Will Robots Save the Planet?

My first reaction to the robot invasion outlined on last Sunday’s 60 Minutes was fear. I was the pessimistic twin in the old joke about twin boys who come down the stairs on Christmas morning to find a pile of horse manure under the tree. The pessimistic twin sees only a pile of horse manure. The optimistic twin takes a running dive into the pile saying, ‘There must be a pony in here somewhere.” This essay will look for the pony, not at the crap.
In a recent book called Abundance: the Future is Better Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, the authors argue essentially that technology can and will bring about a better world for all. Given the proliferation of the smart phone around the world, for example, they may be right. Diamandis and Kotler, chapter by chapter, tell us not to worry. The future looks promising. The idea that we will run out of resources sooner or later is Chicken Little thinking. When it comes to the future, pessimists (conservatives in the natural world-centric sense) lack imagination and faith in human ingenuity. Nature-bound thinking seems rather finite and arithmetic, not infinite and exponential.
Where does this debate originate in American culture? The following paintings begin to give us the picture. (Even though the details I describe are almost impossible to see below, bear with me.)

Cotopaxi by Frederick Church, 1862

Gottlieb Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1861

Andrew Melrose, “Westward the Star of Empire Takes Its Way, 1867

The origin of this fear of technology stems from the Romantic perspective as cursorily represented by the three paintings above. The first painting, by Frederick Edwin Church, shows all-powerful nature in the form of a volcano in Ecuador. Man, represented by the miniscule artist and easel in the lower left corner of the painting is completely dwarfed by the power of nature he is trying to represent on canvas. Nature will always win and the best man can do is try to capture its all-powerful image, not harness its power. Nature is God.
In the second two paintings, the first, done at the advent of the Civil War, and the second, done after, shows the contrasting views of Manifest Destiny in the Leutze painting and ambivalence about it in the Melrose piece. The Leutze shows Daniel Boone-like figures climbing all over nature in triumph while the Melrose shows the coming of the train or technology mowing down the landscape and settlers leaving stumps where there were pristine trees and a cabin in a clearing that discourages the deer from escaping the oncoming train by crossing the tracks into the human-altered landscape. They must retreat to the right into the remaining pristine forest.
The romantic perspective in American culture has never disappeared. It has gained greater credibility through the evolution of scientific thinking called ecology and has never been “railroaded” out of existence. In fact, it has become a powerful political force on the left with considerable scientific momentum on its side. However, as powerful as it might be today, it is not necessarily always right.
Emerson said, in a collection of essays called English Traits, that “the views of nature held by any people determine all their institutions.” In America today, the Tea Party and the liberals have very distinctly different views of nature. The former essentially sees nature as a mine; the latter paradoxically as a secular sacred trust. Liberals want wilderness preserved; Tea Party members want industry to have free play with nature. The only arenas where the two come together are in organizations such as Ducks Unlimited and Trout Unlimited. Both of these organizations try to sustain or expand their respective target populations and preserve habitats for future hunters and fishermen to enjoy. They have found a way to “have their cake and eat it too.”
Perhaps technology can offer opportunities to do the same elsewhere. For example, conservation-bound thinking would have us forego the thrill of acceleration in a car for great fuel mileage. In this mode of thinking, the Toyota Prius is the car of choice at 50 mpg. Porsche has just announced it has developed a 918 Spyder hybrid that can get 72 miles per gallon and 0 to 62 mph in 2.8 seconds. Yes, it costs $845,000 for the moment, but the point is the technology now exists to make cars fun to drive and truly economical. This is just one example of what technology can do. BMW is not far behind with the i8, a plug-in hybrid that will get more than 113 mpg compared with the Prius plug-in at 95 mpg. Just a couple of years ago these achievements were unthinkable.
So let us imagine, for a few minutes, a world full of robots, abundance, and incredibly efficient use of resources, some of which we have yet to even consider as such. What will we do with ourselves? Once again, for lack of imagination, the Chicken Littles of the world who are worrying about disappearing species and global warming also tend to be anti-technology, although I have never encountered one without a cell phone. They cannot or seem incapable of thinking outside the box of the so-called natural world. To them evolution is the natural form of development; human invention is unnatural, even though the nature-bound folks take full advantage of many human inventions including the ugly but semi-virtuous Prius.
Austerity is seen as a tool for both sides, it seems. Economic conservatives like to employ austerity to fix poverty; environmentalists like to employ it to fix the planet. Less help for the poor will result in less poverty. The poor will presumably work harder to find a job even though those jobs are being taken over by robots or cheaper workers in other countries. On the other side, less energy use will result in a healthier planet through a more primitive lifestyle. Neither idea works unless technology is advanced. It is the old trap of arithmetic thinking.
The truth is primitive man intitiallyused a great many resources. If the entire world suddenly returned to harvesting wild animals and picking fruits and vegetables that occur in minimally cultivated habitats, the world human populations would starve within weeks, some quicker. Primitive life is not sustainable, regardless of what the various Alaska-based so-called “reality” TV shows depict about living off the land in Alaska (and dressing like the folks in the Leutze painting). In fact, even primitive man began to use technology, however primitive, to improve his yield.
The purist form of eco-mindedness would have us leave the lightest possible carbon footprint on the earth. Technology is the only means by which this goal will be met. (For more on why this is so, see the following NYT op-ed: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/overpopulation-is-not-the-problem.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130914&
The Luddite mentality that distrusts atomic energy, GMO foods, and robot development is probably a good filter that helps maintain the integrity of technological pursuits. But too often each side of this debate exaggerates its claims in order to thwart or dismiss the other in a political war that retards real progress. We need to confront the inconvenient truths in both opposing camps. In effect, we need to stop protecting and embracing wholesale both Chicken Little thinking (radical environmentalism) and Little Red Hen ingenuity (technology as panacea) which results in little more than playing chicken with the future.
Robots will not go away. Sooner or later atomic energy is going to be the favored form of sustainable energy because it is already capable in its most advanced forms of being the most efficient. It can be in its latest iterations the safest and does not plaster our newly treasured deserts with solar panels and wind-turbines. Automobiles will become so efficient and cheap, they will be as prevalent as cell phones throughout the world. In short, technology CAN be a major part of the solution, not the problem that so many environmentalists would have us believe.
On the other hand, corporations need to stop serving short-term interests. They must employ best practices, not merely the short-term most profitable. Corporations need to show how they contribute to a greater good in the long run rather than measure themselves by the dividends awarded to their stockholders.

