The reality of our High Tech Civilization

With Robots, computers other forms of automation, knowledge sharing on the internet and othe multimedia the turth is we do not need us all to support us all. This means as time passes we will need less and less people to work to maintain our society. We can work less and share the work so we are all participating, We can set up a system to allow us to retire earlier and let the young carry the work load till they reach the much lower retirement age, or lastly we can just let some people live in poverty, unemployed, hungry pitiful lives.

You almost have to move torward socialism when you automate civilization to a point where it takes very little human effort to keep us going. I think in part that is why we are struggling now. We just don't need the labor of all of us to sustain our high tech civilization.

Now you may hate socialism but before you start falming the idea I ask you to instead provide alternative solutions to the problem our high tech society brings us in the form of not needing us all to labor to work to sustain humanity. What can we do if we dont move away from capitalism in a world were our hard labor is just not needed?

Watch Star Trek - The Next Generation. All your questions answered.

P

Originally posted by pheonix358
Watch Star Trek - The Next Generation. All your questions answered.

P

Ooow......I'm a trekkie too.

Fantastic show and it paints a wonderful picture of how life could be lived when humanity uses technology for the betterment of everybody.

At some point we need to realize that going backwards might be the only way to go forwards.
Tech has made us almost obsolete.
It has detached us from everything we were meant to do and be.
No wonder many search for a life's purpose and find none.
We are letting our minds and bodies rot and have become too lazy to do anything to fix it.
Go back 100-200 years and do things the way they did? Many would have you committed for suggesting it.
Might, however, be our only salvation.

reply to post by Xeven

This means as time passes we will need less and less people to work to maintain our society.

You almost have to move toward socialism when you automate civilization to a point where it takes very little human effort to keep us going.

false. Absolutely not. As time passes you need different specializations, but you still need as many people.

Civilization will never be automated. It may be assisted, but we can not sit back and lounge. Factories are pretty damn automated yet they need people to work the machines. So you dont need 4 guys to put rivets into a frame or to screw tops onto bottles. You still need people to work and maintain the machines. The jobs that were dedicated to riveting and bottle top placement, went to system maintenance and design, among other things.

The reality is that as population grows, socialism becomes more and more counter productive. You would need to have more people producing so as to keep everyone with what are essentially hand outs, since some receive compensation while not producing.

The burden of debt becomes the problem of the following generation. It is a system that inherently creates fiat money. You need to borrow from the future since you gift more than you produce.

Machines have created a different world, but human nature is constant. If you take away the incentive of producing your own wealth, society stagnates. You end up with periodic economic crisis that cripple society.

In the capitalist model you increase the flow of wealth to the working class with higher wages at a loss of profits from owners to offset the imbalance of wealth. In a socialism you can not simply divert the flow of wealth from the average working person since he is already at a minimum.

In socialism, If you take the simplest of measures your society suffers greatly. Look at Europe with its austerity measures. It has had to take away everything their workers have gained over the years and it might not be enough. The social tension is almost too great to bear.

No system is perfect but as far as economy and the distribution of wealth, Capitalism is best for its ability to recover without restructuring the whole of society. Socialism must restructure society at every turn because crisis is natural and unavoidable.

Do not be fooled by technology. It is simply an improvement to our tools, not our selves. What was true before about us will be true in the future.

Originally posted by AccessDenied
At some point we need to realize that going backwards might be the only way to go forwards.
Tech has made us almost obsolete.
It has detached us from everything we were meant to do and be.
No wonder many search for a life's purpose and find none.
We are letting our minds and bodies rot and have become too lazy to do anything to fix it.
Go back 100-200 years and do things the way they did? Many would have you committed for suggesting it.
Might, however, be our only salvation.

Sorry, and I will try to express this in a polite way, but I don't understand.
What was so much better 100 or 200 years ago? Really, I won't start with bad hygene, low life expectancy and low standards of living - but I can't think of anything better then than now.

There were no better solutions for the search of life's purpose.

Backwards into oblivion is not the better way.

We have to find an emulsion of the best ideas available - unrestricted to any boundaries, I agree with that, if I got your direction correctly. Yet, I have no doubt that life today is in nearly every possible way better for nearly everyone in the first-world-countries than it was more than 50 years ago.

reply to post by TheForced


I also love star trek (not so much Deep Space 9, love some of the characters but too much deviation for my taste and lost interest due to the initial mysticism, same thing ruined BS Galactica for me in the middle of the series). In any case I have seen all episodes and haven't noticed any lengthy explanation about the works the Federation social-economical systems, how it manages external commerce or how it can cope with some of the mentioned valued commodities).

