Wednesday, June 4, 2008

The Perfect Future

Not necessarily perfect, but kinda....maybe. Anyhoo, let me just preface by saying I thought of this a year or two ago and it has to do with the perfect future, not how we get there technically, but how it could be. It won't happen tomorrow, but in the next few hundred years, assuming of course we don't blow each other away and nothing catastrophic happens that destroys the earth. This perfect future I'm going to speak about is something that will happen assuming things stay the same, with respect to wars and conditions. Anyhoo.

It's the future. Man has created the means to build robots with limited AI that can reproduce daily tasks and jobs that can sustain life for man, without going all Cyberdyne on us(you know, like from Terminator).

Because we have created these robots, ones that can basically do whatever us humans can do with ease, such as running and going up stairs, currently semi-difficult for robots to do, at least with any efficiency, we can do whatever we please in life. If you think about it, why do we go to school? Well, we go to school to learn. Why do we learn? Aside from learning the basics to fit into society, we learn in order to gain the skills to do a particular trait correctly so we can get a job. Well, why do we need a job? The only real reason we get jobs is to lead a good life. Jobs give us money which we need to survive. Also, we need people to do jobs so we can maintain a good life; for instance, we need farmers to grow crops so we can have something to eat. We need people to make us clothes and build houses, and give us electricity and so forth and so on. But the real reason we have a job is to get money, with the end goal being to have enough money so we can retire and relax and enjoy life. Naturally, there are a lot of people that enjoy working and like their jobs, but whatever.

So, all we want in life, very basically, is to have enough money so we can do whatever the fuck we want. We want to relax, watch tv, play video games, travel the world, go on cruises, ski the slopes, learn how to play the guitar, and a million other things, but we can't, because we don't have the time because we have to work to get money and be able to support ourselves and families. However, in the future, when we have the technology, we won't have to work anymore, because robots can do it all.

You can already see it now, to an extent, where robots can do jobs and have replaced many workers in factories because humans are slow, need to sleep, need money, and make errors and mistakes. Robots on the other hand don't need to sleep, continually go fast, and don't make mistakes. They do what they are programmed to do and ask for nothing in return. In the future, this can be extrapolated to the point where robots do EVERY job. Robots will be able to drive cars and pilot planes; they already can. They will be able to grow and pick crops and transport them to factories, where other robots will prepare them in whatever way necessary. Other robots will pick cotton and such and ship them to factories that will weave them into fabric to make clothes with. You'll have robots that know how to perform surgeries and know how to scan and monitor things so they'll know what's wrong and how to fix it. You'll have robots to clean the water supply and distribute it to homes, and everything else imaginable will be run and operated by robots.

Of course, there are some things robots may not be able to do, like come up with entertainment medias, like sports and movies, but there are plenty of people in the world that would like to write and play for fun or on their free time. It is their passion, and people would be able to fill this gap. You could have programmers to program better robots, but at this point in time, you probably won't need to. The robots can do everything themselves including building more robots.

So basically, because robots can do everything, that leaves us as humans to do as we please. Poverty will be non-existent, as everyone will have an equal amount of land and property, with available housing to everyone. There won't be any money because there will be nothing to buy. We can simply go to a store and pick up whatever we want or need. Robots can monitor supplies and ship more to places that need it. Food will be readily available to whomever. You can simply walk into a restaurant, where robots will prepare your food for you. You can head to the grocery store to pick up what you need. If you need to travel, you can head over to an airport and get on the next plane leaving. Heck, computers can already fly planes and land them. You simply need to give them a schedule and they can fly it.

You won't even need to drive in the future, as computers can do that for you. They pretty much already can, with GPS. Just give them a camera and sensors and they can drive you anywhere you need to go. If ever car had a sensor, then they would know where each other are, so they wouldn't cause accidents. Not a very difficult thing to accomplish, especially in the future.

I could go on with examples of how this could be true, but that's more reading and writing than either of us wants to do. So basically, in the future, robots and computers can and will be programmed to do everything imaginable that needs to be done to support a decent standard of living. For this reason, humans do not need to have jobs so they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. They can enjoy their lives. There will be comfortable housing for everyone. There won't be an economy or government. All laws will have already been created by then and there won't be a need to revise them. There might have to be some kind of overall surveillance to make sure laws aren't broken, but no biggy really. Also, because everything is free and there is no strife, there won't be any crime. Well....there mostly won't be any crime. People who have interest in things can choose to partake in them if they please, job wise.

One problem that one may see with this is the fact that kids won't really have to go to school anymore. So, there either could be some law that states that kids have to go to school until after high school, so they are still educated enough to be a decent member in society, however, at this point in time, there will probably be a way to insert information directly into a person's brain, so any information they may need to now can be accessed and "learned" instantly, similar to what they do in the Matrix movies.


So yeah....pretty sweet. It won't happen anytime soon, and it might never happen if earth is destroyed, which is the more likely. But hey, think about...that's the overall goal. Get robots and computers to do stuff for us so we can be lazy. That's what's already happening. Get a calculator to do math for us. Get GPS so we don't have to look at a map. Use a cell phone to store phone numbers so we don't have to remember them. Get robots to make cars and stuff so we don't have to weld and such all day. Get a washer/dryer so all we do is throw in clothes, as opposed to scrapping them with water against a board to clean and then hang them up to dry. The Industrial Revolution. Heard of it? That's what us as humans do. Create a means to make life easier. The future is clear.

No comments: