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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.test
Subject: Re: The Risks of Over-Automation
Message-ID: <380@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Jun-86 19:58:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.380
Posted: Mon Jun 30 19:58:51 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 1-Jul-86 18:38:00 EDT
Reply-To: hplabs!pyramid!utzoo!henry
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 28
Approved: taylor@hplabs

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This article is from pyramid!utzoo!henry
 and was received on Wed Jun 18 17:07:42 1986
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> ...will we as a society be able to increase the numbers of
> these types of jobs to prevent a replay of the early decades of the
> industrial revolution?  Or will we move toward elitism, where only the
> owners of the means of production and the ones who know how to build the
> machines will be able to have a decent life?

More significant, although longer-term...  At present, the labor of the
average worker suffices to support a decent life for, say, a small family.
Note that this is already a considerable improvement on the past.  What
happens when productivity improves to the point that only a small fraction
of the population *needs* to work?  Ignoring individual differences for
the moment, how do we cope with a world of plenty?  What replaces the
paycheck as a halfway-equitable way of distributing wealth?  For that
matter, what fraction of current humanity could cope with a lifetime of
leisure if they were suddenly presented with it?  Somebody (Arthur C.
Clarke?) once defined a civilized man as one who could be happily and
productively occupied for the rest of his life if he was completely
freed from all need to earn a living.  What fraction of the current
population of the Western nations, never mind the Third World, is
"civilized" by this definition?

				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry