October 1, 2011
TOM FRIEDMAN, WITH A SABOT, IN THE STUDIO:
How Did the Robot End Up With My Job? (THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, 10/02/11, NY Times)
I'VE done a lot of television book interviews lately, and I continue to be struck at what a difference there is in the technology in just a few years' time.
Here is a typical evening at a major cable TV network: arrive at Washington studio and be asked to sign in by a contract security guard. Be met by either a young employee who appears to still be in college or an older person who seems to have hung on with tenure. Have your nose powdered by that person. Have your microphone attached by that person. Be positioned in the studio chair by that person, and then look directly into a robotic camera being manipulated by someone in a control room in New York and speak to whoever the host is wherever he or she is. That's it: one employee, a robot and you.
The point of machines was precisely that they'd do our work for us. It's amusing that this sort of Luddism has gone mainstream now that technology makes the elite redundant, not just the laborer.
Posted by oj at October 1, 2011 10:49 PM
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