I welcome our new robot overlords

[Umbran]

I mean, ultimately, hasn't a goal of technological advancement always been to make things easier for us humans?

In a word - No.

Technological advancement is generally about making things cheaper and faster - be it producing books, cotton, woven fabric, information transfer, or what have you. That things become easier for humans is usually a secondary result, often only apparent a generation after a technology is created.

 

[GMMichael]

I think they are trying to get us all hooked on video games, and then virtual reality, and then we'll all retreat into that virtual reality, thereby voluntarily moving into a simulation. In particular as we die, instead of dying being the end, we'll just simply upload our consciousness into the "machine".

I hope you didn't type and send this post from a smartphone.

 

[Dioltach]

I hope you didn't type and send this post from a smartphone.

Pff, how do you know he's not a smartphone himself? How do you know that everyone on here except yourself isn't a smartphone? (Well, except me, I'm a tablet.)

 

[trappedslider]

Pff, how do you know he's not a smartphone himself? How do you know that everyone on here except yourself isn't a smartphone? (Well, except me, I'm a tablet.)

I'm an Etch A Sketch

 

[Aeson]

Diaglo is a clay tablet.

 

[Eltab]

Pff, how do you know he's not a smartphone himself? How do you know that everyone on here except yourself isn't a smartphone? (Well, except me, I'm a tablet.)

Manual typewriter - do you hear the clackety-clack as you read this?

 

[Ryujin]

In a word - No.

Technological advancement is generally about making things cheaper and faster - be it producing books, cotton, woven fabric, information transfer, or what have you. That things become easier for humans is usually a secondary result, often only apparent a generation after a technology is created.

And the growing concentration of wealth in the very few just means that as tech grows, and people aren't needed to tend to daily business, things are going to start to look more and more like "Ready Player One."

 

[Umbran]

Pff, how do you know he's not a smartphone himself?

On the internet, nobody knows that you're actually a dog.

I played that game - it was set in a virtual reality space, in which one of the characters was the badass head of a mercenary company. What nobody knew was that in meatspace, she was an awakened dog with her pack.

 

[trappedslider]

I'm really just a stack of speak and spells in a trench coat

 

[Bohandas]

But maybe there is a "counter"-element that we didn't account for in our technological progress - people actually might seek having a purpose. And a job is very easy way to feel you have a purpose. In that case, you still need to provide some kind of job - but maybe it doesn't matter that much if its as "productive" as some AI-robot-factory-machine-thing.

Or, you know, you could just find a purpose in a hobby or friends or something actually enjoyable instead of actively making yourself miserable.

A world where nobody has to work is my vision of paradise

And the growing concentration of wealth in the very few just means that as tech grows, and people aren't needed to tend to daily business, things are going to start to look more and more like "Ready Player One."

With any luck at all, as people become unneded to tend to daily business the idea that people should be need to have "jobs" in order to get money should naturally break down.