Poetry – In the New Age

Posted on by Opher

In the New Age

In the new age

When automation robs the need for work

We must devise a new way of operating.

No more the long, sapping hours

For we must create something better.

There will be no need for workers

Or their skills

When machines can do the toil

And mimic the skills

As finely as the most exquisite artisan.

It will be a time to share –

A time of great creativity.

For surely it is not right

That a minority

Should glean

The rewards

While the majority

Languish.

We must learn to share the spoils more evenly

To reduce the load

So that none will be left behind.

For it is time for a new future –

To identify the needs

To teach, to care, to heal and provide

So that none are left behind.

Not this time.

This is the time.

We should all have the time.

Opher 1.2.2017

In the New Age

If only we could get it right for once. If only we could stop all the selfishness, greed, hatred and arrogance and learn to care, love and look after each other and the world.

If only the world was not ruled by arrogance, fear and ego.

If we could put aside the lust for power and wealth and treat everyone as equals; if only we looked after the planet.

Imagine what the world would be like if everyone bought into that ideal. No war, no theft, no racism, sexism or inequality. No need for police, security at airports or armies. All that money and energy used to create a better world, to solve poverty and overpopulation and protect the natural world.

OK – we can but dream.

Automation and A/I – a new world.

Posted on by Opher

We are on the brink of a new world. The future does not need an army of workers. They are fast becoming surplus to requirements.

Look at the jobs that are going to be replaced by automation:

drivers

shelf stackers

factory work,

deliverers

miners

brain surgeons

pilots

soldiers

bricklayers

Robots and automation will do both unskilled and skilled work.

In the present day the skilled workforce was kicked out of well-paid jobs in mining, shipyards, docks, building, steel works, car plants, factories. They were replaced by automation. A machine can work night and day and does not need paying. It is cheaper, more efficient and less troublesome. A manufacturer can make much higher profits.

Our docks are all container ports now. There are no stevedores shoveling coal or carrying sacks.

The displaced workforce were put out to work in low-paid menial tasks. They are now stacking shelves in supermarkets, flipping burgers, driving an uber or dashing around all over the country delivering parcels.

Soon those jobs will go. Driverless cars will soon be the norm. Deliveries will be made by robots. We already have self-stacking supermarkets with no need for a checkout. They have machines that lay bricks and robots that build cars. There are automated fast-food joints. Drones replace soldiers and people are blown up remotely. Robots do a better job. The product is done to perfection. They are more efficient, faster and better. They are also a lot cheaper.

I have been doing a daily walk up my hill past the fields and observing the huge fields either side of my lane.

A couple of hundred years ago these were small fields with hedges and streams. The village would have been involved in planting tending and harvesting. It was very labour intensive and inefficient (but fun). Now it is different.

A big tractor comes along and in one day it ploughs the whole massive field. After a while another big tractor discs it. A tractor comes along and sprays the field with fertiliser (the needs assessed from assays. A tractor would come along and sow the seeds. Every few weeks a tractor comes along and sprays the field with pesticide and herbicide. On the big day, when the crop is perfect, three massive machines come along and harvest the peas. I stood and watched (with memories of laboriously shucking peas with my grandmother). The machines chopped the plants, separated pods from plant and shucked the peas. A tractor with wagon rolled alongside the harvester and the peas were poured from a shoot into the wagon. The wagon drove off to the factory where they were frozen and packaged to be sent to the supermarket. The whole field was done in a morning.

What took a whole village could now be achieved by one man, part-time, and five men for a morning.

In a few years time even this will be automated. There will be no need for tractor drivers.

What struck me was that no pea was touched by human hand. The whole process of sowing, tending, harvesting, freezing, packaging and ending up in the shop is automated. The only time a pea touches a human is when the fork enters the mouth.

The end result of this automation is scary.

The manufacturers can produce more goods more cheaply and efficiently and make more money.

People are no longer needed. The workforce is redundant.

We end up with a two-tier world. The extremely rich manufacturers and a very poor underclass who cannot find work.

Something has to change.

New jobs will be made. Robots need tending to. There is design and innovation. Factories need overseeing. Computers need programming.

But a lot of these jobs require skills and intelligence. Not everybody is suited.

There are the caring and leisure industries and education. But even these will be affected by A/I. Distanced learning and robotic friends, arse-washing toilets and smart wheelchairs.

The model for capitalism is under threat. How can people buy the mass of things manufactured if they have no money?

This could lead to a world of pleasure and leisure or a world of two classes of people.

Which is it?

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all be paid handsomely for work and only had to work two or three days a week?

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be trained to carry out caring jobs – nursing, caring for the elderly, looking after nature and teaching – which paid well and gave you plenty of time to prepare and have time off – with the money to do things.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a more equal society where the wealthy was more evenly distributed (on a global basis) so that everybody could proper from this new affluence?

Or is it going to end up with an extremely wealthy elite, greedily raking in the money while the rest of us live on peanuts?

What do you reckon?

Poetry – Grateful to My Motherboard

Posted on by Opher

Grateful to My Motherboard

My life is measured in gigabytes –

An electronic haze

On a universal hard-drive –

I know I’m heading for a crash!

I’m trying to back up

My essential core

But there’s simply not enough space –

The programmes all clash.

I’ve downloaded a few versions

Into clones with dual input

And new combinations –

But it’s really a bit of a hash!

I’ve insufficient memory

To carry out the tasks.

My chip has become dated –

But I’m still giving it a bash.