Since workers will eventually no longer serve as cogs in the industrial machine, they can have the leisure and afford the impulse to help others, one of the most gratifying rewards human beings can experience. This change can revolutionize the way human beings live on earth. Instead of working to live, we can begin living to work.
Technology is the solution, like it or not. Both governments and corporations need to prepare for a new world that no longer requires much in the way of human labor. Instead, societies need to figure out new ways human beings can live meaningful lives beyond earning a living. That may take more than technology to solve. It also may require another look at how mankind views not only nature but human nature itself.

Robotomy

            On 60 Minutes last night I saw the future more clearly. There will be fewer jobs for human beings in the future, and the future is now. No matter whether Keynes or Smith wins the economic ideological battle for hegemony, there will be fewer and fewer jobs that human beings will fill. The robots are here. They have no ideology; they are the perfect slave.

            The battle between management and labor is over. Management has won. It no longer needs human labor to accomplish much of anything. You think this is hogwash? Think again. There are robots in existence and many almost ready to take over just about any task that once belonged to human labor. Management no longer has to worry about unions and health care plans, pensions, strikes, cost-of-living wage increases, or overtime. Robots will do the work 24/7 and never complain.

            The questions begin. If this is true, and it is most definitely true, for what kind of life should we be educating people? What skills will they really need to thrive in a work-less world? Will work become the ultimate privilege of the highest achievers while the rest are left to find meaning somewhere else? Will the protestant work ethic be replaced among the masses by a spiritual quest, a community service ethic, or an exercise and health improvement ethic? What will people do with their time? Will they watch C-Span 24/7 and vote on issues at the local, state and national levels through interactive TV as part of one continuous real time democratic referendum? Or will only those who actually still make things get to vote?

            Driving encapsulates, so to speak, what is about to happen. Most human beings over age 16 or 18 in America right now learn to drive. We already have cars in mass production that can park without driver assistance. We have prototypes of cars already on the highways that drive themselves. In short order, we will not have to drive anywhere: our robotic cars will do the driving. This technology is already here. It’s a matter of time before it is the dominant mode of individual transportation. The question is, where will most of us go: to work? Not the way things are headed.

            To have meaning most human beings need a purpose. That purpose has been traditionally manifested in some sort of work or profession. If we have trouble accepting a 7 percent unemployment rate, what will happen when technology and particularly robotics produces a 25 to 50 % unemployment rate. What meaning will human lives have and how should we prepare people to enter this brave new world of the disappearing workplace?

            The ideas of leisure and work will take on whole new meanings. We are going to have to find things for people to do. Perhaps the 40 hour work week which used to be the norm will be replaced by the 20 hour work week. This change will allow more people to be employed albeit “part-time” by traditional standards. Or perhaps all businesses will start operating 24/7 because an idle robot is a waste of a precious nonlife. This, in turn, will allow more human beings to fill an expanded number of those remaining human roles.

