WORK IS GOOD FOR YOUR SOUL, NOT SO MUCH MINE:

I can get a robot to clean my house. I have a typing machine that fixes my wretched spelling. There are websites that know my tastes in philosophy and literature, and I have a cell phone that tells me where I am. My machines give me, a random humanities professor, the equivalent of a retinue of servants. Outside my home, robotic DNA sequencers and computers in labs are picking out signatures of cancer in patients' DNA (a task that not so long ago took an army of researchers more than a decade). In hospitals, tiny robotic arms perform microsurgery, allowing operations in remote locations. Out in space, satellites circle and warn me of weather hazards. We have already incorporated thousands of robotic achievements into our lives, and it is only sensible to hope for more, such as a robot car that may save tens of thousands of lives, a robot that can fight fires in rough terrain, or robot diagnosticians that can scan a patient and make a treatment plan. 

Of course not all the world lives like I do. Too many women and men dig, and fetch and carry burdens that are too heavy to bear, or do meaningless clerical work. For these people, who are too often invisible and who are treated like robots, the robot revolution cannot come too soon. And, I daresay, those who oppose it have never worked in a factory or a field. 

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