I am an infrequent contributor to the social media maelstrom but I wonder if this will produce some comment. There is emerging concern about the rise of the robots which seems to be one of the underlying tensions within our society. In the first case the fear seems to be that robots will continue to develop and take over an increasing proportion of those tasks associated with manufacturing and service delivery. These are of course the tasks which currently provide our major source of employment. The argument appears evenly divided between the money owners (capitalists?) who see the reduction of costly, unreliable human works as a positive benefit to profit, and the employed who see a real threat to their ability to contribute to, and engage with, a culture based meaningful societal existence. There seems to be little doubt that such a take over will occur and that we will, probably in the not too distant future, be able to source all our material and service needs from the robots. Such a scenario is of concern, at the moment, to the union derived grouping in society and has been expressed by the concern that even if a major car manufacturer is persuaded to remain in Australia the workforce will inevitably become redundant through robotic replacement. The owners, driven by profit of course, do not share this concern and comfortably feel that their over whelming possession of the assets necessary to production are not threatened by robotic take over and that they will continue to reap the benefits of the rich and powerful from such an occurrence. Their reaction is of course to the market and as yet there is no concern expressed that reducing the workers purchasing capability must in turn threaten their own income stream. The second area of fear seems to be of the effect that increasing automation is having on our small scale societal activities. Much concern is expressed that the capability of an individual to materially survive in society outside of the traditional supports of family or other such groups is leading to the gradual decay of those supports. This in turn is reflected in the apparently increasing occurrence of societal and mental health conflicts which we see in society. Both of the above are of course not working on our society in isolation, there are huge influences in politics, population, geographical occurrences and wider social trends at work. They all buried within a pudding mix that is continually being both stirred and cooked, but I believe that this trend is one of the fundmentals. So what to do? Within our society we have, over the past years gradually being developing ways of providing for those not placed sufficiently to be able to enjoy the pleasures of our planet. Historically we have seen simple brute force supremacy supplanted by tribal integration, an emergence of the concept of law, the emergence of the charitable organisations and the creation of a taxation system contributing more and more to the support of the underprivileged. Regrettably this is paralleled by criminal and mental health issues which I believe, reflect the tensions outlined above. I believe that the solution is to a. accept that automation will diminish our individual contribution to the production of material and service comforts b. move towards using an individuals capability to create beauty and social well being through the arts and human social development. Do we have the strength in our wider society to do this? That is an open question.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 10:42:05 +0000