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Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

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Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#211

Post by mistermann »

barry-cotter wrote: post #70
mistermann wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or worse. At least those dull and exhausting jobs could formerly afford you a reasonably content middle class lifestyle with a modest home, but that is increasingly out of reach of even some of the most successful in society at least in some countries, if you'd like to live where there are actually jobs. As we continue down this road to a winner takes all society, I'm not so sure this is what I'd call progress, and I…

Both a middle class lifestyle and a modest home are moving targets. People eat out a lot more than in the 70’s, they have larger homes and smaller families, they have safer and more reliable cars, they live longer. As far as being able to live where the jobs are this is a problem caused by NIMBYs. This is not a problem they have in Japan.

Japan doesn't have an artificial demand problem like some other countries. They're also not mentally disabled by skin color.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#212

Post by albertgoeswoof »

maxerickson wrote: post #122
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #55

Warning: the following is conjecture which I have not researched. Because who has the time? My main question while reading this article was why is the author so stuck on "manufacturing" jobs being automated away? He does address this very briefly in section III but I cannot help but feel his foundational research is highly skewed. Sure, robotics are growing in popularity and that technology, specifically, will likely…

Any company able to obtain financing will instantly replace 10 workers with a $1 million machine. If the machine is vaguely durable that even works if wages are $10 (~$30K annual cost per worker->$300,000 payroll per year, investment pays off in reasonable time).

That assumes the work stays the same- people can be repurposed to do something else or fired. Investing heavily in tech is a big risk and is something that slows this kind of unemployment significantly

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#213

Post by dwighttk »

SmooL wrote: post #200
dwighttk wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so: constricted communication bandwidth?

That's one way to describe it, a better way might be that's its not bandwidth that limits remote working communication, but just a lack of features. To loop this back to the topic at hand, the idea is that you need people in the same space to work effectively. That idea forces collections of people (cities) and drives up the value of the land (a fixed commodity). Having technology that removes the need to have the wo…

I think the efficiency gain from cities is more than just some people working in a single company, but all sorts of logistical savings.

Perhaps my imagination isn't big enough, but I just don't see VR replacing dasein as it were.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#214

Post by khedoros1 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #144
Chris_Jay wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, my own (long term) project is aimed at addressing the problem you're pointing out. Given the possibility of remote work, there's no insurmountable reason why the only land worth living in should be concentrated in a few urban centers. https://sites.google.com/s/0BzzRwqIB2K0dSWhkTXBSTTltTDg/p/0B...

> there's no insurmountable reason why the only land worth living in should be concentrated in a few urban centers. IMHO, one very insurmountable reason is that you could never convince everyone that an urban center is worth living in. Quite a few people just don't enjoy that lifestyle.

I think you read that wrong. Paraphrasing what you said: Some people not liking to live in cities is an insurmountable reason that land in city centers is the only land worth living in.

First, your response doesn't make sense (and I think it's just because it's a misreading of the comment you replied to).

Second, I agree, there are people (myself included) that wouldn't enjoy living in an urban center. But that doesn't address what I think the comment was getting at, which is that land in urban centers is more desirable to a greater number of people than land outside of them.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#215

Post by dvtv75 »

mywittyname wrote: post #160
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #146

The idea that rising disability is a cause of declining labor force participation is interesting, and fits in with anecdotal data from what family members in medicine have told me. They basically phrase it as: If you're uneducated and poor, why would you work a low paying job with little hope of advancement when you could go on disability and collect a similar amount of money without working?

To be fair, many of these people are actually disabled. It's just that previously they could work. Like the article says, their managers cared about them and and had the capacity to let them take lower-impact positions that they were capable of doing. We don't appreciate how difficult it can be to employ these marginally capable workers. Keeping these people on staff at a small company raises health and operational i…

(Not in the US.) My partner worked a factory job for many years. They used to have a "specials" group (unofficial name for them), who would be taken on and they would be trained to do just one job, but they would learn it and perform it to a very high standard, day in and day out for many years. They would become very fast at it, and were paid quite well with regard to the average wage in the area.

Unfortunately, they were also the first laid off when automation was installed, and afterwards they were competing for few jobs at the same (regional) low wages with "normal" people.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#216

Post by maxerickson »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #212
maxerickson wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any company able to obtain financing will instantly replace 10 workers with a $1 million machine. If the machine is vaguely durable that even works if wages are $10 (~$30K annual cost per worker->$300,000 payroll per year, investment pays off in reasonable time).

