Monday, December 10, 2012

ASME — Bringing in the harvest with driverless tractors

"This is a giant step from existing technology in that it is truly autonomous and there is no human override in the cab," says Susanne Kinzenbaw Veatch, Kinze vice president and chief marketing officer. "The systems allow one farmer to operate multiple systems at the same time, vastly increasing efficiency."
ASME, May 2012
Bringing in the harvest with driverless tractors
John Kosowatz | Senior Editor

Recall that in the pre-agricultural subsistence age, virtually all labor went in to food production, chiefly through hunting and gathering. In the agricultural age, well over 90% of labor went into agricultural production. In the industrial age, this is down to about 1% in mechanized countries. With automation and robotics, it will soon be well under 1% in the digital age.




8 comments:

Crake said...

And think of all the goods and services that could be provided to people, affording us with more leisure. But instead we live in world dictated by accountants.

paul meli said...

Who will feed the drivers (that are no longer working)?

Critical Tinkerer said...

I was just thinking about that, robots.
Sometimes i use hipotheticals in order to explain to people what money is, what retirement saving is and so on.
Best one is;
Imagine a great generation that saved a decent amount of money for retirement. Now imagine it is the last generation on the earth, no newborn for 65 years.
Can they all take retirement once they turn 65 and enjoy it with their savings?
No they can not, since someone has to make products and services they need for retirement.

But what if in those 65 years they developed robots that will make all the stuff they need, do the surgeries, fix other robots and so on. Now they can take their well earned retirement and they have enough savings to buy stuff.

Now, what if they have spent all the savings to develop robots and none have any retirement savings but all the robots and resources to produce products and services they would need for retirement? Could government decide and nationalize all resources but provide retirees with retirement money equally to all enough to buy all stuff they need to survive?
Sure, everything will go smothly, and all can retire now.

Now if they want more stuff to buy and enjoy, could they make a parallel curency for their own enjoyment, if someone wants to buy a bigger boat, have more Cribean cruises, do whatever they want with new paralell currency?

I think this is a powerfull way, step by step to explain MMT and its logic.

Tom Hickey said...

Right, it's the real resources that count. Money (unit of account) is just bookkeeping. Of course, in a market-based economy money gives purchasing power and rations scarce goods. But if no scarcity?

Crake said...

I always wondered what would happen if nano-technology made resource and product development almost "free."

How would we allocate the production? Would private owners of the technology just decide there was no profit so not allow the rest of the world to enjoy the fruits of "no labor"?

Tom Hickey said...

I always wondered what would happen if nano-technology made resource and product development almost "free."

How would we allocate the production? Would private owners of the technology just decide there was no profit so not allow the rest of the world to enjoy the fruits of "no labor"?


Unless institutional arrangements change, that is exactly what would happen.

jeg3 said...

"I always wondered what would happen if nano-technology made resource and product development almost "free." "

It may not happen tommorow, but between 3D printing and Nanotech it is likely.

http://3dprintingreviews.blogspot.com/

Eric Drexler: Physical Law and the Future of Nanotechnology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQHA-UaUAe0

Crake said...

Thanks for the links. It is amazing. I recall 20 years ago, the guesses for future consumer applications could be like microwave oven size devices where you input basic carbon material (like refined dirt) and punch in some elaborate dinner, and out pops that dinner.