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sl4shd0rk writes:
"Bill Gates says everyone needs to prepare to be out of work in 20 years due to Robots/software taking over most jobs. In preparation for this, Gates recommends people 'should basically get on their knees and beg businesses to keep employing humans' and reduce operating overhead for businesses by 'eliminating payroll and corporate income taxes while also not raising the minimum wage'. Bill Gates, you may recall, is the former CEO of Microsoft whose business acumen has brought the technology sector such things as Metro, Windows Phone and Xbox One.
BusinessInsider took a similar theme earlier this year."
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Bill Gates: Prepare to be Assimilated
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17 2014, @10:17PM
Kurt Vonnegut took a good look at this problem in "Player Piano", from the wikipedia page on the book,
"Player Piano, author Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, was published in 1952. It is a dystopia of automation,[1] describing the dereliction it causes in the quality of life.[1] The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. This widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class—the engineers and managers who keep society running—and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines. The book uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become a hallmark developed further in Vonnegut's later works.[1]
"In a 1973 interview Vonnegut discussed his inspiration to write the book:[2]
I was working for General Electric at the time, right after World War II , and I saw a milling machine for cutting the rotors on jet engines, gas turbines. This was a very expensive thing for a machinist to do, to cut what is essentially one of those Brâncuși forms. So they had a computer-operated milling machine built to cut the blades, and I was fascinated by that. This was in 1949 and the guys who were working on it were foreseeing all sorts of machines being run by little boxes and punched cards. Player Piano was my response to the implications of having everything run by little boxes. The idea of doing that, you know, made sense, perfect sense. To have a little clicking box make all the decisions wasn't a vicious thing to do. But it was too bad for the human beings who got their dignity from their jobs. "
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday March 17 2014, @10:51PM
Kurt Vonnegut's attitude towards his job was probably much alike his attitude with writing novels and life in general -- "Oh, well, kinda just float along and do this, no punctuation in life, no real beginnings or ends, just kinda a stream of pseudorandom but unremarkable daydreamings you forget afterward"
While Vonnegut was daydreaming, he could have instead asked his boss about how the machines worked and how he could do more for his employer, instead of spending all day waiting for his next toke or shot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17 2014, @11:23PM
Probably made more money as a writer anyway. Why would you have him kiss ass?
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Tuesday March 18 2014, @09:40AM