Robotic Nation Evidence

Just as you said they would. Great job Marshall!
 

Wow. I just read your great work, Manna, last week. I am still thinking about it in school during study hall, and really loved the book. Now, reading that a computer is running workers' shift times is very peculiar. Keep up the great blog.
 

Manna is inevitable. It cannot be stopped. People will become slaves to computers.
 

One slogan I've learned to live my life by when necessary:

I pity the fool who stands between a man or woman, and his or her expected rate of return.

Perfectly sane people start to do things they normally wouldn't do when trying to squeeze more and more productivity out of their existing capital. I've seen this as a support manager to housekeeping operations, mailroom operations, landscaping operations etc... for fortune 500 companies. You've got a budget to work with, and you need to get a job done. It's a hassle. The robotic nation essays resonated strongly with me. I've found myself wishing multiple times on seperate occasions that I could just buy a robot to reduce headcount at my facilities. The SECOND there is a robot available, at a reasonable price (say the labor cost for one or two years of the employee it replaces) and is shown to be as competent, or more... Robots will be flying off the shelves.
 

Biobots arise! -- blzbob ;^)
 

This seems bizarrely stupid. Shouldn't a computer be *better* at matching employees to their desired hours than a person? Employees could just say what hours they are willing to work and the computer could figure out when to use them. An interesting system would be to let the employee's say what wage they require to to work at various hours. That should lead to cost savings and greater employee satisfaction, as well as creating a bidding war for hours.

Granted, in the current system, Walmart can use the hours when they want to work as leverage to make them work other times at below the wage they would accept normally.
 

robotfuturenews.blogspot.com
 

There's a car ad out currently, (sorry no link), that shows off their GPS technology by showing a car navigating its way through a hedgerow labyrinth.

Couldn't help but think of how Manna keeps workers from interacting with each other as they go about their daily tasks when I saw the commercial.

It's a grim future that they're selling us, and we're buying, inn't?
 

Although I don't necessarily disagree with Wal-Mart's push to be the world's most cost conscious company, their insistence on hiring cheap labor (which means, in this case, undermotivated or uneducated labor) will end up biting them in the ass. Stupid labor=labor that thinks everyone owes them. They'll have a global strike on their hands within a year at this rate.
 

"..their insistence on hiring cheap labor (which means, in this case, undermotivated or uneducated labor) will end up biting them in the ass. Stupid labor=labor that thinks everyone owes them. They'll have a global strike on their hands within a year at this rate."

You're confusing uneducated with poor. I know several people with college degrees who are working at Wal-Mart simply because they can't afford to move somewhere else that has jobs. And you know what? Poor people can't strike when they're $5 from losing their house.
 

>>"You're confusing uneducated with poor. I know several people with college degrees who are working at Wal-Mart simply because they can't afford to move somewhere else that has jobs. And you know what? Poor people can't strike when they're $5 from losing their house."<<

They have college degrees, they're working at Wal-Mart, and yet they can't afford a bus ticket? They really are stupid.