
What the Fourth Industrial Revolution Looks Like - Natura
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/life-after-the-fourth-industrial-revolution
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oliveira12345
"Yet rather than putting people out of work, this will supposedly free them up
for more creative, skilled tasks, rather than subjecting them to menial, low-
skilled work"

This is a lie.

It pretends that the factory owner will continue to pay the wages of existing
employees _and_ also the acquisition-and-maintenance of new CPS machines.
Simply a lie.

It pretends that the employees will be free "for more creative skilled
tasks"... this is almost insulting... Previous employees will be fired and in
their place will be a small team of highly specialized technicians to control
the machines. There is no hope for previous-employees to be kept, they will
basically be replaced by machines - please don't create illusions.

The truth is that this means layoffs and a new wave of unemployment, for the
benefit of the corporate efficiency though machines highly intelligent.

The blame should not fall on the technology itself, but instead on the
politics which allow the technology to be used to boost financial results
without taking into account the social-costs of it.

I believe this should be regulated to create socially-owned factories to solve
nation-wide necessities.

~~~
jjoonathan
It is a lie and it is insulting to expect that it will slip past most people
(it's a "some of the people all of the time" lie). I agree with everything
except your last sentence. Some alternatives to socialism:

* basic income

* putting teeth back in overtime laws and shortening the workweek

* "Communes" that arise naturally as the rising cost of rent-seeking exceeds the falling inefficiency of small-scale production. Still capitalism, just with an inverted structure.

All three of these address the fundamental labor supply/demand imbalance
without the need for socialism. That said, I tend to agree that the prospects
of socialism are underestimated -- the internet almost certainly improved the
viability of social economic systems by a factor of 10 or so -- but I am
skeptical of the ability to impose one without tearing society apart first.
Revolution sucks enough to make the other alternatives look attractive by
comparison.

~~~
scrumper
I wanted to engage with this but I'm having a hard time getting past:

 _the internet almost certainly improved the viability of social economic
systems by a factor of 10 or so_

Certainly for me, arbitrary, dimensionless quantification of an essentially
unmeasurable factor casts the rest of your post in a bad light.

Still, basic income isn't entirely good: it denies people the ability to meet
a basic need - that of being valued for their contribution to society or some
other enterprise. In other words, it replaces the good feeling of doing honest
work with a kind of glorified unemployment benefit. While it would be good
culturally (by allowing those of an artistic bent to pursue their craft, for
example), it's not going to do much for the mental well-being of most of those
laid-off factory workers.

As far as your point on communes, can you elaborate on how rent seeking is
going to get comparatively more costly? What particular types of rents were
you referring to?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _In other words, it replaces the good feeling of doing honest work with a
> kind of glorified unemployment benefit. While it would be good culturally
> (by allowing those of an artistic bent to pursue their craft, for example),
> it 's not going to do much for the mental well-being of most of those laid-
> off factory workers._

We need to move away from the meme that your 'honest work' determines your
worth. It was very instrumental in the past, so it's not a surprise we've
integrated it culturally, but it makes no sense in a post-scarcity world.
Humans do have a need to do something worthwhile, but it doesn't necessarily
have to be put inside the current "slave away your life for the right to live"
framework of jobs.

Come to think of it, how much of that "good feeling of doing honest work" do
people have today, when more and more are employed doing bullshit jobs that
are artifacts of various zero-sum games existing in our economic system?

~~~
scrumper
This is a great point but it's not orthogonal to mine. Basic income doesn't
provide a framework for self worth; it simply replaces a need to toil for
money with a state-provided guarantee of a reasonable standard of living. If
you have some side project or external, monetarily low-valued way of spending
your time (full-time parenthood, art, a cottage business) then you've solved
the worth problem on your own. If you're a displaced factory worker, you now
have a new (admittedly nicer) problem.

To your coda, I think a lot of contemporary angst comes from precisely that -
a sense that jobs really are basically worthless. Most of us behind a desk
have felt that at some point. Even my frontline public servant friends in the
military, healthcare, and police report similar feelings from time to time.

------
VLM
The "you" in the article only applies to the likely extremely small percentage
of the population still in the middle class and employed. The vast majority of
the population will be unemployed, living in cardboard boxes down by the
river, at least in between wars and revolutions requiring cannon fodder. And a
very small "end of the roman republic" style class will own absolutely
everything so its not going to be "your house" from the article, everything
will be rented and monetized down to the tee shirt from the article. One big
company store.

"Maximizing the perks of the fourth industrial revolution will require massive
cooperation across corporate boundaries"

Obvious OP has never worked at an actual megacorp job. The best analogy I can
provide to my experience is its very much like being an ancient gladiator
without the death and blood. I fight the other departments for my faction
because anyone who stops fighting and sabotage will be consumed cannibal style
by the non-pacifists. Normally this would result in a less screwed up firm
wiping out the megacorp, but once the megacorp (and its friends) own the
government and the financial system, that will be made impossible. Its not
bad. Its not literal gladiatorial combat so its not physically risky or
stressful, and the business model and job are extremely stable. It
superficially seems like it would be boring to never really do anything, yet,
oddly enough, with a lack of micromanagement comes liberation, exciting new
tools and techniques, thus better fighters who almost accidentally get to play
with exciting new stuff. Those who are about to die salute you, Caesar. Well,
not die for another 40 years or so, hopefully, and my manager is pretty cool
and her name isn't Caesar. But same general idea, corporate spam is just SPQR
and all that. We haven't quite figured out the paperless office yet, for
example. So I wouldn't worry about this for some decades / centuries. We did
recently upgrade from XP to 7 on the desktops, change does happen, although
very slowly (LOL at the 2025, maybe 2125)

~~~
nine_k
> _The vast majority of the population will be unemployed, living in cardboard
> boxes down by the river_

Who is going to consume all the goods that the machines produce? Who is going
to _buy_ these, and how?

