You don't need to replace the plumber; if the sink can autonomously diagnose the leak, anyone can be a plumber. You don't need to replace the barber; if a machine can cut hair exactly the same way every time, one person can style a hundred thousand heads at once.
Yeah, we aren't going to see a robot mailman walking around, but mainly because we won't use mail. Fundamental changes are coming.
"If the sink can autonomously diagnose the leak, anyone can be a plumber."
I think you're underestimating the skills required to be a plumber. If the leak was due to a corroded drain pipe, would you be able to replace it? Do you know how to seal a joint between two pipes so that it doesn't leak? What if the fitting at the bottom of the sink was corroded and you had to replace the entire sink? Moving on to more difficult plumbing tasks: What if your gas-fired water heater had to be replaced? What if your toilet was backing up because you had roots in your sewer line? Do you happen to own all the tools and supplies you'd need? And in the unlikely event that you did have all the skills and equipment to do all these things, what percentage of the population do you think would have similar skills? My guess is that plumbers will have job security for a long, long time to come.
One of the fun things about having fully automated production systems (like, say, a tile kiln) and fully automated data processing systems (say, scanning 2,000 stock market releases per day and tracking 1.5 million mining leases every 3 days) is you can take the time to do your own landscaping (80 acres), your own plumbing (two soak wells, three pumps, three gravity tanks, ~5 km piping, three waste separation/settling tanks & leach drain system).
The only external assistance required to doing all that is getting a qualified tradesman in to sign off on the work already completed & to do the final official hookup (for gas & mains power).
Hereabouts (Western Australia), outside a city, the percentage of the population that can do that would be most of the men and a good percentage of the women.
Hell, some of use can even write compilers & OS's & do flash stuff with wavelets and what not.
Sometimes I feel like a country hick, then I read comments like yours and realise how sadly urbanised many people are.
In the past month, I have run wire for a bedroom in my basement, replaced a kitchen faucet, replaced a garbage disposal, replace an exterior mirror on a car (teenagers and garages don't go well together :) and replaced the ice maker in my freezer. In the past, I've replaced almost every piece of my nearly 20 year old dryer and some of the pieces of the matching washing machine.
With all that, I still feel like I haven't go a clue what I'm doing, but it sure feels good when you get something completed.
These things are really not that hard. They just take some tools and some time.
I could learn plumbing, but I choose not to. It's not interesting to me. Not everyone is like you; in fact, I'd guess the majority are more like me in that respect. So regardless of the fact that plumbers may eventually disappear in Western Australia, that's a regional quirk if anything.
Well, if no one has any jobs how can they afford to buy all of that sophisticated junk?
Also, who fixes the junk that is supposed to figure out and fix problems with other junk. Is this future human society supposed to make perfect junk that works all the time; I have yet to see any junk work that well.
We won't use mail? How are we going to get all this junk?
This utopia sounds great but we have large populations that can't even get drinking water, before we jump off an decide we need to deal with these amazing "fundamental changes" that will do all these things like allows to get pizza from a magic vending machine, maybe somewhere along the way we can figure out how to just get basic 1900s style plumbing throughout the world. Just an idea.
>Well, if no one has any jobs how can they afford to buy all of that sophisticated junk?
They don't. They are supposed to starve to death, or make some alternative trade economy in vast ghettos.
The rich people, the people who control and own the factories and make the decisions will live in closed patrolled communities, and they won't need those people for anything at all. Maybe as sex workers, but at some point they could just generate genetically-designed people for that.
It would be like feudal kindgoms all over again, with the difference that the people outside the closed walls of the palace/city are not needed at all (whereas in the feudal kingdoms they were the basis for the wealth of the royals, with their agricultural work).
I don't know about that. I think the rich people might find it a touch inconvenient if the peasants rebelled. Not insurmountable, you understand, but ... inconvenient. And distasteful.
Easier to just pay them a small living wage, provide them with cheap entertainment, and dangle the promise of "If you work hard or are lucky, you can become one of the rich too" in front of them.
No, you're being ridiculous. I'm pointing out the reality that this view is unrealistic in multiple ways, it is no proxy. It speaks for itself, really. We have not had any technology as reliable as is claimed so I think it's a little naive of a view, especialy in any time frame remotely related to "changes are coming." As well, the issue of how this is going to get paid for is a real issue for the reality based community. :)
When my dad was my age, a statement like "The entire global economy will soon be managed by a publicly-accessible world-wide computer network" would have seemed similarly ridiculous. Computers are way too slow for that.
The problems we have now will be fixed in ways we haven't yet thought of. We will have new problems, but not the ones we're thinking of. Fundamental changes are always coming.
Yeah, we aren't going to see a robot mailman walking around, but mainly because we won't use mail. Fundamental changes are coming.