Robomow
To all low-wage landscapers and gardeners from south of the border: Hold on to your hats -- your services may be no longer required to the extent that they once were. By making one large initial investment ($1,899.00 to $2,299.00) in a Robomow, a well-to-do California homeowner can enjoy a nice cool glass of lemonade on the deck while the grass is mowed without your assistance. While your employer doesn't necessarily want to mow the lawn himself, he would much prefer the mower to run itself than to have you push it, because that means he can feel free to sit around naked in the back yard while watching if he so desires. From the article:

Not only is the autonomous electric system quiet - an on-board mulching system eliminates grass clippings and it's powerful enough to tackle the same mowing conditions as a traditional petrol-driven push-mower according to manufacturers Friendly Robotics.

The onboard navigation system is used to monitor the unit's position relative to the wire around the lawn and includes a compass-like device that uses the magnetic field of the earth to determine the current driving direction and distance traveled. This information is then used to determine the most efficient method of mowing any given lawn. [...]

Powered by maintenance free rechargeable batteries with no gas, no oil and no emissions and the initial set-up takes about an hour on the average property and the perimeter wire will disappear from sight ground in about two weeks.

- posted by Chris @ 12:34 AM

 
Automated Convenience Stores
An article reports on automated convenience stores in France. These stores are essentially giant refrigerated vending machines that sell 200 unique items. No workers are required. From the article:

They resemble mini-convenience stores with the shopkeeper replaced by a robotic hand, ready to take your order 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Selling everything from milk and cat food to toilet paper and toothpaste, Yatoo Partoo is an urban life-saver par excellence!

Competition comes from Belgian Shop24, which now operates 160 stores in 7 European countries, with another 150 stores in the pipeline.

An American company called Shop2000 is manufacturing such vending machines in the United States. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

A robotic arm rolls past dozens of items stacked 10 shelves high. It stops at a row of sodas, where a gear engages a conveyer belt that causes the bottle to drop into a waiting bin. Mission accomplished, the bin returns to a central receptacle, which slides open to present the drink along with a plastic bag. The machine can vend up to 10 items at once.

Such machines occupy 200 square feet while selling 200 separate products, unlike conventional convenient stores, which occupy 3,000 square feet and sell 3,000 products. Although their selection is inferior, they allow vendors to save money on labor and real estate costs. Also, the technology is more sophisticated than standard vending machines -- they accept debit and card payments and can use sensors to determine if an item has been dropped.
- posted by Chris @ 12:44 PM

 
Bio-Plastic
This Denver Post aricle reports that Wild Oats Markets is in the process of replacing its plastic deli containers with "clear, biodegradable boxes made of corn solids" in all 77 of its stores. This is a mere drop in the bucket, but it is worth noting that there is a viable way to create a durable "bio-plastic" material without the use of petroleum products. Such containers cost "a few cents" more to produce than petroleum-based containers, so we won't likely see Wal-Mart or Safeway begin to stock up on them until their price drops. Wild Oats might have made this decision early to appeal to its eco-oriented niche market.
- posted by Chris @ 2:17 AM

 
Direct Manufacturing
This Technology Review article reports on some exciting developments in factory automation where "three dimensional printers", guided by digital design files, fabricate raw materials from dust and automatically shape them into products using lasers. Mainstream companies like Siemens and Boeing are already adopting this technology. This could be a very promising development if used correctly, in my opinion.
- posted by Chris @ 12:39 PM

 
Gift Economy
I've recently been developing interest in an attractive alternative to capitalism, bureaucratic socialism, and the various utopian forms of communism: the gift economy.

Low-tech and small-scale gift economies have been practiced among the Native American societies of the coastal Pacific Northwest in the form of potlatch ceremonies, where the wealthy of the various communities gained prestige by giving away vast amounts of surplus goods that they had acquired during the year in their resource-rich region.

A high-tech gift economy already flourishes on the internet, most notably in the form of open source software, wikis, and peer-to-peer filesharing. People partake in collaborative projects not so much for monetary gain as for personal enjoyment, to meet people who share common interests, to develop skills and knowledge, or to contribute to the creation of useful resources. Participants make their creations (or in the case of illegal fileswapping, other people's creations) free for a number of different reasons. They might simply derive satisfaction from seeing resources that they helped create put into widespread use. Artists and musicians often just want to have their works seen or heard. In the case of file-swapping, there does exist a sense of reciprocal morality, and in some cases, one's download times speed up as one's contributions increase.

