Summary: Today we have updates to past posts, interesting recent news about important themes. Also, please use this as an open thread to comment and ask questions about geopolitics.
Contents
- More news of the robot revolution
- The rumor-mongers were wrong (again) about US carriers attacking Iran
- Ayn Rand back in the news!
- The rumors were wrong. Prince Bandar is alive!
All of these stories are about observation, learning, and adapting. Things we used to do so well, but appear to have forgotten.
(1) More news of the robot revolution
During the past two years the FM website has run many posts about the robot revolution, the next wave of automation in manufacturing and especially services. Better vision, mechanical skills, sensors, ability to interact with humans, and what sci-fi author James Blish called “semi-intelligence” = another structural shift in unemployment.
Slowly it comes into view of the general public: “Skilled Work, Without the Worker“, New York Times, 18 August 2012 — Excerpt:
This is the future. A new wave of robots, far more adept than those now commonly used by automakers and other heavy manufacturers, are replacing workers around the world in both manufacturing and distribution. Factories like the one here in the Netherlands are a striking counterpoint to those used by Apple and other consumer electronics giants, which employ hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers.
… The falling costs and growing sophistication of robots have touched off a renewed debate among economists and technologists over how quickly jobs will be lost. This year, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, made the case for a rapid transformation. “The pace and scale of this encroachment into human skills is relatively recent and has profound economic implications,” they wrote in their book, “Race Against the Machine.”
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In their minds, the advent of low-cost automation foretells changes on the scale of the revolution in agricultural technology over the last century, when farming employment in the United States fell from 40 percent of the work force to about 2 percent today. The analogy is not only to the industrialization of agriculture but also to the electrification of manufacturing in the past century, Mr. McAfee argues.
“At what point does the chain saw replace Paul Bunyan?” asked Mike Dennison, an executive at Flextronics, a manufacturer of consumer electronics products that is based in Silicon Valley and is increasingly automating assembly work. “There’s always a price point, and we’re very close to that point.”
… Such advances in manufacturing are also beginning to transform other sectors that employ millions of workers around the world. One is distribution, where robots that zoom at the speed of the world’s fastest sprinters can store, retrieve and pack goods for shipment far more efficiently than people. Robots could soon replace workers at companies like C & S Wholesale Grocers, the nation’s largest grocery distributor, which has already deployed robot technology.
Rapid improvement in vision and touch technologies is putting a wide array of manual jobs within the abilities of robots.
Posts about the robot revolution, the next wave of automation, and how it will reshape our world:
- The coming big increase in structural unemployment, 7 August 2010
- The coming Robotic Nation, 28 August 2010
- The coming of the robots, reshaping our society in ways difficult to foresee, 22 September 2010
- Economists grapple with the first stage of the robot revolution, 23 September 2012
- The Robot Revolution arrives, and the world changes, 20 April 2012
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(2) The rumor-mongers were wrong (again) about US carriers attacking Iran
The usual rumor-mongers fed ominous news to the credulous again about US forces massing against Iran.
- “Two more US carriers, dozens of mini-subs rushed to Hormuz“, DebkaFile, 12 July 2012 — “By August, five aircraft carriers will be on site – four American and one French.”
- “Three US Aircraft Carriers Now In The Middle East With Fourth En Route“, Zero Hedge, 18 July 2012 — “So to recap: Four US aircraft carriers. One big deck amphibious warfare ship. One Iran. WTI well below its 2012 highs even with Bernanke having engaged in yet another flow-boosting Qualitative Easing operation. And One presidential election in 4 months.”
Both of these feed the fears of the gullible, reporting routine carrier rotations as attack preparations. Zero Hedge has run breathless articles 11 times this year so far: 4 in January, 4 in February, once in March, and twice in July.
We correctly called these for what they were in Hegemon at work on Iran, doing what hegemonic powers do. No war needed – or likely., 17 July 2012 — “Fear-mongering by the usual sources about war will probably again be wrong.” Today we have two carriers near Iran.
(3) Ayn Rand back in the news!
Ayn Rand is an a apostle for America’s dark side, illuminating the hypocrisy of its Christian core. Now Paul Ryan drags her philosophy from the shadows into the light for all to see.
- Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand Reader: Lesson One, David Weigel, Slate — Good Christian GOPs believe that “money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence.”
- Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand Reader: Lesson Two, David Weigel, Slate — “The Galt speech {that Ryan loves} is one of the most aggressive arguments against Christianity you will ever read.”
- “Jump on the Rand Wagon! How Ryan Resurrected Ayn“, George Gurley, New York Observer, 21 August 2012 — “How everyone’s favorite spouse-swapping, godless pulp novelist and dorm-room doyenne became the Tea Party’s new mascot”
For further insights we turn to: Bob the Angry Flower gives the big spoiler to Atlas Shrugged – the Sequel:
(4) The rumors were wrong. Prince Bandar is alive!
Prince Bandar, rumored dead in a blast at Saudi intel HQ on 22 July. These was discussed in Assassination of an important Saudi Prince! By Syria. Or Iran. Or both. Or it might be a fake story., 1 August 2012. Now we can put the rumors to rest.
First, a quasi-official denial: “Thierry Meyssan and Prince Bandar bin Sultan“, Arab News, 4 August 2012 — Excerpt:
Last week, Thierry Meyssan wrote on Voltaire that Prince Bandar was killed along with his assistance Mishaal Al-Qarni in a bomb blast on July 26. The same day, Prince Bandar appeared with Prince Khalid bin Sultan at a function. He was also present at the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques’ reception for princes in Jeddah. This shows that the propaganda against Prince Bandar only aims to stir instability and anarchy.
The Voltaire Network admitted their error the next day.
Last week we got another form of evidence — “Princes group photo” at the Islamic Solidarity Summit, 16 August 2012:
From left, Prince Ahmed, Minister of Interior, Prince Abduz Aziz bin Abdullah, Deputy Foreign Minister, Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, Emir of Makkah Region, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Intelligence Chief, during the conference. — Okaz/Agencies photos
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