I think the coexistence of people and machines will always be. I don't believe there will ever be a day when technology, or machines will make the human race obsolete. In the work place, I believe machines will take over because developers can create them for the purpose of carrying out a specific task. In this case, I think the number of people employed will decrease greatly. I don't agree with Lanier's statement" improving technology is the only way to expand wealth for many people at the same time". I think improving technology will only decrease the amount of employees, especially in fields where manufacturing occurs. Alongside Lanier's terms of "open culture" and "free culture", another term should be "lazy culture". Why pay someone to do a task, or better yet waste the energy to do a task when you can create a machine to do it for you? The beginning stages of this are already happening before our eyes: Downloading free music as opposed to buying it, and downloading movies as opposed to going to the theaters. I think this is the first roll of a snowball effect that will relieve those who work in hands on industries.
This is not good because nothing is full proof, technology is not something that is flawless, or something that will correct it's mistakes when it screws up. People need to stay in control and keep technology in a realm where it can always be controlled. How do we do this? Honestly, i'm not sure, but keeping the reigns of control is crucial for going forward in the next century.
can you say more about reins of control? what do you have in mind? who do you have in mind?
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm saying is that people have self-control, machines don't. Since machines don't have either emotions or feelings they can never wipe out the need for a human presence. I think there will be a time where people will only be needed to monitor machines, but I don't think they will be obsolete.
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