With the rise of massive hard drives and broadband internet connections, the cost of distributing information, multimedia and software is becoming negligible, and the logistics that businesses face when distributing goods do not apply. Quite a number of political, financial, infrustructural, technological, and even motivational barriers prevent basic necessities such as food, clothing, housing and utilities from being developed in a manner conducive to free distribution. Free distribution is diametrically opposed to the profit motive that drives the production of said necessities as commodities. Technological innovations such as hydroponics, airponics, genetics, robotics, and nanotechnology could be utilized to automate, and hence significantly reduce the production costs of agriculture and construction, but the initial investments necessary to integrate such investments into industry are quite large, and are thus less profitable in the short-term than hiring needy people who have bills to pay. Such developments are being implemented at a slower pace than necessary, and many innovations are being patented (and thus placed off-limits to other adopters). Further, when automation does occur, those who lose their jobs are not able to meet their expenses because the ability to acquire basic necessities is based upon participation in the workforce. It is technologically possible to streamline the production and distribution of necessities such that they can be offered for free at a low marginal production cost, but the economic and political pitfalls are much more problematic. There is no clear path to that point from where we currently are.

The gift economy is not the same as communism (even in its idealized form). The means of production would not be "collectively owned" by society as a whole or by local communities. Perhaps everybody should be equally entitled to the benefits of land (which was never created by anybody, even though it has long been bound up in exclusive private estates), but participants of projects and activities would be able to set their own standards of inclusion or exclusion, as well as their own organizational structure. Further, production would not necessarily be organized under one common umbrella; if people are not satisfied with an existing project, they can start a new one that aims to achieve the same purposes by a different route. There would be no forcing of people into communes or mandatory employment. Further, market relationships, bartering or selling would not be banned, although the power of such activities would be greatly diminished if they lost their stranglehold upon the distribution of basic goods. Many people would likely withdraw their labor from the market, or work irregularly in order to acquire certain luxuries that could only be acquired through exchange. Lastly, the idea of the gift economy doesn't really pin any hopes upon an internationally united proletariat coming to attain revolutionary consciousness (a completely laughable prospect, in my opinion), nor upon a political vanguard attempting to organize the masses. The gift economy that prospers on the internet was made possible by a number of highly skilled and talented individuals who helped develop a number of new modes of interaction that many ordinary people have taken advantage of -- and not all consequences have been intentional. Those who use filesharing utilities to swap music and pornography are not necessarily any more enlightened or awakened than they were before -- they are simply taking advantage of new avenues that have been made available in a very obvious way.

Some might ask why I propose a high-tech gift economy given current technological barriers when low-tech small-scale gift economies have functioned successfully before. The reason is that most people who live in modern societies would never willingly sacrifice the comfort and convenience of plumbing, toilets, refrigerators, freezers, sinks, hot showers, microwaves, computers, electric lights, video, internet, air conditioning, modern medicine, etc, nor do they even have any working knowledge of how to function without them. And given that the planet currently hosts over 6 billion people, roughly half of them living in urban areas, the logistics of supporting the population by means of gardens, hearths and axes are far more staggering than that involved in the scenario what I propose. Technology is the only product of capitalism that I truly appreciate, and low-tech agarian communalist visions really don't inspire me anymore at this point.

If the economy that I propose ever begins to develop in the physical world, it will happen organically and almost by accident, much like what has taken place on the internet. I don't set it forth as a program that can be achieved by following a blueprint. After all, political blueprints are the tools of would-be tyrants. However, the increased automation and unemployment we are likely to see in the future will create some interesting contradictions, as well as opportunities. We shall see if they are taken advantage of in a creative manner.
- posted by Chris @ 4:06 AM

 
Recent Thoughts on Capitalism
I've been reworking my thoughts on capitalism as of late; here is what I've come up with:

Firstly, I am in favor of developing advanced technologies if such technologies actually have the potential to reduce the burdens of daily life, or to extend or augment the capacities of human beings.

