Where automation is driven by humans
Last year, we let go of our part time cook. That was just 72,000 pa clean out of the GDP. Not a big amount by any standard. Last month, the maids took a month off to go vote in the state that thrives on illegal migrant voters.
The result: We bought a robotic vacuum cleaner and a dishwasher. When those maids return, they will find that their jobs now pay less because a part of their work has been taken up by the machines.
In both cases, what led to the automation was not a love for robots. It was, quite simply, the unprofessionalism of the human workers. Not their productivity, but their unprofessionalism. We only looked for options when it became impossible to continue with the human option.
I suspect something similar is happening in the manufacturing space too. The automation is a result of our inability to do things as they need to be done (at the very least). And perhaps, this is also the reason that there is so much algorithm driven trading, automated data analysis and other white collar jobs that are now automated and handed out to algos.
And where it is not
But there is one more area where automation and bots are taking over. The area of affection. And in this domain, I think we need to make an important distinction.
The reason that someone would replace automation for affection and s#$, imho, is simply this - an unrealistic need for compliance.
Biologically, we cannot exist alone. Yet, over the last few decades, we have almost made a religion of "individual self actualisation" - that a person must reach their pinnacle of self satisfaction. This self satisfaction must happen, even if it is at the cost of social isolation. We have forced infants to sleep alone without the warm snuggle of another human body (while entire tribes sleep in 'sleeping huts') - teaching their subconscious minds that it is every man for himself.
This then, leads to a situation where the individual finds it impossible to make the necessary bends required to sustain a relationship. Our need for compliance is so absolute that we have forgotten the fine art of "getting along".
Last year, we let go of our part time cook. That was just 72,000 pa clean out of the GDP. Not a big amount by any standard. Last month, the maids took a month off to go vote in the state that thrives on illegal migrant voters.
The result: We bought a robotic vacuum cleaner and a dishwasher. When those maids return, they will find that their jobs now pay less because a part of their work has been taken up by the machines.
In both cases, what led to the automation was not a love for robots. It was, quite simply, the unprofessionalism of the human workers. Not their productivity, but their unprofessionalism. We only looked for options when it became impossible to continue with the human option.
I suspect something similar is happening in the manufacturing space too. The automation is a result of our inability to do things as they need to be done (at the very least). And perhaps, this is also the reason that there is so much algorithm driven trading, automated data analysis and other white collar jobs that are now automated and handed out to algos.
And where it is not
But there is one more area where automation and bots are taking over. The area of affection. And in this domain, I think we need to make an important distinction.
The reason that someone would replace automation for affection and s#$, imho, is simply this - an unrealistic need for compliance.
Biologically, we cannot exist alone. Yet, over the last few decades, we have almost made a religion of "individual self actualisation" - that a person must reach their pinnacle of self satisfaction. This self satisfaction must happen, even if it is at the cost of social isolation. We have forced infants to sleep alone without the warm snuggle of another human body (while entire tribes sleep in 'sleeping huts') - teaching their subconscious minds that it is every man for himself.
This then, leads to a situation where the individual finds it impossible to make the necessary bends required to sustain a relationship. Our need for compliance is so absolute that we have forgotten the fine art of "getting along".
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