People with complex jobs will be without an option. That means, nearly everyone. One thing it is making a course that teaches how to operates a new machine within a few months to adapt to a new job. Another thing it is losing jobs that requires youth energy and many years of training and consider that happening in several complex fields.
2013/12/5 Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> > This is somewhat off-topic, but it is a subject that has long interested > me: how new technology is sometimes used to prolong the life of obsolescent > technology. > > This article describes a new library at the University of Chicago. All the > books are stored underground in a gigantic three-dimensional array > accessible only by robotics elevators. > > QUOTE: > > "The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library's ASRS will shelve materials > underground by size rather than library classification, in racks 50 feet > high, with a capacity to hold 3.5 million volumes in one-seventh of the > space of conventional shelves." > > Reducing stack space by a factor of seven is a remarkable accomplishment. > > I am sure that 50 to 100 years from now, all new books will be published > in electronic form only, and all the books now in this library will be > scanned. There will be no need to bring them up from the stacks by elevator > in order to physically hand them over to students. Even today, that is > essentially and obsolescent activity. > > E-book readers have finally achieved contrast as good as paper. I expect > they will soon have resolution and color better than paper. They will be > larger, and they may even become somewhat flexible, like paper. When that > happens, there will be no point to printing paper books for most uses. I > suppose people will want some paper books for small children, or for things > they often read, or just as nostalgic decoration. But the vast majority of > books will be electronic. Reference books already are electronic. > > There is nothing wrong with prolonging the life of old technology. It is a > good idea. You might as well get the most out of your sunk-cost > investments. It is probably cheaper to bring the books to the students now > than it would be to scan them all, and e-books are still not as good as > paper ones in some ways. > > There are many other interesting examples this. One of my favorites was > the use of steam tugboats to improve the performance of sailing ships after > 1850. The so-called extreme clipper ships would not have been possible > without steam tugboats to bring them into harbor. These were the fastest > and most beautiful commercial sailing ships ever made. We see pictures of > them and we assume they represent sailing ships throughout the ages, but in > fact they were only made for about 20 years. They were designed with modern > knowledge of physics and engineering, so they look quite different from > traditional ships. The Flying Cloud was one of the most spectacular. The > Flying Cloud lasted 23 years which was much longer than most ships at that > time. By modern standards most of them were disposable objects. Modern > ships are intended to last for decades and dozens of trips, whereas the > extreme clippers lasted only five years or so. The masts and rigging were > so stressed by the extreme performance they had to be refitted after every > voyage. You can see how they piled on sails in this picture: > > http://www.sailmsc.com/Boats/club/pix/flying%20club%20full%20sail.jpg > > http://www.sailmsc.com/Boats/club/flying_cloud.htm > > The use of steel hulls in sailing ships is another example of bolstering > the old with the new. > > There was a long period during which both steamships and sailing ships > were used, from the 1850s to the early 20th century. I do not think that > fossil fuels and other energy sources will compete with cold fusion for > that many decades. > > - Jed > > -- Daniel Rocha - RJ [email protected]
