IN REAL LIFE

Dan is good for me. 

If you're new, Dan Copping is a very good writer and commenter on this blog, and elsewhere. Dan is approximately twenty years younger than me. We do not always agree. That is ok. 

To be relevant to this particular post, one way that Dan is good is because he teaches me to accept new things. He's part of a generation that was born when the Internet was a baby. He, and it, grew up together. He's forward thinking, accepting of a future that will look very different from today in very many ways. I have qualms, especially about how my children will earn a living. I want them to have an income, and a purpose in life.

"I never really was that good in school

I talked too much, I broke the rules

Teachers thought I was a hopeless fool, alright

I don't know how but I made it through
Just one of those things that you gotta do
I always had a knack for telling the truth

Still wondering why I'm here
Still wrestling with my fear
But oh, He's up to something
And the farther on I go
I've seen enough to know that I'm not here for nothing
He's up to something."

Excerpt from "Wait and See", sung by Brandon Heath

It's this AI thing, Artificial Intelligence. I saw the writing on the wall when my gifted son was very young. As he, and his sister grew, I cautioned them to work hard at school , do as well as they could, because manual, unskilled jobs would be disappearing. What I got wrong was the speed of that. I thought we had more time, (pretty much what the pundits are saying about North Korea's nuclear capability). Instead of happening in ten years time, the day of the smart machines and robots is now.  

Now. A robot in Australia can do the job of a human, at a rental to the business owner, of only $15 au per hour, apparently. That's less than the minimum adult wage, plus entitlements. If the rental drops, it could conceivably get lower than the youth wage. Is this why there are now keypads for you to put your order at McDonalds? Will the cooks and customer service staff be phased out? 

"While he expects the number of jobs to increase, the danger is they may not be better jobs. Those working for machines will experience the most disruption." Taken from an ABC article listed at the bottom of this post. "Those working for machines" ... say what now? What? Who is deciding that we should work FOR machines, and who is letting them decide that?

This came in the post for Acerules' party. 

It's secondhand, 2nd half of last century, I'm guessing, silverplated, held together with three screws. The central screw down its hollow core, has a number 48 on the top. This is for a human being to read, someone assembling the candelabra, that others had used machines to make. Humans like us. In the days before the industrial revolution, the whole thing would have been painstakingly made by hand.

"Early in the morning factory whistle blows, 

Man rises from bed and puts on his clothes, 

Man takes his lunch, walks out in the morning light, 

It's the working, the working, just the working life. 

Through the mansions of fear, through the mansions of pain, 

I see my daddy walking through them factory gates in the rain, 

Factory takes his hearing, factory gives him life, 

The working, the working, just the working life"

Excerpt from The Factory, sung by Bruce Springsteen. 1978

Doesn't every able person in the world deserve the right to work? Who is standing up for that right? Don't we all have a purpose in life, a contribution to make? 

Here's what I wrote to a friend the other day, in response to a mine closure in Africa where people were put out of work:

"I despair of the way the world is going, in particular with automation, or A I . I read about it and it's scary stuff. As a therapist we were taught the advantages to humans of the value of work. If corporations go on unchecked, there will be little to no work, even in the third world. Robots are getting cheaper all the time. I taught my kids about this from when they were young, to work hard and get scholarships, as no entry level jobs will remain, no unskilled work......Now it's already happening. 

Take the retail sector. Amazon is racing ahead unchecked, overrunning the markets of more and more countries, putting stores out of business. Robots will pack the order, robots will ship it, driverless cars will deliver it, automatic text message or such will tell you it's at your house. Complaints will be handled by chat bots.

I see great social unrest in the future by the disenfranchised . Hmm, I feel a blog rant coming on."

I would make a correction to that , drones will deliver packages. Today I received two eBay packages for Acerule's birthday party next year. (See my Venetian Party series of posts for that.) The driver brought them to my door, he was the usual man who's done it for years, he smiled, was briefly chatty, and cheerful. After my daughter went to school today, his was the only (non-online) conversation I had until I went to the shops in the afternoon. If I was a "shut in" , perhaps old, more disabled, or just lonely, that might have been my only IRL (in real life) contact with a human all day, therefore of great importance.

From one package, some gold lace for my costume, (it's more golden than that IRL.)

and a vest for my husband's costume

for the party, and probably made in China by people, but is that still true?

I would like to know something, Big Business. If vast amounts of people of my generation and younger are not working, how will they afford your products? Are you only going to produce goods and services for financially secure baby boomers and older? They are living longer, but they can't live forever, what then? If they are financially supporting their children, what disposable income will they have left to purchase your stuff?

I admire, and try to emulate Dan's optimism. I will be honest, it's an uphill struggle for me, even though I try to stay abreast of things. As a parent, what I really wanted were clear answers about what jobs might be there for my kids. Here's a current article on that,  that probably everyone should read. It's a bit more optimistic than I've been feeling, but it generates infinite questions, too. Like this one: why are governments seemingly asleep in all of this? 

safe link to ABC

Dan's article that makes me feel a little better, maybe:

Safe link to Dan's article