Capitalism -- that is, an economic system based on the private ownership of property and market-based exchange -- is responsible for the development of many of such technologies. The ideas that fuel such technologies are often originally developed in universities or government research organizations, but even in these cases, the capitalist economy typically performs the function of converting said ideas into marketable products, while using prices to determine the most cost-effective (although not necessarily the most efficient) manner of producing and distributing them. Although some industries are not amenable to competition, businesses that face competition tend to be very adept at providing products and services that the customer finds satisfying at a reasonable price, given that their competitor benefits at their expense if they do not. Capitalism can be said to be beneficial in at least one respect: Under the right conditions, capitalism can facilitate the cost-effective development, production and distribution of goods and services that are useful to people. I don't believe that a socialist planned economy is capable of the same, although governments have shown themselves to be perfectly capable of of running a small number of key industries -- particularly ones that are susceptible to monopoly, such as utilities or railways. In easily monopolized industries, state ownership has often proved beneficial, as it can ensure that lower income people have access to essential services at reasonable prices, and that they won't be discontinued in certain areas due to a lack of profitability. However, a single organization cannot effectively orchestrate an entire economy, nor should it be trusted to decide exactly what will be developed and produced, how much will be produced, who it will be distributed to, and under what criteria.

Although capitalist industries are cost-effective, they are not necessarily efficient, in the sense of utilizing the smallest amount of energy and resources necessary for the production of goods and services that are in demand. If the market price of a watt of electricity derived from fossil fuels is lower than that of a watt derived from solar cells, buyers will typically purchase energy from fossil fuels, even though the production of solar power consumes fewer natural resources. If businesses invested a sufficient amount of money in developing solar power, it could become cost-competitive with fossil fuels, but such an investment is not conducive to short-term profitability. Solar power probably will eventually become cost-competitive in the future due to current pushes towards alternative energy -- many of which are not motivated by profit at all -- but this goal will take longer than necessary to accomplish given that the development of solar power yields no immediate profit to most businesses that matter.

Capitalism is also not necessarily efficient in terms of its labor utilization. Although automation has really started to kick in during recent years due to a widespread adoption of existing robotic and computer technology, the economy still has not eliminated the most unpleasant and dangerous jobs in existence. Armies of workers are still hired to perform such basic drudgery as digging ditches, picking vegetables, cleaning toilets, and stitching clothing. The reason is that unemployed and unskilled workers, especially those in developing countries, are willing to work terrible jobs for long hours, low wages and no benefits. In the short term, hiring such workers is less expensive and more profitable than investing money to research and develop technologies that could replace them, and thus many businesses will profit for an extended period of time without introducing any labor-saving innovations into the workplace (or even innovations that could improve the work environment).

Capitalism imposes certain artificial costs of living upon people, thus compelling them to enter the world of wage labor. The large privately-held landed estates that existed under feudalism remained under capitalism. Under feudalism, the nobility who held title to said estates would impose rent on the resident agarian peasants as a condition of receiving a vassal's "protection" while forbidding them from leaving, thus intensifying the amount of labor they needed to perform daily. As mechanized industry developed under capitalism, landholders would evict the peasants so that the land could be used for other purposes, thus forcing them to flee to the cities and accept a wage job in a dirty factory just to pay for rent and food. Modern consumer capitalism in the first world differs in the respect that workers labor not just to satisfy such basic necessities, but to purchase newer commodities, some of which have come to be regarded as necessities (like modern medicine) while others are no more than frivolous luxuries. In the third world, most workers still labor for the same reasons as 19th century English textile mill workers: just to survive.

In the last one hundred years, capitalism has become tolerable and even quite livable for many people in developed consumer economies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Japan. This is due in part to increased productivity within the economy, but also due to redistributionist programs enacted by the government. Free or subsidized education, social security, pensions, socialized or subsidized medicine, the government ownership of easily monopolized industries, unemployment insurance, environmental protections, and a restricted workweek have all been key to allowing the average person to take advantage of a market economy. However, it is questionable if such programs will continue to function in the future, given how easily capital can be relocated to countries with lower labor costs, lower taxes, and fewer labor laws and environmental restrictions. Such programs also must contend with the accelerating pace of automation (which is different than earlier forms of mechanization, which actually created new jobs).