I do not doubt that someone has written something but did Gene Roddenberry ever envisioned (or approved) anything more definitive about that aspect ? It seems very murky at best United Federation of Planets Economics.

reply to post by Xeven


You don't understand. They don't need us anymore, we are expendable. Only a few people are needed to supply food and alcohol.

Originally posted by ManFromEurope

Originally posted by AccessDenied
At some point we need to realize that going backwards might be the only way to go forwards.
Tech has made us almost obsolete.
It has detached us from everything we were meant to do and be.
No wonder many search for a life's purpose and find none.
We are letting our minds and bodies rot and have become too lazy to do anything to fix it.
Go back 100-200 years and do things the way they did? Many would have you committed for suggesting it.
Might, however, be our only salvation.

Sorry, and I will try to express this in a polite way, but I don't understand.
What was so much better 100 or 200 years ago? Really, I won't start with bad hygene, low life expectancy and low standards of living - but I can't think of anything better then than now.

There were no better solutions for the search of life's purpose.

Backwards into oblivion is not the better way.

We have to find an emulsion of the best ideas available - unrestricted to any boundaries, I agree with that, if I got your direction correctly. Yet, I have no doubt that life today is in nearly every possible way better for nearly everyone in the first-world-countries than it was more than 50 years ago.

I dare say, century or centuries ago, people lived more in harmony with themselves and the world around them as was done long before them. All that our technology has brought us is the decline of humanity in the span of a hundred years. The purpose was self preservation of the species and the planet...we care about neither anymore.

Originally posted by ManFromEurope
Sorry, and I will try to express this in a polite way, but I don't understand.
What was so much better 100 or 200 years ago? Really, I won't start with bad hygene, low life expectancy and low standards of living - but I can't think of anything better then than now.

There were no better solutions for the search of life's purpose.
.

I don't know, call me old fashioned, but there's a certain higher purpose to:
-Conducting most of your communications face to face, voice to voice, touch to touch rather than communicating mostly via miles of cables and air born signals with the aid of computer screens, smart phones, and "social" networks
-Sitting at the family dinner table with a home cooked meal of real, nutritious food, talking with each member of your family about their day and then all gathering together to play a card game or read some books rather than flopping down on the couch with a nuked "meal" and spending the rest of the night mindlessly watching a television with 250 channels, not a single one of which has anything worth watching shown on it.
-Busting your ass for 5 days out of the week, then spending a fun weekend with your family basking in the personal satisfaction of having provided for them and doing something purely for relaxation and enjoyment for the first time all week because you earned a rest rather than spending the week on your ass, doing little or nothing productive, waiting for the government subsidized check to arrive so your kids can sequester themselves in their rooms to play videogames while you try to fight boredom all weekend.
-Depending on YOURSELF by growing food, hunting food, chopping your firewood, tending your livestock, making your furniture, making your clothes, and knowing at the end of the day you by God are a self sufficient rock star rather than freaking out because the grocery store has run out of your favorite brand of snack cakes, your electricity bill is going up by 15% next month, and Levis has stopped making the style of jeans that son't make it look like you dropped a turd in the back of your pants.
-Having a scientific community which seems to make major discoveries and people who seem to make important inventions almost daily, such are the scale of the advancements in past centuries, rather than people crapping themselves because iPhone5 is going to have a 3% larger screen and weight an eight of an ounce less than iPhone4.
-Truly living in a free society in which a man's ceiling of success is only limited by his goals, his work ethic, and his determination rather than a regulated society in which there exists a middle ground ceiling large enough to ensure taxation, regulations, and restrictions keep those without connections and a high level of seed money to start with from ever achieving the dreams this nation was founded upon.
-Being able to claim a chunk of remote land and truly owning it rather than paying out the ass for a chunk of land and then annually paying the government a dowry for the right to not have it seized by those idiots and then auctioned off to the next guy willing to live as a serf.

I honestly could continue this all day long. Then again, I'm one of those folks who would turn the clock back 200 years if I had the power. I could lose all of this technology tomorrow and, assuming it was lost to all, would live far more as I wish I lived than I do today. Technology has made mankind weak and has turned the world into a land of controlled slaves. Most of our gadgets are little more than shiny baubbles intended to distract the caged bird from realizing it can never fly free. If the future holds more of that, and presents less reason and opportunity to answer life's real calling, making a legacy for yourself through what you have built and produced, then I sure hope that Mayan calendar prediction is correct.

Originally posted by AccessDenied

Originally posted by ManFromEurope

Originally posted by AccessDenied
At some point we need to realize that going backwards might be the only way to go forwards.
Tech has made us almost obsolete.
It has detached us from everything we were meant to do and be.
No wonder many search for a life's purpose and find none.
We are letting our minds and bodies rot and have become too lazy to do anything to fix it.
Go back 100-200 years and do things the way they did? Many would have you committed for suggesting it.
Might, however, be our only salvation.

