THIS IS NOT NEWS EITHER
Jun. 30th, 2008 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenPlayed for humor, this video nevertheless raises a good point. (Minor spoilers for Wall*E).
We all know that most of our menial jobs will be eliminated whenever it is we get around to making robots that do them. Odds are good we'll have maybe two minutes to worry about that before the robots take over and kill us all, but it's something to think about. Specifically as regards our approach to fiction set in such a future as would have service robots.
The question I ask is this: would we move towards classlessness or would socio-economic stratification become all the more entrenched and ugly as a result of replacing poorer labor with synthetic labor? My money is on the cynical answer--that as soon as people get closer to the poverty line/unemployment as a result of not having skills to do jobs that robots can't, society as a whole starts shitting on them more than ever. Something to ponder.
*
They call it the "Global Literacy 2008" issue. So why not completely simplify shit and undermine the idea of literacy--which is an ability to decipher complex thought in addition to simple grammar and vocabulary--by positiing this riveting question? I can't find the cover picture anywhere, though you can see a small picture of it on their homepage now, but it is pretty stupendously...stupid. Imagine two stuffy, fairly old white guys standing back-to-back like prizefighters bumping shoulders while posing for heavyweight championship posters. That's Abe Lincoln and Chuck Darwin posing. And the title reads: "Lincoln vs. Darwin: Who Matters More?"
Can we say "false dichotomy" much?
Lest you be lulled into thinking that this is just an oddball historical piece, the author DOES directly weigh the one against the other as if there can be no overlap in people who like one with people who like the other. (It's the imaginary black woman demographic that couldn't exist when we were casting wide nets of assumption about Obama/Hillary voters.) Nope, you like Lincoln, that pull-himself-up-by-his-bootlaces hero who advanced despite his rube background or you like Darwin, that queer English dude who liked to look at birds. A lot.
So, who's the winner? Do you even have to guess? In an election year, in America, does the white-haired, balding, English scientist who shied away from publishing his own ground-breaking work because he didn't want to upset people even stand a goddamned chance against An American Patriot who, for all we are told about him, pooped red, white, and blue turds? Of course, it's not phrased that way. It's phrased as if Lincoln and only Lincoln could have successfully weathered the secession of the South, the Civil War, and the eventual liberation of slaves. Anyone else? Would have failed miserably. But Darwin had Wallace right at his heels and other scientists were getting around to this natural selection/evolution thingie, so it's not like he was irreplaceable or anything. We'd have gotten The Origin of the Species by another name sooner or later. Not so the Gettysburg Address!!! USA#1USA#1USA#1!!!!
But Darwin shouldn't feel bad about basically just getting lucky and being the first guy to publish, so sayeth bullshit artist "author":
If Darwin were not so irreplaceable as Lincoln, that should not gainsay his accomplishment. No one could have formulated his theory any more elegantly—or anguished more over its implications. Like Lincoln, Darwin was brave. He risked his health and his reputation to advance the idea that we are not over nature but a part of it.
Hey, Chuck D, don't cry or nothing! At least you write good! And you stood up to religious people and shit, that's like mad awesome, yo!
The man gave us a rubric by which we have come to understand the natural world. I'd say he deserves more than a pat on the back and runner-up trophy. I also fail to see why notoriety and acclaim are zero-sum quantities. Can we not admire Lincoln's actions to secure the United States as one nation (not under God; fuck you) and see in it the strategy and brilliance and honor and not equally admire Darwin's ability to parse the mysteries of genetics, evolution, and speciation, which have granted us the keys to understanding our world and ourselves?
The answer, quite literally, is no. I'm not kidding. At the end of this "America--FUCK YEAH!!!" article it is stated, unequivocally. The title is "Who was more important: Lincoln or Darwin." And, on the last page, it says: Answer: Lincoln.
Fuck you, Newsweek. Fuck you and your anti-intellectualism, nationalist ass-licking "news." If you want to publish an article saying that Lincoln was awesome, fine. If you'd like to take a closer look as to WHY Darwin has fallen out of favor, that might, in some way, be relevant to how we live today. (The answer, by the by, is because ignorance rules the day. If Newsweek can offer opinion as fact, so can I.) Fuck you, you fucking fucks.
