Killing The Human Race...

What's the average guy to do?

Is progress really better when you turn your back on the people who helped build this world? What's left for them when technology takes over?

On Sunday, August 19, 2012, John Markoff wrote an article for THE NEW YORK TIMES titled "Skilled Work, Without the Worker: New Wave of Deft Robots Is Changing Global Industy." Here are some highlights from the article that have me concerned:

"DRACHTEN, the Netherlands-At the Philips Electonics factory on the coast of China, hundreds of workers use their hands and specialized tools to assemble electric shavers. That is the old way.

At a sister factory here in the Dutch countryside, 128 robot arms do the same work with yoga-like flexibility. Video cameras guide them through feats well beyond the capability of the most dexterous human...

And they do it all without a coffee break-three shifts a day, 365 days a year...

This is the future. A new wave of robots, far more adept than those now commonly used by automakers and other heavy manufacturers, are replacing workers around the world in both manufacturing and distribution...

"With these machines, we can make any consumer device in the world," said Binne Visser, an electical engineer who manages the Philips assembly line in Drachten...

Foxconn has not disclosed how many workers will be displaced or when. But its chairman, Terry Gou, has publicly endorsed a growing use of robots. Speaking of his more than one million employees worldwide, he said in January, according to the official Xinhua news agency: "As human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache."

The falling costs and growing sophistication of robots have touched off a renewed debate among economists and technologists over how quickly jobs will be lost. This year, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, made the case for a rapid transformation. "The pace and scale of this encroachment into human skills is relatively recent and has profound economic implications," they wrote in their book, "Race Against the Machine."...

Beyond the technical challenges lies resistance from unionized workers and communities worried about jobs. The ascension of robots may mean fewer jobs are created in this country...

Yet in the state-of-the-art plant, where the assembly line runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are robots everywhere and few human workers...

Such advances in manufactoring are also beginning to transform other sectors that employ millions of workers around the world. One is distribution, where robots that zoom at the speed of the world's fastest sprinters can store, retrive and pack goods for shipment far more efficiently than people. Robots could soon replace workers at companies like C & S Wholesale Grocers, the nation's largest grocery distributor, which has already deployed robot technology.

Rapid improvement in vision and touch technologies is putting a wide array of manual jobs within the abilities of robots...

The Obama administration says this technological shift presents a historic opportunity for the nation to stay competitive. "The only way we are going to maintain manufacturing in the U.S. is if we have higher productivity," said Tom Kalil, deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy...

If the United States does not compete for advanced manufacturing in industries like consumer electronics, it could lose product engineering and design as well. Moreover, robotics executives argue that even though blue-collar jobs will be lost, more efficient manufacturing will create skilled jobs in designing, operating and servicing the assembly lines, as well as significant numbers of other kinds of jobs in the communities where factories are...

Mr. Graves wears headsets and is instructed by a computerized voice on where to go in the warehouse to gather or store products. A centralized computer the workers call The Brain dictates their speed. Managers know exactly what the workers do, to the precise minute.

Several years ago, Mr. Graves's warehouse installed a German system that automatically stores and retrieves cases of food. That led to the elimination of 106 jobs, roughly 20 percent of the work force. The new system was initially maintained by union workers with high seniority. Then that job went to the German company, which hired non-union workers.

Now Kroger plans to build a highly automated warehouse in Tolleson. Sixty union workers went before the City Council last year to oppose the plan, on which the city has not yet ruled.

"We don't have a problem with the machines coming," Mr. Graves told city officials. "But tell Kroger we don't want to lose these jobs in our city."
"

GREED IS KILLING THE HUMAN RACE...