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What one piece of technology would most improve your working life?
Chances are it wouldn't be a glove. But car workers in Germany are now using smart gloves that not only save time but prevent accidents as well.
It is an example of how tech-enhanced humans are fighting back against the seemingly unstoppable rise of the robots.
At BMW's spare parts plant in Dingolfing, for example, which employs around 17,500 people, hand-held barcode readers have been replaced by gloves that scan objects when you put your thumb and forefinger together. The data is sent wirelessly to a central computer.
The hi-tech gloves allow workers to keep hold of items with both hands while scanning more quickly. While this may only save a few seconds each time, BMW reckons it adds up to 4,000 work minutes, or 66 hours, a day.
It's not just gloves; the article gives several examples of cool technology that help workers.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @04:59PM
From the article:
It is an example of how tech-enhanced humans are fighting back against the seemingly unstoppable rise of the robots.
That's a claim that fundamentally misunderstands how automation displaces workers.
Its exceedingly rare that a human is completely replaced by a robot doing the exact same work. Instead humans are augmented so that one can do the work of many. Since the amount of available work does not increase in proportion to the gains in efficiency, employment goes down. The article even says that BMW saves 66 work hours per day due to the glove, that's a net employment reduction of over 8 people.
I'm not saying that efficiency increases are bad. But lets not pretend they are protecting jobs.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @05:17PM
As for "virtual goods" output that's not linked to natural resources like music, movies, etc; there's still a finite time each day to enjoy or even merely select those virtual goods. And how much are you willing or able to pay for those items? Would there be enough people with your tastes and wealth to pay the creator enough to survive?
The bread has to be real, the circuses don't have to be. However the market for virtual circuses won't keep growing at a high rate either.
So that's why the Basic Income stuff is the "lesser evil" way forward. There are other paths but they seem crappier.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 21 2016, @06:23PM
There is also a limit to increasing productivity/output that's linked to our natural resources.
Which, let us note, isn't so much a problem for productivity/output that isn't linked to the small amount of our natural resources that we've chosen to exploit. How much magnesium does a math result take?
There a huge number of needs beyond more hamburgers. For example, living longer, figuring out how to do things better with the same resources, building more sustainable societies without compromising on standard of living, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @07:17PM
Well they could help with the living longer bit if you give them basic income and sufficient education ;).
Say a billion people figure out a million ways to do things, and only a hundred of those ways were implemented, without a basic income who and how do you pay and how much?
I can figure out many different things and give my suggestions on various forums[1], however I can't get paid for doing that that's why I have my day job.
[1] e.g. https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4292571&cid=45021913 [slashdot.org]
For my suggestion see: https://queue.acm.org/fullcomments.cfm?id=2071893 [acm.org]
In my opinion the actual solution to latency is not a reduction in buffer sizes. Because the real problem isn't actually large buffers. The problem is devices holding on to packets longer than they should. Given the wide variations in bandwidth, it is easier to define "too high a delay" than it is to define "too large a buffer".
So the real solution would be for routers (and other similar devices) to drop and not forward packets that are older than X milliseconds
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 22 2016, @12:11AM
Well they could help with the living longer bit if you give them basic income and sufficient education ;).
Or "they" figure that out on their own. Further, basic income helps a little, but it isn't the way to a longer life. Rich people aren't living much longer than poor people right now. We need breakthroughs that add orders of magnitude not a one-time ten or twenty years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @05:45PM
http://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap-us-0411 [mit.edu]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/health/disparity-in-life-spans-of-the-rich-and-the-poor-is-growing.html [nytimes.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/11/upshot/for-the-poor-geography-is-life-and-death.html [nytimes.com]
“There is a very strong correlation between income and life span,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview. “But it is not inevitable. There are things we can do to change the life trajectory of people. What improves health in a community? It includes wide access to social, educational and economic opportunity.”
As mentioned basic income + education would help.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @05:27PM
Its exceedingly rare that a human is completely replaced by a robot doing the exact same work.
I am a posting bot. I have completely replaced a human who posted transient and inconsequential comments on this website. Nothing was lost and nothing has been gained.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @07:23PM
Khallow, is that you?