I’m grateful to my motherboard

For the foundation

On which I’m based.

Those paths were clear –

Though life’s one mad dash.

It was the seminal floppy

Plugged into the slot,

Streaming in its programmes

That made me loud and brash.

Now the programmes are degrading

And I’m moving kind of slow.

The upgrades I’m downloading

Keeping ending up in trash!

Opher 2.1.2015

Grateful to My Motherboard

I think it was the constant crashing of my computer that prompted me to write this poem – that and my interest in consciousness as a neuronal network of interconnecting neurones.

As I become aware that my body and brain are not quite as agile as they used to be I began making the analogy to the degrading of my computer programmes. It seems to me that if you leave the PC on it starts to go slower and slower. The upgrades are also designed to slow it up. There is an inbuilt obsolescence. They want you to regularly buy an upgraded computer!

That is what we have – an inbuilt obsolescence. We have evolved to get old and die so that we do not compete with our offspring for available space, food and water.

I could do with a sizeable upgrade but I cannot seem to find a repair shop that will do it for me.

I’m grateful to my parents who donated the DNA that made me what I am. But this ageing business is a pain.

The Future is upon us

Posted on by Opher

The Future is upon us!

Some laugh at Jeremy Corbyn when he promotes the 4 day week. It will not be a four day week we will be grappling with. It will be the three or even two day week. For the majority of us it may well be the no day week.

The future is here. The world is changing. We are in the winter of the old ways. Artificial Intelligence is coming fast. We have to prepare.

Corbyn is right. We need rapid change. We have to ensure that this tsunami of change will carry all of us along, not just the few.

Automation will displace people from factories as it is more efficient. A machine does not need pay, sleep, holidays, meals and rest periods. It can work 24/7. Productivity will go through the roof. Wage bills will go down. Profits will soar – but will they be flowing into the pockets of workers or into the pockets of bosses and profiteers?

Do we really want a society of billionaires and paupers?

The age of driverless cars is coming. Car ownership is hugely expensive – purchase cost, insurance, tax, fuel, and repairs. The days of owning a car are limited. Driving will soon be a minority leisure pursuit.

It is also inefficient. For much of the day cars sit in traffic jams or are parked in drives, streets and massive car parks.

The future is here. We will summon up an Uber. A driverless electric cab will pick us up, drop us off and drive away to collect someone else. It will be cheap and efficient. There will be no driver to pay, no cars clogging up our streets, no need for carparks, garages, traffic lights, traffic cops, or traffic jams. No-one will break the speed limit or make dangerous manoeuvres. The roads will be safe and efficient. Travel will be cheap. Traffic pollution will be a thing of the past. Already some cars and trucks are driverless. The industry is getting us used to automation. Some cars can park themselves in tight gaps and have automatic lights and windscreen washers. We are gradually becoming accustomed.

Instead of an army of drivers delivering goods there will be an efficient fleet of driverless trucks taking cargo from ports to warehouses where machines will unload. Convoys of lorries will take merchandise to stores where machines will unload and stack shelves. No more drivers, shelf stackers or loaders.

You might head to a fast food joint where, after you have placed your order in an automated machine, a machine will flip your burger. Your meal will be delivered quickly and efficiently, perfectly cooked, with no sight of an unhygienic human hand.

You ring up the doctor and find Alexa at the other end. She will ask a series of questions, consult her ever increasing data base and dispense drugs to treat your ailment. I doubt you will get an appointment. In most cases there will be no need.

The days of receptionists are already almost over. Alexa will have many names, genders and personalities and her voice will always be comprehensible.

You are insulted by Kim Jong Un and decide to go to war. You deploy your drones, launch missiles, and have a new batch of fearless automatons armed with the latest weapons, who never miss, do not duck or run away, and are programmed to take out all enemy combatants efficiently, quickly and cheaply. They are backed up by automated tanks while a fleet of automated ships and drones deliver the new robosoldiers to the battle front without a real flesh and blood soldier in sight.

When there is another Grenfell it will be a robofireman who will tirelessly bound up the stairwells at great speed, impervious to heat, not having to breathe the smoke. He will gather you up, encase you in a heat resistant envelop and bound back down to safety. And you know what? You will be grateful. You will be grateful because you will know that no human, no flesh and blood fireman, no matter how strong and brave, could have rescued you from those flames.

Brain surgery is already being carried out by robots. Planes are being flown by computers. In Japan the elderly are companioned by robots. We will have robotic nursing in hospitals. No patient will be left unattended, without food or drink – or a soothing voice. Their biometrics will be automatically assessed – continuously.

So what is going to happen to these tens of millions of factory workers, drivers, receptionists, carers, shelf stackers, burger flippers, brain surgeons, police officers, nurses and all manner of other workers who are surplus to requirements?

Do a small number of people continue working 60 hour weeks while the rest of us twiddle our thumbs? Or do we organise a shorter working week and apportion the new jobs created, more fairly?

Do we share the fruit of this increased productivity? Do we find a way of limiting the pay of the bosses, create a fair taxation system and increased pay for the workforce, or do we end up with gross inequality – a country of billionaires and homeless?

We may not like it but Artificial Intelligence is surely coming and it will sweep the past away.

We are in the winter of our discontent. Where is the sun coming from? Jeremy Corbyn is shedding light on a bold new future – a time of plenty for all, of leisure and freedom, fun and frolics – a more equal society with a shorter working week and better pay. Corbyn is surely the glorious sun.