Word: robots
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This idea that man is destined for higher things than work-not necessarily a realistic idea or even a meritorious one-provides the green light at the end of the pier. Says Albus: "The robot revolution will free human beings from the pressures of urbanization and allow them to choose their own life-styles from a much wider variety of possibilities...
That first revolution, which began two centuries ago, created the technology of modern life, but at a high cost in hardship and hunger. Some experts see analogous dangers in the robot revolution. If robots can do men's work faster, better and more cheaply, then what will men do? They will be retrained for other things, the robotmakers answer. But by whom, and for what? Almost 20 years ago, Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano portrayed a future society in which the elite few run the machines while the unemployable majority subsists on handouts in resentful idleness...
...robot revolution originates in American industry's most fundamental problem: the stagnation in productivity. From 1947 to 1965, U.S. productivity increased by 3.4% a year, but the growth rate dipped to 2.3% in the following decade, then dropped to below 1% in the late 1970s and down to -.9% last year. (Japan's productivity growth, by contrast, has been climbing at an average annual rate of about 7.3%.) Now that economic planners are trying to work out methods of "reindustrializing" the U.S., they can see in the robot a major answer to those productivity declines...
...only can the robot work three shifts a day, but it takes no coffee breaks, does not call in sick on Mondays, does not become bored, does not take vacations or qualify for pensions-and does not leave Coca-Cola cans rattling around inside the products it has helped assemble. Its "up time" on the job averages around 95% (the figure for the average blue-collar worker is about 75%). In addition to its Horatio Alger work habits, it is immune to government and union regulations on heat, fumes, noise, radiation and other safety hazards. The robot has no affections...
...developments have brought the industrial robot to life...