From: Emlyn O'Regan (emlyn@one.net.au)
Date: Wed Sep 13 2000 - 06:39:05 MDT
Samantha wrote:
> This technology is supposed to be about a more abundant life for human
> beings. When the technology takes over what the human beings had being
> doing to support themselves the human beings must still be supported.
> Unless you believe these human beings should simply be left on the junk
> heap of history. If you do believe that don't come crying when it
> happens to you.
>
Right on, I support this position 100%. The fruit or side effect of
increased automation, depending on your point of view, is increased
redundancy for people. This isn't always true; as some jobs go away because
of automation, more jobs are created at the "next level up", doing the next
thing that the machines can't do yet, and that we never tried before because
they were too hard without the current level of automation as support. But
to a large extent, automation has a goal of reducing manual work, and often
succeeds.
Currently I think that more opportunities are being created as previous
opportunities dissapear. I don't think we are seeing ever rising
unemployment statistics in the west; it seems that the opposite is currently
true. That would be what people call an economy, I guess.
However, as the machines get smarter (not really happening yet), the jobs
left for people will trend more and more toward mentally difficult stuff;
stuff that the machines aren't smart enough to do, and which many people are
also ill equipped to handle. This is the track toward AI; Drexler talks
about intelligent engineering systems, if I remember that book 'o' his
correctly. I think people (or at least most people) will start to become
entirely unable to fill any useful job at some point.
If this happened in our current economic climate, I wouldn't think much for
the chances of these redundant masses. I've read some stuff I didn't really
understand about "democratisation of capital", maybe someone can explain
this? Maybe the "new economy" has built in mechanisms which will kick in to
balance out ensuing social problems from mega-redundancy? I'd be grateful if
someone informed would comment on this.
Otherwise, we need something new in the way of economic systems. When
nano-santa comes, if we are set up exactly as we are now, it's going to be a
bad christmas for a lot of people.
>
> I worry about another problem. Technology is still marching forward. I
> support this 101% of course. But, as it advances it automates more and
> more job levels. I predict that within 5-10 years it will automate most
> of what is called programming today. This is only one example. As we
> get more powerful computers at lower cost with more AIish abilities more
> and more jobs will fall to them. We had best be thinking really hard
> right now about how we plan to have people have a decent life without a
> regular for pay job. Despite the current rather slanted rosy
> unemployment statistics in the US, the problem is real and it will
> eventually hit even many of us.
Hee hee, the old "programmers will be redundant in 5-10 years" line. Haven't
heard that for a while; supposedly it's been kicking around since at least
the 70s. It's no truer today than it has ever been.
It is true that we continue to automate things which used to be done
manually. So why aren't all the coders on the dole queue? It's because, as
something is automated, it becomes qualitatively different (easier) to build
systems based on that something. In terms of possible systems, entirely new
vistas open up, which although reliant on the newly automated something, are
not themselves automated, and require lots of people to build them.
Once upon a time, to write software, you had to write your own OS. Then OSes
started to appear, and provided basic functionality (loading a program into
memory, talking to disks, basic screen handling, and all kinds of other
stuff). Later, programmers spent a lot of time writing (console based) user
interface code, reading and writing from primitive disk files, all those
good things. Then databases started to become common, and GUIs became
common, and other things became the programmer's task. Now people wanted
nicer printouts, programs that interoperated, pretty gui front ends, and,
urm, networking! Programmers wrote lots and lots of code by hand, performing
those tasks; evetually it was again subsumed into the OS. At some point
Microsoft invented VB, and programmers were redundant forever shortly
thereafter.
Or that's the hype... oddly enough, there is such a thing as a VB
programmer, with possibly more positions available than any other
language/environment. Because the things it makes easy to do are easy to do,
sure. But now people can imagine even more complex systems, which they would
not have attempted before, which they can now just accomplish by writing
lots and lots of code. If they do these things in VB, it's often even
harder.
This continues. As far as I can see, the tools have improved incredibly
beyond what I was using 10 years ago when I started uni. So much more is
possible; it's astounding. And yet, paradoxically, it is harder than ever to
be a programmer. The job is getting more and more difficult. Why?
Well, because people want to interoperate. Heterogeneous networks,
applications, software layers, layer upon layer like a crazy croissant,
building new, more ambitious, more interesting systems than ever before. The
new economy, with the 'net as the centerpiece, is a mish mash of components
and chunks and layers and stuff, all trying to talk to each other, all
idiosyncratic, brittle, cranky code stretched out like a net weaved of scrap
metal. Making this stuff hang together is a mad job, done at a frenetic
speed as old technologies die and new technologies are born. There's no
comfort zone. There's no pause for breath. There's certainly no sign of AI
taking over any time soon!
People have been worried about the contrary point of view; that our systems
are getting so big, so unwieldy, that at some point we cross a failure
threshold, beyond which we cannot, as a bunch of humans, reliably maintain
the systems any more. Why would this be true?
Well, much of the problem is that, even though basic OS features are
"automated", even though the user interface (gui), persistent storage
(databases), communications (networks) are "automated", they actually
aren't. These things work well now, but they are never quite perfect (some
people would say they are not even close!). Just ask UI programmers,
database programmers, OS coders, network engineers. All the hordes of
people, working to make/maintain the "automated" systems, the stuff that is
already "done".
Something really different will have to happen to change this picture. Super
intelligent AI could do it (so could the wish fairies). Genetic programming
advances might have a shot, but will still require humans to coordinate them
at some level, especially given that our ambitions will increase by orders
of magnitude as our abilities increase, to keep us focused on what is just
out of reach. The job of configuring such magical genetic programmed
automated systems to reach these new goals will look a lot like, well,
programming.
Sure the techniques will change. Sure the skill set required will change.
But the basic programming job will remain, and grow wider in my opinion.
Lots of things will begin to look like programming in the future, which do
not now. Biotech might get to a point of "automation" where it starts using
programmers. Through nanotech, even the bricks & mortar world will start to
become a programming concern.
Programming is the creative edge of automation. At any point, we are
automated to a certain degree, and some people will look around them and say
"I can make something new, something no one has tried before, something that
can't be done by the fully automated systems". Then they need programmers.
The programmers build the thing (with luck), and the edge of automation
advances, and a new horizon is revealed.
Emlyn
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