Perhaps there will be a point at which ordinary people can take advantage of the technologies that capitalism helped develop while eschewing its demands. Average people are already taking advantage of modern computer and network technology to replicate and exchange digitized information at virtually no cost. This may involve the the illegal pirating of software and multimedia, or the creation of open-source software, open-content books, or non-copyrighted multimedia. There may very well be a point at which the continued automation of industry simultaneously increases both productivity and unemployment; a declining consumer base could create a crisis among industries that may find themselves with a surplus of goods that cannot be sold. The financial establishment could conceivably push for a universal basic income grant, which would make all citizens of a given nation -- whether employed or otherwise -- more capable of purchasing their goods and services. Another option is for volunteer networks of people to run certain key industries themselves, while freely distributing basic goods and services such as housing, food, electricity, internet access, and medical care. Automation could eliminate many of the basic costs and logistical problems of doing this. People would thus be free to devote less of their time performing meaningless jobs and more of their time trying to figure out what they really want to do with their life. Such a situation could lead to many people whose services are still valued by industry choosing to withdraw their labor from the market, thus undermining many of the more useless of industries. Automated industries run by volunteer networks and the elimination of the necessity of wage labor is my proposed "next step" beyond capitalism.
- posted by Chris @ 1:41 AM

 
Automation Advances
This Dallas-Fort Worth Star Telegram article discusses the automation of white-collar office jobs:

"A decade ago everybody put computers on desktops to make us more efficient. And we played solitaire and did word processing with them," said Scott MacDonald, head of the Graduate School of Banking at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "Today, those computers are finally delivering on that promise."

Indeed. The article continues to describe how numerous customer service, back office and accounting functions require fewer human hands (or minds) to perform them due to computer and internet technology.

I would say that this is one of many factors explaining the economy's "jobless recovery". Productivity has increased, but fewer people are contributing to this expansion:

The nation's total output jumped a healthy 4.2 percent in the quarter compared to the year's first three months, according to the Department of Labor. But Americans worked 2.7 percent fewer hours. Indeed, by the end of the second quarter, 181,000 fewer Americans -- including 83,000 fewer service workers -- were employed compared to the end of the first quarter, even though output was up.

Previous forms of automation -- contrary to the expectations of many -- created new jobs as they destroyed old ones. However, earlier forms of automation were significantly more rudimentary with respect to their capabilities. They lead to increased resource extraction and numerous new logistical problems. Now, the physical mass of the economy is declining even as GDP expands, and solutions to said logistical problems are being streamlined. Arguably, early industrial machine usage was not a form of automation at all, but mechanization, which is the use of powered machinery to help human laborers become more efficient. That is quite different from what is happening today.

Again, I view the elimination of meaningless drudgery as desirable, but it will create instability in a world in which people still must partake in wage labor to meet their expenses in terms of rent and bills. We will have to take advantage of opportunities to transform the dynamics of the economy as they present themselves -- that is if we don't want to see the benefits of technology restricted only to those the current economy can make use of.
- posted by Chris @ 1:21 AM

 
Japan, Immigration and Automation
Channelnewsasia.com reports that the Japanese government has issued an annual economic report that predicts negative economic growth as a result of the country's declining birthrate and aging population. Japan's birthrate currently stands below replacement level at 1.42 children born per woman. From the article:

Japan's population was expected to peak at 127.7 million in 2006 and slip to 121.1 million in 2025 and 100.6 million in 2050, the report said. The country's population stood at 126.7 million as of the end of March, according to government figures.

The ratio of the workforce -- people from 15 to 64 years old -- to the overall population is projected to drop to 53.6 percent in 2050 from 68.1 percent in 2000, the report added.

Japan's pension system, which redistributes money from the working age population to retires, is in jeopardy due to an aging population.

The government report advocates increased immigration as a solution. As of so far, Japan has accepted only a very small number of immigrants compared to the number accepted by other industrialized nations. The article states:

But the projected decline in population in Japan is so steep that were it to fill the gap with foreigners and immigrants, it would have to accept some 640,000 of them annually -- 10 times higher than the current pace.

