From: Harvey Newstrom (harv@gate.net)
Date: Sat Jan 24 1998 - 21:44:29 MST
At 8:48pm -0500 1/24/98, James Wm. Lewis wrote:
>In Robotopia, as I have described it, everything will be free for
>everyone, because robots will do all the work, detect human needs and
>demands, acquire the raw materials, build the factories, replicate
>themselves, deliver the bounty to us, and never charge a penny.
I don't want to exchange Dynamic Optimism for Dynamic Pessimism, but I've
heard this song before... Slave labor was supposed to do this, then steam
engines, then electricity, then nuclear power, then solar power, and now
computers, robots, nanites and genetic engineering. It ain't gonna happen!
In the super-future, I with my Jupiter-sized brain will reconfigure whole
galaxies in a day's work. My boss will yell at me for not remaking two
galaxies in that time. I will only have enough money to buy a small
sub-universe, and will have to mortgage my next 47 galaxy remakes to pay
for my coveted universe enlarger upgrade.
No matter how much more power we get, we'll want more. No matter how much
work we can produce, our bosses will want more. No matter how much profit
we make, there will be more things to spend it on. It's like network
bandwidth. For every doubling in network speed, we quadruple our data
bandwidth with more 3-D animated graphics and full featured sound. The
more powerful the network gets, the slower our web browsers go. The more
choices we have in our life, the harder it is to choose.
I am rushing toward the future as fast as I can, but it will be a fast and
furious future. There will be no time for sitting on our
Boundlessly-Expanding Butts while robots feed us grapes.
. . . Or, am I just reading to much Cyberpunk?
-- Harvey Newstrom <mailto: harv@gate.net> PGP 5.5 Fingerprint F746 7A20 EB7D 27BA 80A5 4473 D8E1 6A54 1EB0 56F7 PGP Public Key from <http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371>, <ldap://certserver.pgp.com>
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