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.