in Japanese society, many students as well as professionals spend at least an hour riding public transportation every day. This provides quite a bit of time to play with one's cell phone. In Japan, cities are crowded, streets are winding and only occassionally named, and buildings are numbered non-consecutively, making the finding of meeting places difficult. In Japan, where three to four generations usually live under the same roof in a house whose walls are hardly thicker than two inches, privacy is unheard of. Thus, anything that provides a sense of privacy (a personal cell phone from which you can make personal calls, write personal emails (not just text messaging), take personal photos (ooh la la)) is attractive.
While it is possible to live in Japan without a cell phone, the benefits of having one are vast compared to having one in the United States.
All is not positive, though. With cameras on mobile phones vouyerism has never been easier. And with such huge mobile phone penetration with teens and young adults, mobile phone companies in Japan are now looking for new users and are targeting elementary school students.
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No. In this situation, robots are taking over specialized jobs that require a great deal of accuracy. Other than the guy on the street corner who wrote my name on that grain of rice, humans can't fab chips by hand. Car manufacturing also requires a great deal of precision.
This article makes the falacy of applying Moore's Law to algorithm development. There are still no linear time sorting algorithms despite decades of research. Processing speed alone won't guarantee a reliable algorithm for visual simulation. (Of course, there does seem to be a real correlation between Moore's Law and code bloat.)
Another mistake Mr. Brain makes is to imply that the hurdles to overcome to mass produce cars and make airplanes fly were realatively as easy to overcome as building robots to replace half the jobs in the economy. Robots may be capable of performing hard labor, but the barriers to overcome in order to make a robot successful in the service sector are much greater. Will a robotic smile ever replace the geriatric one greeting you at Wal-mart?
While it is possible to live in Japan without a cell phone, the benefits of having one are vast compared to having one in the United States.
All is not positive, though. With cameras on mobile phones vouyerism has never been easier. And with such huge mobile phone penetration with teens and young adults, mobile phone companies in Japan are now looking for new users and are targeting elementary school students.