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IMHO - Detroit is showing what the rest of the country will look like in a couple of decades. Desolation surrounded by a wealthy circle. Eventually the circle will become as devastated as the core. Then the economic cycle will be complete with a very few very wealthy and near total desperation for everyone else. Think "Blade Runner" on a good day and "Mad Max" on the bad rest.
For the rest of the world there will be religious and resource wars far larger than ever. Most likely parts of the planet will become effectively depopulated after Plague, Pestilence, Famine and War have had their ride.
If humanity is lucky the remaining population of a billion or less will develop a technological utopia after the fires burn out, the radiation dies off, the dust settles and ice melts. The remaining humans will be able to live off the production of the robots without having to do much work themselves while maintaining a low and stable population.
IMHO - Detroit is showing what the rest of the country will look like in a couple of decades. Desolation surrounded by a wealthy circle. Eventually the circle will become as devastated as the core. Then the economic cycle will be complete with a very few very wealthy and near total desperation for everyone else. Think "Blade Runner" on a good day and "Mad Max" on the bad rest.
For the rest of the world there will be religious and resource wars far larger than ever. Most likely parts of the planet will become effectively depopulated after Plague, Pestilence, Famine and War have had their ride.
If humanity is lucky the remaining population of a billion or less will develop a technological utopia after the fires burn out, the radiation dies off, the dust settles and ice melts. The remaining humans will be able to live off the production of the robots without having to do much work themselves while maintaining a low and stable population.
I believe it will get to the point where the wealthy no longer need consumers to buy their products and services. With 3D printing technology and a host of other advanced technologies, the rich can basically have their own utopia city closed off from the rest of society. They will be able to create anything needed to live. The rest of society, as you mentioned will live in total chaos and poverty.
Think "Blade Runner" on a good day and "Mad Max" on the bad rest.
It won't be that chaotic. The oligarchs will manage the transition as they have been for a long time. The public will continue to be manipulated, confused, distracted, and entertained. Freedom and privacy will slowly disappear. There will be more law and order, not less.
The wild card will be the power struggles amongst the oligarchs themselves. It's hard to tell what will happen there. If there are major wars, production will be targeted rather than population, since killing off useless humans would be doing a favor, but we will suffer the consequences. Resources to maintain the useless will be reduced or cut off.
I don't expect a major war though, at least not in a time frame where we need to worry about it, since there would be too much too lose. But it really depends on the character of those who end up with the greatest power. More likely the masses will slowly die off, and be maintained in high-tech poverty until they do, rather than being wiped out by war and famine or exterminated in some other fashion.
Didn't a lot of classical sci-fi describe a lot home/office environments specifically tailored for human convenience? Things like conveyor belts, moving sidewalks and all that. It's therefore not unreasonable to tailor environments for robots and automation, just enough to help them function better. People then benefit (maybe) a little sooner from the machines.
This lowers the bar required for the sophistication required for robots to start being useful. Meaning both, that they don't have to be humanoid and that their arrival can come sooner if useful designs can be simplified enough.
I don't think that humanoid robots are sci-fi. I think right now, we are almost at the point where you could run a restaurant with just those Japanese robots, and no human employees. Robots to cook the food, robots to serve the food, robots to clean up. The robots don't even need a tailored environment. The sci-fi robots need a tailored environment. But as you can see in that video, these robots can even walk up and down steps. I'm not sure if they can carry food up and down steps yet, but if they can't I'm sure Honda is working on that, for the next gen.
I think this time is different just because of the exponential growth we see in technology. Look at how far smartphones have gone in a couple of years. It's insane. I don't think we can create enough jobs at the pace that technology replaces them. There's talk of a concept of basic income rumblings here and there. Be interesting to see how it all turns out.
Civilizations historically take centuries to collapse, but there is plenty of room for temporary chaos on the way down. Our civilization has plenty of systemic and local vulnerabilities. Just in the USA, we could roll snake eyes. We could have a really bad hurricane season, or two or three in a row. A dozen Cat 5 hurricanes hitting the Gulf and Atlantic in a couple of years would strain our capacity to recover. Add in a magnitude 9 subduction zone quake that leaves everything from Seattle to Crescent City a smoking pile of rubble and flotsam, and things could get really tight. The drought in the West is a slow motion disaster rolling right now. We're about 5 more bad years from having to start the evacuation of Phoenix and Las Vegas. Where do you plan to put those people? Systemically, our endless wars are draining the treasury. Militant foreign policies have brought down many governments in history. Eventually the other side gets smart and you start to lose.
I agree we won't see civil unrest until the electricity goes out. All of our large cities break out in riots within a few hours of a major power outage. A small 5th column of saboteurs working a disaster zone could delay recovery of power or destroy municipal water systems for millions of people. I don't think the preppers are all that weird.
If that was true we'd all still be living in caves...
What makes you think they will be easier to *self* provide? How many people grow their own food, make their own clothes, or build their own houses?
Thats kind of my point, the technologies we are working on make the ability to self provide completely doable. Right now providing a decent house, creating your own food, and clothing, is almost impossible for one individual to do by themselves. Mind you-one person CAN do it, but thats ALL they would do, and the results would be a FAR cry from what we have as a norm.
Once 3D printing advances sufficiently, and the associated technologies catch up, you CAN do all of this, and for a small investment.
Lets give an example. 3D printing has reached the level where metals, plastics, etc can be printed with great accuracy, and even recycled. Focus fusion, and lockheed martin have beaten the other 7 companies working on fusion, and the fusion plants are available.
For 20K you can purchase the parts that you can't print at home (yet), to have your own fusion plant.
So. you have a small shed, 10,000 lbs of various metals and plastics, a fusion plant, 10 good CPU's with onboard memory and storage, and 100 cheap ones, and 5 acres of land somewhere. All told about a 50K investment.
First you print up the recycling plant. something that can disassemble a known assembly or device. Then you print up the hydroponics bays, a robotic tender for them, and then you print up the home assembly robot. You then assemble the house, recycle the robot, print up a moped or other vehicle, etc etc etc.
For the truly standalone folks you might start some sort of automated mining of your property for materials.
What are your outside dependencies? CPU's, and materials. And the materials can be substituted with on site mining in some cases.
Timeframe? probably 15-20 years. I know that sounds fast (and many within the futurist would argue its going to occur faster-but I believe they are unrealistically optimistic), but the changes we're seeing on the processing side of the equation, and some of the upper end 3D printing make it likely in my opinion. Seriously some of the stuff in labs is insane. And once it hits the public, its going to rapidly evolve how our society works. Patent pirating by individuals will be the corporate concern. and "freeware" designs will be the response.
3D printing has reached the level where metals, plastics, etc can be printed with great accuracy, and even recycled.
SF for sure. Fusion plants in your back yard? It won't happen. See the EPA about that.
I don't know how much you know about 3D printing but I haven't seen anything yet to make me go "wow". Low strength plastics mostly. If the tech is mature, why aren't the products we buy made this way?
The sophisticated stuff we use is comprised of hundreds or thousands of materials using complex processes and assembly. Does that lend itself to 3D printing? Can you make a 3D printer with a 3D printer?
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