This line reasoning is incomplete. ujnless you evision a hunter-gatherer
civilization dependednt on 'natural' bounty - which could not support
billions of humans, the infrastructure reqires specialization, which in turn
requires argiculture -- not simple farming [whichis *not* simple], but
sophisticated agruculture on an industrail scale, supported by sopecialists
and tended by computerized systems, requiring other specialists.
Readers may remember an old si-fi story by [Jack Williamsion (?)] in two
parts:"With Folded Hands...." envisioned a civilization in which anroids
took over with the impertive "To serve and protect, and guard men from
harm". Implementation of the latter clause meant that men could not do
anything dangerous -- so with folded hands there was nothing left for men to
do. The seqluel "...and Searchuing Minds" envisioned that manking would move
on to metal and spiritual adventures.
Advances in technology have always displaced humans used as machines;
Norbert Wieiner, father of cybrnetics, wrote a book "The Humand use of Human
Beings", hopeful that the world of cyborgs would be the new cohort of
willing slaves. Early resistance to industrial robots cam not from labor
[releasing men from some really nasty and dangrous jobs] but from middle
managers who would have to think clearly about the whole production process.
Advanced technology multiplies the efforts of a small cadre of managers and
technocrats who are a new and natlural 'elite' apart from 'bankers' and
'landed gentry', the traditional bad guys.
The new guy on the block, who may change everything [or at least lots of
things] will be the energence of BlackLight Power into commercial
development of distributed power systems that run on hydrogen from water.
Deplymne of these systems will be trasnformational. The BLP technology
extracts from H atoms 200 times the energy that would be realized by
combustion.
Mike Carrell
