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New Wave Of Automation And The Future Of Jobs
From NextBigFuture.com
NY Times – 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. Factories like the one here in the Netherlands are a striking counterpoint to those used by Apple and other consumer electronics giants, which employ hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers. The dutch factory here has several dozen workers per shift, about a tenth as many as the plant in the Chinese city of Zhuhai.
At an automation trade show last year in Chicago, Ron Potter, the director of robotics technology at an Atlanta consulting firm called Factory Automation Systems, offered attendees a spreadsheet to calculate how quickly robots would pay for themselves.
In one example, a robotic manufacturing system initially cost $250,000 and replaced two machine operators, each earning $50,000 a year. Over the 15-year life of the system, the machines yielded $3.5 million in labor and productivity savings.
Robot arms like those at a Philips Electronics factory in the Netherlands can perform the same tasks as hundreds of low-skill workers.
While the many robots in auto factories typically perform only one function, in the new Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., a robot might do up to four: welding, riveting, bonding and installing a component.
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2012-08-30 22:22:22
Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/08/new-wave-of-automation-and-future-of.html
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To whom fall the benefits of such technology ? What kind of world do we, the people feel and understand is useful and beneficial ? If ‘function’ is paramount, we might as well all pack up shop right now. The only possible way such a road leads is to a situation of reduced population and highly privileged minority rule over a more numerous ‘maintenance’ population on controlled wages and rights.
If you have no power right now – do you imagine someone is suddenly going to give you some tomorrow? – It’s never happened so far…
It might not be bad at all.
If our basic needs are provided it does not mean we will succumb to a life of excess and indulgence