Sorry, and I will try to express this in a polite way, but I don't understand.
What was so much better 100 or 200 years ago? Really, I won't start with bad hygene, low life expectancy and low standards of living - but I can't think of anything better then than now.

There were no better solutions for the search of life's purpose.

Backwards into oblivion is not the better way.

We have to find an emulsion of the best ideas available - unrestricted to any boundaries, I agree with that, if I got your direction correctly. Yet, I have no doubt that life today is in nearly every possible way better for nearly everyone in the first-world-countries than it was more than 50 years ago.

I dare say, century or centuries ago, people lived more in harmony with themselves and the world around them as was done long before them. All that our technology has brought us is the decline of humanity in the span of a hundred years. The purpose was self preservation of the species and the planet...we care about neither anymore.

edit on 5-12-2012 by AccessDenied because: (no reason given)

Hmmm. Could you explain the following of your points, please? I'm honest, not mocking!

(a) People lived more in harmony with themselves and the world around them.
Q: Betweeen all those wars and famines and droughts and other ugly events, could you describe the life of (for example) a farmer and his raised level of harmony? How did the harmony express itself in his life? What is your idea of harmony for a single person? Does he feel happier? Does he glow in the dark with mirth (okay, this was mocking..)? Honestly, this should be defined so we could argue about REAL higher levels of harmony.

(b) Selfpreservation of the species and the planet...we care about neither anymore.
Q: Selfpreservation of the species was never an important feature in humans minds - why war? The planet wasn't as polluted as it is today, I give you that, its a verifieable fact. The cause itself is a thing of many sources: overpopulation (or even just MORE population), newer technologies requiring materials and energysources prior not used, so there were nearly none plutonium on this planet, and so on.
Nevertheless, could you quote some facts how the selfpreservation of the species did occur?

Originally posted by burdman30ott6

Originally posted by ManFromEurope
Sorry, and I will try to express this in a polite way, but I don't understand.
What was so much better 100 or 200 years ago? Really, I won't start with bad hygene, low life expectancy and low standards of living - but I can't think of anything better then than now.

There were no better solutions for the search of life's purpose.
.

I don't know, call me old fashioned, but there's a certain higher purpose to:
-Conducting most of your communications face to face, voice to voice, touch to touch rather than communicating mostly via miles of cables and air born signals with the aid of computer screens, smart phones, and "social" networks

Families do work this way and will most likely ever do so.

-Sitting at the family dinner table with a home cooked meal of real, nutritious food, talking with each member of your family about their day and then all gathering together to play a card game or read some books rather than flopping down on the couch with a nuked "meal" and spending the rest of the night mindlessly watching a television with 250 channels, not a single one of which has anything worth watching shown on it.

Not a problem in our family, so I could overgeneralize like you did.

-Busting your ass for 5 days out of the week, then spending a fun weekend with your family basking in the personal satisfaction of having provided for them and doing something purely for relaxation and enjoyment for the first time all week because you earned a rest rather than spending the week on your ass, doing little or nothing productive, waiting for the government subsidized check to arrive so your kids can sequester themselves in their rooms to play videogames while you try to fight boredom all weekend.

Not a problem in our family, so I could overgeneralize like you did. Stop posting platitudes, please.

-Depending on YOURSELF by growing food, hunting food, chopping your firewood, tending your livestock, making your furniture, making your clothes, and knowing at the end of the day you by God are a self sufficient rock star rather than freaking out because the grocery store has run out of your favorite brand of snack cakes, your electricity bill is going up by 15% next month, and Levis has stopped making the style of jeans that son't make it look like you dropped a turd in the back of your pants.

I'm living in a larger city, how should I keep my own livestock?.. And whoever flips to the fact that some designer changes the style of some clothes does have my deepest sympathy for being such a shallow person.. I agree.

-Having a scientific community which seems to make major discoveries and people who seem to make important inventions almost daily, such are the scale of the advancements in past centuries, rather than people crapping themselves because iPhone5 is going to have a 3% larger screen and weight an eight of an ounce less than iPhone4.

Those people argueing over some smartphones are simply louder. The technology advances we have nowadays are rapidly increasing -> singularity.

-Truly living in a free society in which a man's ceiling of success is only limited by his goals, his work ethic, and his determination rather than a regulated society in which there exists a middle ground ceiling large enough to ensure taxation, regulations, and restrictions keep those without connections and a high level of seed money to start with from ever achieving the dreams this nation was founded upon.

