In my first blog I will explain the link between the thesis I have and the subject of this blog. As you all know are we using motors, robots, machines, etc already for a lot of things. So for our thesis a company asked us to develop a control system by using vision. We have to look what the possibilities are and at what price. Now there is a guy, let’s call him Jos, who does the job manual. And here is were the connection with our blog is started.
If I want to tell in a light conversation what my thesis will be, I just say :” well my job is to get Jos fired by building a machine instead.” Because going to automation is the same as going away from manual work.
Let’s go a step more extreme, not only Jos will get fired. The more automation will grow the more people like Jos will have to search a new job. In general all the easy jobs will be done by a machine or an automated system. Those machines are actually new workers you create who are better in those Jobs. Jos and all his co-workers will be fired or will have to do a Job that isn’t automated yet.
But because the evolution of automation, more and more jobs will be automated. what brings that many people won’t have a Job. At the end only a few people will be necessary to control all the economies and industries. What will happen with you and me without a job, what will be our propose in life? Do we still need to live? Will automation, made by us, be the reason why we don’t have a reason to live anymore? are we killing ourselves true automation?
Suicide Through Automation 
Dear writers,
Very interesting to write about this topic.
This topic forces other people, not only friends or classmates but also politicians, economists,… to think broader than only today. We, engineers, are looking more to the futher of this world; how to make the world better in innovation or how to make the world more sustainable, how to create more technologies, automatization,… without looking to the consequences. This topic might be one of the biggest problem where everyone gets involved with. Not only our generation will notice this problem but also our children etc. Well I hope that this blog, with the writers and readers, can also find a solution for the problem where technology and jobs can find each other.
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let’s say the world population now is 90% human and 10% automation. Thinking of world population as not how many people we have but what we do that is useful in society. Let’s say that in numbers we have the equilibrium of 10 billion people who work useful for society. In the future this will shift in a 50-50% what means that or we do more useful things or the human part has to decrease. In the far future we will have maybe a 10% human – 90% automation. this means that or the population on earth will decrease 88% or we have to increase the usefulness to 90 billion.
And I think the second option is something engineers can work on. the rest will come as a result.
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Vignero, I’m figuring you meant the worlds labor is currently divided into 90% performed by mostly human actions and 10% by pure machine automation? I don’t think you can actually express it that way… every fraction of work done is, in the end, commissioned by a human. No end product is ever truly intended for a machine. If anything, you can only say that 10% of labor has just been made easier to the extent that human intervention has been severely minimized.
I do get what you’re going at however, and this counts for the general story arc of this entire blog, it’s also slightly linked to the interesting post with the TEDx video; technology has advanced at ridiculous rates the last century and society simply hasn’t adapted on many, many levels.
We’re sort of stuck in a system that is based on the principle that everybody works a 9 to 5 job (at least in most European countries) whilst there is indeed no demand for so much work potential, thus unemployment is created. On one part this should be a utopia, on the other we simply don’t know how to deal with it as other systems are changing at much slower speeds.
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Nice focus of the relation between people’s roles in future society and development of automation. I agree with that automation will get more dominating in society gradually. People will have their parts of controlling, designing, manufacturing and maintaining for the automation system. Ones who do not fit in automation system will for sure have troubles then.
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