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posted by mrpg on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the robot-scare-fad dept.

Weep for the future?

Today's 6th graders will hit their prime working years in 2030.

By that time, the "robot apocalypse" could be fully upon us. Automation and artificial intelligence could have eliminated half the jobs in the United States economy.

Or, plenty of jobs could still exist, but today's students could be locked in a fierce competition for a few richly rewarded positions requiring advanced technical and interpersonal skills. Robots and algorithms would take care of what used to be solid working- and middle-class jobs. And the kids who didn't get that cutting-edge computer science course or life-changing middle school project? They'd be relegated to a series of dead-end positions, serving the elites who did.

Alternatively, maybe Bill Gates and Elon Musk and the other big names ringing the alarm are wrong. A decade from now, perhaps companies will still complain they can't find employees who can read an instruction manual and pass a drug test. Maybe workers will still be able to hold on to the American Dream, so long as they can adjust to incremental technological shifts in the workplace.

Which vision will prove correct?

30 years into the Information Revolution and schools are only just now realizing they should teach kids how to code...


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 15 2017, @03:11AM (7 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday December 15 2017, @03:11AM (#610070) Journal

    Marx was a natural-born critic. That means that he's right when he's dumping on something but for the love of Cthulhu DON'T take his advice about what would be better.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @06:10AM (6 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Friday December 15 2017, @06:10AM (#610141) Journal

    Marx never suggested an alternative, he only pointed out the natural tendencies of a Capitalist system. One thing most people seem not to grok is that tech is capital, knowledge and collective expertise is capital. The more workers learn to cooperate, because of the necessary complexity of modern production, the less they need management, and so worker self-government is a natural, cost-effective way for industrial production to go. Parallels the bourgeouis democratic political developments that replaced feudalism. So, not to worry.

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 15 2017, @09:40AM (4 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday December 15 2017, @09:40AM (#610209) Homepage
      > Marx never suggested an alternative

      ?!?!?!?

      It may be several decades since I read the Marx/Engels letters, but my memory is that he was *full* of suggestions, most of which were ill-founded, as they were purely speculative and based on nothing but high ideals that assumed humans were non-competitive altruists. Maybe it was Engels who was doing all the suggestions, but in that case, Marx was egging him on and patting him on the back (burping him?) constantly.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @10:02AM (3 children)

        by aristarchus (2645) on Friday December 15 2017, @10:02AM (#610219) Journal

        So, never actually read any of Marx, or Engels? Trade Unionism, and a central bank, that was the spectre haunting Europe, during the time of the Communist Manifesto. American, I take it? Even if an ex-pat?

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 15 2017, @11:44AM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday December 15 2017, @11:44AM (#610246) Journal

          Oh my goodness, it seems like both of you could use a refresher. The central driver of Marx's philosophy was his materialism. The means of production drove everything. That's why production had to be collectivized, to produce a culture that was just, where everyone was equal, and nobody owned or controlled everyone else. That liberated end state was communism, the half-way house from capitalism was socialism where the state undertook responsibility for deconstructing the control structures of capitalism, where the means of production where controlled by the few. For Marx, under communism there would be practically no more need for a polity because Man himself would have been improved by freeing the means of production from the control of the few.

          In other words, he did very much have a recipe for something better and wrote about it at length. It's not for no reason that his philosophy influenced so many intellectuals and moved millions for a long time.

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 15 2017, @04:12PM (1 child)

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday December 15 2017, @04:12PM (#610329) Homepage
          Which bit of "I read the Marx/Engels letters" above leads you to believe that I didn't read Marx or Engels?
          Given that you're the one claiming that stuff that's clearly written about at length in those letters isn't in any of Marx's works, it's you who looks like the one who's not read them.
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @07:22PM

            by aristarchus (2645) on Friday December 15 2017, @07:22PM (#610407) Journal

            purely speculative and based on nothing but high ideals that assumed humans were non-competitive altruists

            Perhaps a bit harsh. What I meant to say was, "possibly read, but definitely did not comprehend". How could you possibly have come to this conclusion?

    • (Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday December 16 2017, @01:23PM

      by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 16 2017, @01:23PM (#610686) Journal

      The more workers learn to cooperate, because of the necessary complexity of modern production, the less they need management, and so worker self-government is a natural, cost-effective way for industrial production to go.

      And that might explain one of the many reasons that PHB-types don't like self-organising teams, and they prefer to manage in a command and control way. They feel threatened.