OCTOBER 7, 2015
TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES
If only two of every ten people decide to have children, in sixty years overpopulation will no longer be an issue.
If all of the potential wonders of possible technological advances come true, in less than thirty years paid employment for almost everyone will no longer be available. There will be those who tend the machines. There will be those who design better, quicker, and more reliable machines. And there will be those who cater to the whims, desires and personal needs of those who own, tend, or design the machines that provide every material thing and every needed service that one may want.
Perhaps that is the unspoken point of modern automation in practically every field of human economic endeavor.
Yet around the world and throughout these United States the natives are getting restless. Is it possible that they may have had a different perception of the future benefits of human progress?
In 1965 I do recall sitting in the audience at a high school graduation and hearing this conclusion drawn by the valedictorian in her speech:
“In thirty years we will have the leisure to explore our interests freed from the onerous demands of relentless, ongoing labor by the wonders of cybernetics . . . “
It hasn’t quite worked out that way.
Perhaps you have noticed.
