Robots: Good or Bad?

When I read the email conversation sent to me by my father, I was reminded of a quote from Sir Francis Bacon cited by Lauren Eiseley in The Starthrower.  This quote has always stuck with me:

[W]e would in general admonish all to consider the true ends of knowledge, and not to seek it for the gratifications of their minds, or for disputation, or that they may despise others, or for emolument, or fame, or power, or such low objects, but for its intrinsic merit and the purposes of life, and that they would perfect and regulate it by charity. For from the desire of power the angels fell, and men from that of knowledge; but there is no excess in charity, and neither angel nor man was ever endangered by it.   (Source: http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111bac.html)

***
(My father writes):
Under Capital Homesteading these robots would be owned by 
citizen-shareholders, so that the profits from the productiveness of 
advanced labor-saving technology (what Bucky Fuller called "energy 
slaves" would be distributed as earned income throughout the 
population. That would democratize power and control over the 
enterprise using robots, as well as the fruits of capital in the form of 
dividends to purchase the strawberries or other marketable goods and 
services. And it would free people to pursue what Aristotle described 
as "leisure work", the unlimited creative work beyond economic work, 
work once done by servants and slaves, work that those who own do 
without economic compensation, what he called "the work of 
civilization." See chapter 2 of the first Kelso-Adler book on our 
website, entitled "Economic Freedom: Property and Leisure."

Thanks, Joshua, for bringing this relevant info to the attention of this 
discussion group.

Norm

-- 
Norman G. Kurland, J.D.
President
Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ)
P.O. Box 40711, Washington, DC 20016
(O) 703-243-5155, (F) 703-243-5935
(E) thirdway@cesj.org
(Web) http://www.cesj.org

"Own or be owned."



On 12/5/10 2:40 PM, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> "A typical berry field one square kilometer in size takes about 500
> hours to harvest. With its speedy evaluation, the strawberry picking
> robot could cut this down to around 300 hours. Not only that, but every
> berry would have a quantifiably similar level of ripeness based on
> color, and would be harvested with a minimum of bruising. Robots will
> also be able to harvest during the night (as shown in the videos below)
> allowing for the fruit to reach market closer to optimum freshness.
> These improvements in speed and quality will likely translate to
> millions of dollars saved each year for the industry as a whole. Even if
> we focus on strawberries alone, robots like this one make a lot of
> sense."
>
> http://singularityhub.com/2010/12/04/japans-robot-picks-only-the-ripest-strawberries-video/