sir baconface
Well-Known Member
I think it's bigger than all of those. I think Robotics will be a social revolution of the size of only two others in terms of change - the Agricultural Revolution which essentially invented the concept of cities and the Industrial Revolution which invented the concept of mechanical labour. I see it as one of the major changes in human history.
Society progressed in many different ways across the world but the basics were pretty simple. Surplus food allowed specialisation which drove technological increase. Thousands of years ago most humans spent all day farming in order to generate the food to live. Better techniques meant that they had a bit more time so they started specialising in other things such as making better tools. Eventually when they started living together in cities, surplus food plus bartering systems meant that some people didn't have to farm to live any more and could just make/trade tools all day which led to more advancement, better farming, more food. Being sat in one place geographically rather than chasing herds around the world meant that we also had to begin to shape that place we lived in in order to better serve our needs.
So the entire social structure that we've invented relied on using human muscle (and animals) to produce food, goods and essentially the whole of society.
The industrial revolution brought about the idea that human muscle is inefficient in the production of goods and food, so instead we should have humans using mechanical muscles such as steam power and ironworks. I can lift a decent amount of weight but not in comparison to a crane. I can spin a wheel fast to churn something but not in comparison to a steam engine. The work of 100 people became the work of 10 people and a mechanical muscle.
And for better or worse this is pretty much where we've been for hundreds of years - the labour needed to produce goods lessens which allows greater specialisation of roles and it drives technological increase which lessens the labour needed to produce goods. The revolutions you mention about computing and the Internet are just a by-product of the social organisation.
The Robotics Revolution changes that game. There's no lessened labour leading to greater specialisation. Practically robots can almost every single job in the world and can do them better than humans can - almost every single one of them can be automated and require little oversight. Robots can and do build whole houses now from groundwork to completion. Robots build other robots. Robots can find programming and/or logic errors in programming code better than humans can. Robots are the main investors on the stock market and make a ton of money by making trades in milliseconds rather than minutes as humans do. Robots can do our shopping better than we can, they can drive cars better than we can (and the role of automated drivers in F1 is already becoming a bigger issue because they're quicker than us too), robots can diagnose illnesses at a VASTLY superior rate to humans and this will be a big deal soon (though it's already in operation in the US). I can walk into a store in the US, pick up a piece of fruit and walk out eating it and robots will make sure that it's all legal, paid for and restocked properly. Look at the rise of self service machines, at automated bartenders. This isn't lessened labour, this is eradicated labour.
And robotics is currently in the "computers the size of a whole room" phase of its technological growth while already achieving these things. Think of the difference in power and technology between the Bletchley Park computers that cracked the Enigma Code and the iPhone 7. The Bletchley Park computers didn't have the computing power necessary to display an icon, let alone run the operating system, let alone do all the mad things that the new iPhones or Android phones can do. That took 60 years, less than a lifetime. Think of where robotics will be in another 20 or 30.
We're about to undergo a monumental change in how we experience and organise life. A few years ago I talked about this on here and was concerned that nobody else seemed to be bother by the iceberg dead ahead but I'm happy to say that that's no longer the case. Universal Income might not be the right idea but at least it's an idea. There's committees and bi-partisan meetings in Westminster being held now about a post-robotics economy and what that would look like that's dragging in experts from wide fields. I've heard the idea that perhaps robotic workers should pay taxes (or essentially the company that owns them does every month) which again might not be the right idea but it's an idea. The world is beginning to wake up to the idea that a post-labour society is around the corner and perhaps a post-scarcity one too. Whether this means we'll see the same economic inequalities where corporations now make trillions rather than billions, or whether we'll see new models of wealth distribution is too far off for us to know but either way this is coming, it's coming soon and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.
Thanks for a really interesting post, Damocles. It's not an area I've taken much note of before. I will from now on.