We all know that most of our menial jobs will be eliminated whenever it is we get around to making robots that do them. Odds are good we'll have maybe two minutes to worry about that before the robots take over and kill us all, but it's something to think about. Specifically as regards our approach to fiction set in such a future as would have service robots.
The question I ask is this: would we move towards classlessness or would socio-economic stratification become all the more entrenched and ugly as a result of replacing poorer labor with synthetic labor? My money is on the cynical answer--that as soon as people get closer to the poverty line/unemployment as a result of not having skills to do jobs that robots can't, society as a whole starts shitting on them more than ever. Something to ponder.
*
They call it the "Global Literacy 2008" issue. So why not completely simplify shit and undermine the idea of literacy--which is an ability to decipher complex thought in addition to simple grammar and vocabulary--by positiing this riveting question? I can't find the cover picture anywhere, though you can see a small picture of it on their homepage now, but it is pretty stupendously...stupid. Imagine two stuffy, fairly old white guys standing back-to-back like prizefighters bumping shoulders while posing for heavyweight championship posters. That's Abe Lincoln and Chuck Darwin posing. And the title reads: "Lincoln vs. Darwin: Who Matters More?"
Can we say "false dichotomy" much?
Lest you be lulled into thinking that this is just an oddball historical piece, the author DOES directly weigh the one against the other as if there can be no overlap in people who like one with people who like the other. (It's the imaginary black woman demographic that couldn't exist when we were casting wide nets of assumption about Obama/Hillary voters.) Nope, you like Lincoln, that pull-himself-up-by-his-bootlaces hero who advanced despite his rube background or you like Darwin, that queer English dude who liked to look at birds. A lot.
So, who's the winner? Do you even have to guess? In an election year, in America, does the white-haired, balding, English scientist who shied away from publishing his own ground-breaking work because he didn't want to upset people even stand a goddamned chance against An American Patriot who, for all we are told about him, pooped red, white, and blue turds? Of course, it's not phrased that way. It's phrased as if Lincoln and only Lincoln could have successfully weathered the secession of the South, the Civil War, and the eventual liberation of slaves. Anyone else? Would have failed miserably. But Darwin had Wallace right at his heels and other scientists were getting around to this natural selection/evolution thingie, so it's not like he was irreplaceable or anything. We'd have gotten The Origin of the Species by another name sooner or later. Not so the Gettysburg Address!!! USA#1USA#1USA#1!!!!
But Darwin shouldn't feel bad about basically just getting lucky and being the first guy to publish, so sayeth bullshit artist "author":
If Darwin were not so irreplaceable as Lincoln, that should not gainsay his accomplishment. No one could have formulated his theory any more elegantly—or anguished more over its implications. Like Lincoln, Darwin was brave. He risked his health and his reputation to advance the idea that we are not over nature but a part of it.
Hey, Chuck D, don't cry or nothing! At least you write good! And you stood up to religious people and shit, that's like mad awesome, yo!
The man gave us a rubric by which we have come to understand the natural world. I'd say he deserves more than a pat on the back and runner-up trophy. I also fail to see why notoriety and acclaim are zero-sum quantities. Can we not admire Lincoln's actions to secure the United States as one nation (not under God; fuck you) and see in it the strategy and brilliance and honor and not equally admire Darwin's ability to parse the mysteries of genetics, evolution, and speciation, which have granted us the keys to understanding our world and ourselves?
The answer, quite literally, is no. I'm not kidding. At the end of this "America--FUCK YEAH!!!" article it is stated, unequivocally. The title is "Who was more important: Lincoln or Darwin." And, on the last page, it says: Answer: Lincoln.
Fuck you, Newsweek. Fuck you and your anti-intellectualism, nationalist ass-licking "news." If you want to publish an article saying that Lincoln was awesome, fine. If you'd like to take a closer look as to WHY Darwin has fallen out of favor, that might, in some way, be relevant to how we live today. (The answer, by the by, is because ignorance rules the day. If Newsweek can offer opinion as fact, so can I.) Fuck you, you fucking fucks.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-01 08:13 pm (UTC)That's awesome, someone turned an Apples to Apples game into a Newsweek article. Them journalists is smart! I look forward to the next installment, "What's More Annoying, the Big Bang or Lint?"