However much you might not like factory owners, they are not likely to
deliberately shoot themselves in the foot.

~~~
marcosdumay
Why do you think the factory owners care about people consuming his
production? What will those people offer him for it?

~~~
nine_k
Because these same people pay them money. If you're a producer, your first and
foremost care is your consumer.

If the great majority of people cannot afford to buy what your machines
produce, your market is very narrow. If _every producer 's_ market is narrow,
there's not enough wealth on it, and they are suddenly poor, too.

This is why most producers, especially huge corporations, go to great lengths
to lower prices for another few cents.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _If you 're a producer, your first and foremost care is your consumer._

No, this is not true, and it's pretty clear everywhere you look. If you're a
producer, your first and foremost care is _money_ , not your consumer. Sure,
appealing to your customers is a good way to get that money, but it's _not the
only one_. Why do you think that, to pick just one example, companies put so
much malware on the computers they sell? Because they calculated that they can
do something _against_ their clients that yields extra profits but is not
annoying enough for the clients to switch.

Customers are just a proxy for profits.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
You're both correct, but coming at it from different levels. Most
manufacturing businesses build things for other manufacturing businesses. In
that light, the producer's first care _is_ the "consumer" because his consumer
isn't a person; it's another business. As long as that other business is
profitable, the guy upstream can get paid and that's his primary concern.

It's only once you get to the factories building actual "consumer goods" that
you see the real concern over "who is going to buy this."

The funny thing is that I spend a lot of time on a forum mainly populated by
owners of small factories and I see this come up from time to time. The guys
(and they're mostly owners & workers at small manufacturing businesses) are
concerned about too much automation having an impact on society, but by far
their primary concern is making sure that _they_ automate enough to stay in
business and be profitable. After all, it's _their_ kids being able to eat
that they're going to be mainly concerned with.

------
pharke
The most interesting part of the article seems to be in the video in which it
is mentioned that part of the goal is to create easily reconfigurable assembly
lines that "fit together like lego bricks". It is also mentioned in the
article that many of the manufacturers that have already implemented these
automated and configurable production processes are in the business of
producing the machines used in other assembly plants.

Could it be possible to produce a set of standardized manufacturing machines
that can be swapped out or reconfigured to produce different end products?
This would require an incredibly high degree of automation, but that level of
automation is the stated goal of this movement. I don't see how you could
feasibly do it today but given some combination of rapid additive
manufacturing, conductive ink circuit printing, and some future generation of
baxter like manufacturing robots capable of handling pick and place as well as
assembly or other more general tasks could move us in that direction.

If this is implemented it might be used for simple customization for
individual use. Smartphones whose dimensions are tailored to your hands or
usage patterns. A flatscreen designed to match the aesthetics of the room in
which it will be placed and integrating your preferred console or other
gadgetry. Mass produced prosthetic limbs designed to perfectly match their
owner. Hololens' in whatever style you choose so you feel like less of a space
cadet while wearing them. Driverless cars geared towards your lifestyle and
family size. It'd essentially be the end of the 'model' as we know it for
products. Just provide your body scan and bio-socio-informatic data along with
your credit card number and you can expect a drone delivery in the next 3
hours.

~~~
superbaconman
This is the goal we should be striving for. Not just for end user
customization, but for small business owners who design products but don't
have the capital to invest in infrastructure think factories as a service.

------
dothething
It must be much more fascinating to imagine machines managing everyday life
than to imagine the societal complications that will result. I've seen like
3-4 of these machines do it all posts and nothing to examine what people will
do.

It's a bit silly to imagine everyone suddenly becoming creative and
entrepreneurial - of the people I know and the people I see they are such a
small minority.

~~~
TeMPOraL
What people will do? Probably finally get around all those things they really
want to do but they don't have time because of their job and commute. People
are generally creative and have dreams - even those who one would dismiss as
dumb/lazy. It usually takes talking to them to discover it.

INB4: I don't believe people would sit all day in front of TV/Netflix - it's a
kind of thing you do because after 8+ hours of working, some commute, making
dinner and stuff you're really too tired to do anything else.

------
pdkl95
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)

"Humans Need Not Apply" (by CGPGrey)

In case someone hasn't seen it yet, this is prone of better overviews on the
problem we need to start solving _now_ , now that automation has started
making many of the remaining jobs obsolete,

------
kokey
The fantasy future presented in the introduction is different from mine. I
don't think you will hear the car start. I think a car will be on its way to
pick you up at home, and it will probably have electric motors so you are
unlikely to hear it start before your journey.

------
walterbell
_> Welcome to life after the fourth industrial revolution, where all of the
objects you use on a day to day basis are custom-made and constantly talking
to one another for your benefit._

Maybe, if they talk through an API filtering proxy of the user's nomination,
which can determine benefit based on personal data history that is unavailable
to partially-trusted objects.

------
negamax
This is only half the picture. This sort of automation is welcome and should
be pursued. But it won't free people but enable to take on bigger, wider,
never imagined before challenges. There will be products which none of us are
thinking of right now. Solutions (and also problems)