            Whatever the case, robots are here to stay. No modern equivalent of a Luddite revolt will reverse the trend. America may end up a wholesale welfare state funded by those who have the privilege to work, but that transformation is going to require a whole lot more retooling than simply replacing human beings with robots on assembly lines.

            Maybe the solution is to give a lobotomy to anyone whose SAT scores do not suggest a place among the elite “workers” of the future. It could be performed by a robot, much the way, say, prostate surgery is done by robotics. We could call it a robotomy just to make it sound more clinical. I said clinical, not cynical.

Muy Blanco

            In light of the fact the Weld County Commissioners have voted to put secession on the ballot for this fall, it is time to consider the appropriate name for the new proposed state. I know, the commissioners have already indicated that the new state would be named Northern Colorado, giving location the nod, just as West Virginia was so named because it lay west of Virginia. This copying of an eastern state that made the move in 1863 just won’t do for us westerners.

            Colorado is the Spanish name for red. Yes, Colorado used to be a red state politically. However, lately it has turned blue or at least purple, depending on how angry and activist the conservatives are in any given election. But naming the new state “Northern” Colorado would send a confusing signal. It might imply the new state would align itself with the “North” but clearly, given the political bent of the Weld County Commissioners, it would more than likely align itself with the Deep South.

            The term “Colorado” also has problems because a second meaning of the term in Spanish means “colored ”or “colorful.” Once again, the new state would not want to suggest it was open for business to folks of color because that is exactly what the Weld County Commissioners want to limit. As I look around at the racial composition of the commissioners in Weld County, I don’t see anything but white folks.

            Let’s face it: what the commissioners really want is a place where white folks get to decide what’s what without worrying about what people of color think or want. Therefore, in keeping with the Spanish heritage of the current state’s name, the new 51^st state should be called MUY BLANCO.

            But why stop there. Why not become a new country? That way, the Weld County folks won’t have to deal with Obamacare, global warming, and those lousy wind turbines and solar collectors. Weld County can become a lily white island of gas and oil wells in a mongrel sea of change.

            Wait. We already have such a state: Wyoming.   

The Bullet and the Tweet

 

            The research is in. The NRA has declared that the proliferation of guns has nothing to do with mass violence. It’s tweeting that is the culprit. Here is how the argument goes.

             The tweet is like an assault rifle.  Instead of a 90 bullet clip, a tweet has up to 140 characters per clip blasted out at the whole world all at once. People have become so at ease with blasting their ill-formed thoughts out at the universe, it has become easier to do the same with bullets. Guns are not the problem: tweets are. All it takes is someone who has trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy, and the transition from tweet to bullet is as easy as changing clips in the middle of an assault.   

            I know, you are thinking of the old adage, “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Well, guess what: there are a lot more kinds of words out there than there are kinds of ammunition. And now that we can shoot from the hip a quick burst of tweet, the idea of shooting bullets at a complete group of strangers becomes easier.

            Once upon a time words were used to write letters and essays, and those efforts took a lot of time. You had to think before you wrote. Often you had to wait days or even weeks before you got a response. You also had to wait for the postman to pick up your written material or you had to deliver it to a mailbox or post office. Now, all you have to do is register with Twitter, something gun owners don’t have to do in all cases, and off you go: Ready, Fire, Aim.

            The tweet is the opposite of, say, a soliloquy. Just imagine if Hamlet had “tweeted” his famous speech. This is all he could have delivered:

HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And…

            On the other hand, had Polonius been able to “tweet” his advice to his son Laertes as Laertes was about to leave for France, perhaps Hamlet would have received it and avoided tragedy. Polonius, the good counselor that he was, said: “To thine own self be true,” advice certainly suitable for a tweet and just what Hamlet needed to hear.  Clearly, tweets can be useful at times.

            There are a lot more words and word assassins out there than there are assault rifles. So before you try to curtail the use of firearms, why not reduce the tweet to, say, 10 characters. That way most tweets will fall harmlessly to the ground and a lot of lives will be saved from death by embarrassment.

            But, you argue, the limitation on word use has been eroding our use of language and limiting our capacity to hunt down ideas that may feed us in the future. The larger our thoughts are, the smaller the audience we reach. It is the inverse of the assault rifle. Maybe if we invited people to say more than 140 characters worth of philosophy, it would serve as a release valve and thereby prevent some folks from turning to the machine gun as a means of expression. Therefore, will someone please create a site called “Soliloquy” where First Amendment rights can be fully exercised so that Second Amendment rights return to, well, their second place position?

            Just a thought.