The question I ask is this: would we move towards classlessness or would socio-economic stratification become all the more entrenched and ugly as a result of replacing poorer labor with synthetic labor?
Hard to say -- we can't even explain the current trend towards inequality, even though it's been going on for 30 years. I'd say it depends largely on politics, and on the mobilization potential of those who still work. (I'll note that Japan, a leader in robotic labor, has a more egalitarian division of wealth than we do, but I'm not sure how relevant the example is.)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-01 08:25 pm (UTC)Chocolate or strawberries? YOU MUST CHOOSE OR DIE!
no subject
Date: 2008-07-01 08:31 pm (UTC)Clearly I'm a big honkin' liberal, but I think socio-economic stratifcation would become more entrenched unless education kept pace to keep those put out of work by synthetic labor employable.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-01 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-01 09:26 pm (UTC)I think the exercise of influence explains a lot of the growing rich-poor divide. Rich people have always told the government what to do. Hell, shortly after our beloved Lincoln's term, we had the most corrupt president of all time (in my opinion), Ulysses Grant. With the shortening of distance between those who have the grease and those with the palms outstretched thanks to better, more reliable transportation and communication, the demands of the rich are more easily dictated to the people in charge of the rules about distribution of wealth. As a result, wealth becomes the barrier and the watershed; if you have it, you roll off to the happy, greener side with more green to show for it; if you don't, you never make any influence at all, and you stay impoverished and made worse. (Money, unlike fame and importance, is sort of a zero-sum game whereby the rich can only get richer if the poor suffer more.)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-01 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-01 09:33 pm (UTC)This is why Darwin is on the wane in our educational systems, too. Because some idiots said that religion (excuse me, (un)intelligent design) deserved equal time with science despite the fact that the two are mutually exclusive studies with mutually exclusive rule sets. You can't study them together (unless you're studying the anthropology of religion, and then you can apply science to religion, but that's not studying them together). So, in keeping with: Jesus or mitochondria, MAKE YOUR CHOICE, we may now make science and politics impossible bedfellows. That stupid science! It can't get along with anyone!
no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 03:49 am (UTC)I'd just like to point out--dude, that's already happened. What do you think makes your cars?
no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 02:50 pm (UTC)Cats, which hunt disease-carrying rodents.
What had a bigger impact: comic books or the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs?
The asteroid, because without it there'd be no comic books.
Who'd win in a fight: a chicken or Jesus?
A wild chicken could tear the shit out of a hispanic guy named Jesus who was drunk on tequila; in all other cases, Jesus wins.
Which is more awesome: a sunset or a guy jumping 17 school buses with a postal van?
Dude! The jumper, hands-down. The sun sets every goddamn day.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-04 02:38 am (UTC)The basic problem is actually Malthusian -- in my opinion as, you know, some guy without an econ degree even -- but essentially the good years of the 50s and early 60s were just the aftereffects of the tremendous economic stimulus of WWII. The default state of this economy is one of moderate recession, especially as we continually try to make sure that inequalities of wealth are not depleted by practicing anti-inflationary policies that prevent erosion of established money.
Education, on the other hand, is an arms race. "Unskilled labor" is always relative -- your average factory worker able to read a notice board is in possession of a skill that would've placed him or her in the top 1% or more of, say, Babylonian society. Nowadays with the attitude of "college is for everybody," we're in our 20s before we're in the work force (a time when two hundred years ago you could've already been a practicing lawyer) and employers are already realizing there's more college graduates than they know what to do with, so the newer rite of passage becomes a grad degree... but if everybody in America went to B-School, we wouldn't expect everybody to make $150k plus stock options, would we?
no subject
Date: 2008-07-04 02:43 am (UTC)If you look at the Utopian Socialists of the early 1800s, they had these great envisioned communities where because of machines everybody would only have to work like three hours a day! And could spend the rest of their time having a life, and stuff! But as a society, America (and the whole world generally) has tended to choose rising standards of living (whether or not they lead to increased happiness) over the opportunity to work less; give Americans machines, and they decide they want to work even harder to get the stuff the machines make. Or so an extremely arms-length analysis appears... but I mean, we have levels of automated production that would've been UNIMAGINABLE to these guys, and yet still we're working more hours than we were fifty years ago?? And most of us just barely getting by??/