That assumes the work stays the same- people can be repurposed to do something else or fired. Investing heavily in tech is a big risk and is something that slows this kind of unemployment significantly

Sure, it's a cartoon example. But I think the broader point, that businesses can afford to invest quite large amounts to reduce labor costs, is not very controversial.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#218

Post by mncharity »

jpao79 wrote: post #203
mncharity wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the possibility of remote work, [...] urban centers. Even HN doesn't yet seem to be discussing the impact of coming VR/AR on people's geographic distribution. Perhaps it's still too low profile? Eye tracking; facial expression tracking (researchy); foveated rendering reducing GPU requirements; inexpensive laptops with discrete GPUs; HMDs with monitor-like angular resolution; inexpensive finger tracking (hopef…

Or maybe even just an always-on video setup. Basically use the following innovations to connect an office in SF with one in Fresno: 1.) MIT Stanford Wormhole http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/... The designers of the installation, who call it the wormhole, say it is meant to encourage random encounters between students and staff at two of the country’s premier technology-oriented universitie…

> Or maybe even just an always-on video

Or perhaps video in addition to XR? HMDs don't entirely play well with eyes (at least until we get adaptive optics or light fields), so I want to give my eyes a break periodically. A video wall in the kitchen would permit a "let's take a break" conversation with a non-local colleague.

The power of the XR argument, is that if your ideal development environment is XR, and your ideal collaboration context is via XR, then locality constraints have simply gone away. Rather than video's challenge of being an impoverished medium, which may or may not be worth some non-locality benefit.

> MIT Stanford Wormhole

I spent a lot of time in Stata, over may years, and I'm not sure I ever saw the "wormhole" used. But perhaps there was some pattern of use, like late lunch, which I systematically missed. And one can walk by the cafeteria without easily noticing.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#219

Post by mncharity »

memebox3v wrote: post #159
mncharity wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the possibility of remote work, [...] urban centers. Even HN doesn't yet seem to be discussing the impact of coming VR/AR on people's geographic distribution. Perhaps it's still too low profile? Eye tracking; facial expression tracking (researchy); foveated rendering reducing GPU requirements; inexpensive laptops with discrete GPUs; HMDs with monitor-like angular resolution; inexpensive finger tracking (hopef…

Or for that matter self driving cars. You could commute for 5 hours a day, spend 2 hours in the office and go home again. All while being productive. That greatly increases the commutable range. Then you have the prospect of self driving Motor homes, moving with the work becomes that much easier.

People take commuter buses with wifi, from Pennsylvania to NYC, with a 2 to 4 hour round trip. A few commute Boston to NYC on Amtrak Acela, with a 7-ish hour round trip (you can stand up and walk around, get coffee, etc).

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#220

Post by mncharity »

dwighttk wrote: post #213
SmooL wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one way to describe it, a better way might be that's its not bandwidth that limits remote working communication, but just a lack of features. To loop this back to the topic at hand, the idea is that you need people in the same space to work effectively. That idea forces collections of people (cities) and drives up the value of the land (a fixed commodity). Having technology that removes the need to have the wo…

I think the efficiency gain from cities is more than just some people working in a single company, but all sorts of logistical savings. Perhaps my imagination isn't big enough, but I just don't see VR replacing dasein as it were.

> efficiency gain from cities

Sure. It's just that "tolerable commute" would no longer need to be one of those gains.

A fun conversation went by with someone from the Sierra Club. It was pointed out that the built environment which best matched their resource conservation/efficiency goals, was Manhattan. Their response was something like "yes, but we don't emphasize that, because it wouldn't appeal to our membership". ;)

> dasein

Picture brainstorming in front of a hallway whiteboard. Picture grabbing some nearby colleagues to collaborate. Now picture how relatively ineffective and unpleasant it would to do that collaboration over video conferencing and such. It's suboptimal, but that's a price you're sometimes willing to pay for non-locality. But now imagine that given a choice, you would much prefer to be brainstorming in front of a virtual whiteboard.[1] And collaborating there. Simply because it's a more powerful and helpful environment. So your physical whiteboard languishes, gets taken down for wall painting, and is never rehung. Then non-locality is no longer something you pay for. Locality constraints are just gone.

There's a fun decades-old metric on communication technology: Given some communication task, and a choice of technologies, how far would you walk to get access to them? Physical letter, email, phone, in-person conversation. Down the hall, different floor, different building, across the city.

Already, there are some tasks where even if you are sitting in the same office, you would use some tech rather than turning around. VR/AR seems likely to greatly increase that set of tasks. Reducing the importance of being able to physically walk to people.

[1] Here's a limited existing virtual whiteboard: http://store.steampowered.com/app/585040/Dry_Erase_Infinite_...

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