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1. How will the developing nations acquire this extremely expansive technology in the first place?
2. How will the nations that now have legions of shiny robots train and pay for an army of specialists to maintain the machines?
3. How can a developing nation utilise robot workers if they don't even have the infrastructure in place to power the 20-Watt bulb in the shack by the road?
The rate of development of infrastructure in the third world is pretty staggering, in my experience. I'm not suggesting that robiticization will solve problems in the developing world this week, but I believe it has the potential to make significant impact in my lifetime and my children's lifetimes. In 300 years the "developing world" will be so far ahead of where western society is now that we wouldn't be able to recognize it. Suggesting that people in developing countries are unable to make the same progress as those in the western society, especially when so much information is becoming globally available, strikes me as parochial in the extreme.
When I was staying at a monastery in India, the brothers there were teaching children from the local village (which didn't have running water or public sanitation) to use computers. The cab drivers that would take me to and from the market had cell phones. Technology spreads with extraordinary rapidity. Hell, I manage a website for a guy in Moshi, Tanzania and he communicates with me by email. And he's a one-man tour operator who makes his living humping other people's luggage up Kilimanjaro. These are people whose lives are being improved by technology - the guy in Tanzania can now reach potential clients all over the world with the only investment necessary being time and a little bit of money to use the local internet cafe.
Your example of the failed resort is a classic example of mismanagement, not a counterexample to the utility of technology. Those who conceived the resort failed to provide sufficient technical support and training. It was not that the technology was bad, or that the people who were supposed to operate it were stupid - it was that they were not given the necessary training to be able to fulfill their tasks.
With respect to the idea of automation creating alienation in western societies, I have to say I still regard it as self-indulgent crap. Moreover, the whole concept of feeling alienated is itself a bit moronic - people in western society have so much freedom to do what they please that if they'd turn off the bloody TV and start connecting with people they might have happier lives. I think that it was Dennis Miller who had a nice little skit where he was a therapist whose only advice to people was "Shut the fuck up!" The worst part about alienation in modern society is that in some ways, I think that being alienated has become a fad, like the aggressive stupidity that we suffer so much from in the U.S. Bush was able to garner a significant number of votes in the last election by playing up his stupidity!!! People want to feel alienated so that they can commiserate with all the other alienated idiots.
Most on-the-job training now doesn't include any background or information on how to actually make the product, but a quick review on which buttons to push in which situations.
Most products made today are so complex, or made in such a large volume, that the only way to produce them is with the abstraction of the machine interface. People don't have the intimate knowledge of their products because it's simply not possible for a single person to assimilate all of that information, and because we have abstractions that reduce the need for detailed knowledge it's arguable that that knowlege is not particularly useful to a person using the abstraction anyway. Hell, I write Java code for a living, but don't know a thing about the detailed implementation of the JVM, and don't really want or need to.
The guy selling potatoes by the side of the road is at the side of a road - rather than at a local market, because the local market is now in a town far away that can only be reached by motor transport (rather than by foot), and the local shops all carry ready-made packet potato at a price he can't afford, for instance.
What utter nonsense. The guy selling potatoes by the side of the road was a farmer working his field. There was a fellow with a donkey cart who would come by and pick up the produce from the various farms to sell in the village a mile down the road. It isn't all globalization's fault, you know - being a peasant has always fundamentally sucked. |
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