I don't understand why more politicians don't star in some soap opera for a few years as the sickeningly good and trustworthy character before running for office. Seems like a very good strategy. People are bad at separating fiction from reality.
Remember that automation is not about removing effort, it's all about packaging it in convenient ways so that it can be stored and moved around. Sometimes you get some savings due to bunching up of similar things or economy of scale, but most of the time the perceived savings are simply because the real effort is hidden away or deferred. Whether it's Jacquard looms, language models, github actions, self-driving cars, or robot food delivery, someone is doing (or has done, or will do) the work.
@dcz Ah, but what about the effort needed to build the loom, to operate it, to load it with materials, to monitor it, operate the steam engine that powers it, to maintain it all in good repair, and to fix things when they break? And the cost of changing the patterns as the fashions change becomes huge, when it was a trifle before. All this effort is hard to see by just looking at the loom running for a few minutes, but it's still there, hidden by the technology, moved out of sight.
@deshipu Of course. My bet is that this new effort is typically smaller than the old effort was. Have you tried to sew by hand?
Maybe not automation by your definition, but the sewing machine saves hours and hours of work. If I was serious about sewing, I'd build one just to save my own time.
In another example, using machines for farming made it so that there's less than 90% of the population dedicated to food production.
I'm really tired by the amount of noise pollution in american cities. I only visit for a few days for a conference, but by the end of the visit I have a constant headache from the never ending air conditioning, beeping, traffic noise, refrigerators gurgling, electric buzzing, and loud music in restaurants and on the streets. And everyone seem to be completely oblivious to all of it, like I'm the only person hearing it. It's almost as bad as the church bells in Switzerland.
@deshipu loud restaurant music is a major pet peeve of mine. Completely unnecessary and super annoying. Designed to keep anyone from holding an independent thought in between bites.
Deception always felt to me like a form of violence, and I'm always mortified with people who lie casually, for the fun of it, because to me it feels as if they casually kicked a dog.
Whoever invented the shower taps in US hotels that only have one lever, that goes from small cold stream, through large cold stream, to huge hot stream, is a bastard.
Traveling for #PyConUS tomorrow. Bringing some #CircuitPython robots and handhelds with me. Catch me if you want to see them and/or talk about Python on microcontrollers.
What if there was a university-developed, EU-sponsored, open source reference implementation of an operating system for consumer devices, and all consumer devices sold in EU had to be compatible with it, in addition to optionally having their own operating system, developed by the manufacturer?