Yeah right, as if that was better 100 years ago.... Nope.

-Being able to claim a chunk of remote land and truly owning it rather than paying out the ass for a chunk of land and then annually paying the government a dowry for the right to not have it seized by those idiots and then auctioned off to the next guy willing to live as a serf.

This is only and really only possible if there is an overabundance of unowned land. Hasn't happened here in Europe for the last thousand years, I guess.

I honestly could continue this all day long. Then again, I'm one of those folks who would turn the clock back 200 years if I had the power. I could lose all of this technology tomorrow and, assuming it was lost to all, would live far more as I wish I lived than I do today. Technology has made mankind weak and has turned the world into a land of controlled slaves. Most of our gadgets are little more than shiny baubbles intended to distract the caged bird from realizing it can never fly free. If the future holds more of that, and presents less reason and opportunity to answer life's real calling, making a legacy for yourself through what you have built and produced, then I sure hope that Mayan calendar prediction is correct.

You would die. Faster and more ugly than you or I would imagine. This I am sure of. I am sorry.

reply to post by zedVSzardoz

false. Absolutely not. As time passes you need different specializations, but you still need as many people.

I totally disagree.
Think back to the days just before computers hit. Early 60's?
Your phone company and electric company had rooms of women maintaining your account and sending you a bill in the mail. Gone! Just a handful running the machines. In recent years even the IT department has seen cuts.

The computer has been the biggest destroyer of jobs in history.

Any place where computers have touched have lose jobs.

Shaver factory in Netherlands

At the Philips Electronics factory on the coast of China, hundreds of workers use their hands and specialized tools to assemble electric shavers.

At a sister factory here in the Dutch countryside, 128 robot arms do the same work with yoga-like flexibility.

They are down to a few dozen people per shift. Even the Chinese are losing jobs to computers.
If they can replace YOU they will.

Even retail jobs are taking a hit. Have you been to a Dollar store lately? 2 workers maybe?
Think Amazon. How may Xmas presents have you ordered on line?

It's a fallacy to think the jobs are just being exchanged to hi tech jobs. What is the economic reason to replace 100 factory workers with 100 computer operators? Tech workers cost more to employee.
Jobs are going away never to return.

reply to post by samkent


The truth is in the middle somewhere.

Think of the 60s. Yes, lots of people worked in areas that no longer exist. They also worked longer hours and many tasks required physical abilities.

Consider though all the jobs out there that never existed or existed in much smaller numbers. Beauticians, Gym instructors, Cell phone sales, repairs. The whole industry of the internet, the whole computer industry. All the people employed in creating / selling computer games. Theme parks. The multitude of the food industry including fast food.

There are many, many fields that exist today that did not exist or had limited existence in the 60s.

The jobs have changed. Times have changed.

Before someone says yea, but the jobs have disappeared, remember the great depression and the ups and downs between then and now.

A paradigm shift is occurring, we have to get through it.

P

Dont forget, that technology is only there to serve people.......New little useless gadgets to waste time, the internet, facebook, cells phones with too many "Things" on them, all a waste of time. Basically toys.
If humans didnt buy these gadgets, then they wouldnt impact on society.
Other than these toys and time wasters, we havent improved much. Information is everywhere, but people seem dumber. School exams of 60+ years ago, would be considered too hard and "Tough" for today's kid.
Slide Rules, Log books, etc all replaced by the scientific calculator...kids are more interested in the latest "Celebrity" or computer game, not how to invent a new propulsion system, or flying craft for Mars.
Probably a little harsh and generalizing, but parents seem to be too busy to parent anymore...tho rich people always had nannys and butlers to do all that.
It seems to me that the Free thought and creativity of the late 1800s to the 1970s seems to have disappeared to a degree.....It is still there, but now hidden away by all these so called "New Technology' gadgets that we really dont need, and in a way made life more stress full.
Why am I wasting time typing on this computer communicating with who? Why Indeed.

reply to post by ManFromEurope


It isn't overgeneralizing, it is simply stating what life is like today in the USA. You're from Europe? Your mileage may vary... I disagree with you entirely on the degree of technological advances today. Very few of them are life changing in a meaningful way when compared to inventions of the past which truly impacted everyone who followed.

You would die. Faster and more ugly than you or I would imagine. This I am sure of. I am sorry.

Explain, please. I'd enjoy reading your rationale for believing I could not survive sans technology when mankind has done exactly that for 95% of our collective history.

Socialism for our needs and capitalism for everything else.

reply to post by Xeven


Not true.

Greed and rape for profit culture is forcing people away from all of the jobs, required to maintain a healthy society.

Who fixes the roads? No one.
Who cares for natural resources? No one
etc;