It is questionable whether the Japanese government would go ahead with such a plan, given the xenophobia of the general population. Immigrants of Japanese descent from Brazil are even looked down on, given that they are culturally Brazilian, and have been known to engage in "un-Japanese" activities, such as throwing loud all-night samba dance parties. Complaints have also already been raised about the relatively minor number of immigrants that have been accepted from Southeast Asia and Iran.

Although I would find it interesting to observe the effects of mass immigration on Japan, I worry that it might undermine one of many tasks that Japan excels at: automating unpleasant work. Japan faces a constant shortage of cheap labor due to a lack of immigrants. Because of this, Japan is embracing automation at a more rapid pace than other industrialized nations. The construction industry is a good example:

Buildings Built While You Wait -- By Robots
SEKISUI | Unit Technology
Towards Industrialized Construction

One of the negative effects of mass immigration is that it provides an endless supply of cheap labor for business, thus removing incentives to automate backbreaking drudgery. In California and the southwestern states, armies of disposable workers are being hired in agriculture, construction, and domestic industries for low wages and no benefits, which allows said industries to exist without producing any quality-of-life improving innovations. I'm not saying this to disparage low-wage immigrants -- I would likely do the same as them if I were in their shoes. However, these tendencies should give pause to all of those who would like to encourage the obsolescence of burdensome and repetitive labor. The streamlining of commodity production -- especially when it comes to necessities such as housing and food -- can drastically reduce our cost of living. Unfortunately, if it is more economically viable for the construction and agricultural industries to use cheap human labor instead of machines and robots, automation will proceed at a slower pace.

The potential for future automation to increase unemployment is something I won't discuss here. I will only close by saying that there are other economic models that could be taken advantage of under a more fully automated economy.
- posted by Chris @ 11:13 PM

 
Chobits -- Excellent anime
I just finished watching the 26 episode anime series known as Chobits today.

This is one series that I'm quite smitten with. Basically, the story begins by focusing on a good-hearted but not particularly bright farm boy from Hokkaido named Hideki, who fails a university entrance exam, and thus moves to Tokyo to become a "ronin" -- meaning a person who attends intensive cram school until they can pass the exam. Hideki is awestruck by Tokyo in general, and specifically by the latest and greater form of computing technology that he only heard about back on the farm: persocons.

Persocons are advanced computers that are produced with a humanoid form (except for their robotic-looking ears), and the ability to engage in the same physical activity as humans. Not only do they perform the same functions as regular computers, but they run "personality programs" which give them a unique character. Hideki lusts after the persocons in a display window, but quickly becomes disappointed upon seeing their high price. After moving into his new apartment, he wanders through the streets of Tokyo, obsessing about how he might be able to acquire a persocon, and luckily stumbles across an extremely cute discarded female model with golden hair flowing down past her knees in a trash heap.

Upon bringing her back to his apartment and activating her, he finds that she has no vocabulary, no obvious memories, and is only capable of saying "Chii" (which later becomes her name). Hideki consults his neighbor and classmate Shinbo, who refers him to a young wealthy whiz-kid named Minoru who happens to be an expert on persocons. After Chii overloads all of Minoru's persocons who attempt to connect with her to perform an analysis, they learn that Chii has no operating system or application programs installed. They also determine that Chii has the ability to learn spontaneously. Minoru believes that Chii is no ordinary persocon and may be a member of a legendary "Chobits series" of persocons (which has never been proven to exist).

The series thus progresses with Hideki teaching Chii new information, attending cram school, and working a part-time job at a tavern. The series starts out hilarious and cute: Hideki is in many respects a buffoon, and the viewer will enjoy many a laugh at his expense. Also, Chii is quite adorable as she expands her understanding of the world while developing an obvious affection (and for a persocon, not a particularly normal one) for Hideki. However, the story eventually becomes very serious as it explores the effects of persocons on general society, the exact nature and identity of Chii, and the motivations and experiences of the various characters. "Chobits" does not follow a typically cliche "dorky boy and android girl fall in love" plot. Much is revealed that the viewer wouldn't initially suspect, and there are a number of surprises.

I highly recommend this series -- it has become one of my favorites. The ending made me cry -- but in a good way!
- posted by Chris @ 3:57 AM