It might seem funny but it is also somewhat sad really. Today there are factories, offices and homes that are full of bits of technology, machinery in particular, the purpose of which is to take one thing to turn it into something else. Machines make paper from blocks of wood. Printers turn paper into documents. Expresso machines mix coffee beans and hot water to make coffee. It seems that humanity has progressed greatly, and we have - and yet we still find that there is a distinctive divide between the generally wealthier northern countries and the generally imporished southern countries. Worse still, we still see a steady flow of resources from the south to the north. Within these northern countries themselves we still find that there exists a class impoverished or nearly so.
It seems somewhat baffling that, with all the technology that is in motion, we humans still find ourselves toiling away at a 40+ hour week. It seems almost senseless to acknowledge that, rather than allowing technology to make our lives easier, we have permitted a space-time compression to occur, spurning on what is popularly termed the great rat race, ever accellerating upon a treadmill and with no end in sight.
While the number of cases of depression and suicides per annum mount we humans remain ever venturing to go that little bit faster, regardless of the consequences that accumulate all around us. Forests and natural oil resources are plundered and squandered, individuals exploited and discarded in the name of a better reading in the international stock-ratings and ultimately the profit margin, the present is ignored and our perspective of the future is reduced to an egotistical drive for more money.
Oh yes, we give ourselves all the excuses in the world to partake of it, whether it be in the name of remaining competitive, being the best, bringing up a family in the best of ways, investing for one’s pension or a big holiday break. How superficial and misguided… it saddens me.
One would think that with all the technology that humans have invented we would be able to put such to more purposeful use - to make life more bearable - more about working to live than living to work.
Yet it seems almost a terrifying prospect. If a machine were to produce some consumable with little or no further intervention from humans, what would humans do? Would we panic about the evil machines that seek to replace ourselves? Yes, that is what we typically do when such prospects loom on the horizon. We blind ourselves to the potential and groan about lost opportunities to toil.
This is perhaps why we haven’t embraced the concept of automation to its full potential. We who refuse to recognize that what lies beyond the hurdle is the prospect of providence - the utopic concept of having needs satisfied with the minimum of effort.
Some would turn around and suggest this to be the mission of nobody other than the lazy - the lout. The lout and the lazy do little to give back to society in times of scarcity. Such a comparison hardly holds in times of plenty. In fact it is little better than the argument that medical intervention is bad because it contradicts the will of God.
First came the Neolithic or agricultural revolution. Then came the industrial revolution. We are heading into the information revolution and it seems only appropriate that the next or accompanying revolution ought to be the automation revolution. The question is whether society is able to handle a life of reduced life-long survival-driven suffering.
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