Future Scenarios...Stories That Won't Happen
Time Cliffs in the Future
An old science fiction story tells of the 60 year trip of a spaceship from earth to a planet similar to earth
circling a distant star similar to our sun.
When the travelers get to that planet they find that it is inhabited by English speaking humans. It seems that
after the first spaceship left, another advance in technology allowed the trip to be repeated by a second team
with the total travel time being only one year. Space is so vast that it was not possible for the second ship to
contact the first ship with this information. By the time the first ship got to the planet it had already been
colonized by the second ship and two generations of humans had been born on the earth-like planet.
This is an example of a “Time Cliff”, or perhaps “Technologically Induced Discontinuity (TID).” (Please offer
any other name you feel is more apt for the concept.) A TID is a discontinuity created by an outpacing of an
old technique with its delay of implementation by a new technology whose implementation can be made
more quickly. By the time the older technology is delivered, a new technology has made it obsolete. If
someone sets out to bring up a daughter to sew clothes by hand and during her upbringing the sewing
machine is invented, then the plans made for her life should be changed. One must bring up a generic
daughter and let her decide which profession she is suited to when she is old enough to see what is available
at the time.
It seems to me that we are now facing a TID with the birth of most humans because most jobs now performed
by humans will be obsolete in 20 years.
If you set out to create a human neuro-surgeon starting today, you might want to consider that robots to do
this surgery are already at the stage where human hands are no longer used directly because the human
fingers are much too large, clumsy and shaky. By the time you raise your child and educate her to be a
neuro-surgeon, the profession will be totally given over to the specialized robots for that function. At best,
humans will be refining the programming of the neuro-surgical robots. Consider the job of joining millions
of nerves in a broken spinal column. Would you expect a human surgeon to be capable of doing this in one
sitting? Only a specialized robot whose “hands” are designed for such a job and whose speed is adequate to
the task will be capable of performing such a miracle.
Now consider the following scenario: two sisters are reared by the same parents who guide them both into
the field of surgery. When the oldest sister is 35, she completes all of the necessary education and passes all
of the qualifying exams. At that point in time, the younger sister is 18. The year is 2030 and the ability to
connect computers to the brain has evolved to the point whereby in one year the younger sister is attached
to devices which allow her to learn at an accelerated rate. At the age of 20, the second sister passes all of the
same qualifying exams and becomes a surgeon just like her older sister did, but she is 15 years younger.
The younger sister has better memory retention than the older one because of the use of digital electronics.
Meanwhile the parents have given birth to a son who is a clone of a child prodigy and graduates from
medical school at the age of 12. He does his residency using virtual reality machines which give him
realistic situations and allow him to gain the practical knowledge of residency in only one year. They all
come home for Thanksgiving dinner at their parent’s home. How does the oldest sister feel at 35 years-old
when discussing medicine with her 13 year-old brother and 20 year-old sister who have met all of the
qualifications that she has? How do they all feel when most people are having their surgery performed by
robotic surgeons made by Dell?
The situation is similar for parents who are raising a child to flip hamburgers. McDonald’s is already
starting to use robots in their restaurants. Building roads? This will be totally automated as well. Driving a
taxi? Cars will drive themselves and the accident rate will plummet. By 2025 it will be illegal for a human
to drive an automobile or truck on an Interstate highway unless they are a service vehicle such as a tow
truck, etc. Safety considerations will mandate such laws. Most accidents are the result of human error.
The only solution is to remove the human element. We have air bags because we don’t trust people to fasten
their seat-belts. If we don’t trust someone to fasten their seatbelt, why do we trust them to drive an
automobile which is potentially a lethal weapon? The only automobiles and trucks allowed will be those
which drive themselves. Central computers will be able to track such vehicles for security reasons lest a
truck bomb be sent by some radical. Computers are beneficial to the world and society. Some humans
generate viruses which can be very harmful. The tendency will be to look on computers and robots as
beneficial and to look on humans as something not to be fully trusted.
Dell Computers currently manufactures 140,000 computers per day. Once you have a single robot that can
perform the duties of a nurse, such a robot can be duplicated by a manufacturing process similar to the
manufacturing of a Dell Computer and any nursing shortage will be alleviated. Training human nurses
will be much more expensive and have a greater time lag. Having a human nurse will be a luxury that only
a few can afford just like a hand sewn suit costs more than one made using a sewing machine. The high
cost of taking care of the elderly now appears to be situated to bankrupt the economies of North America and
Europe over the next few decades. In actuality, this problem will be solved by the use of relatively
inexpensive robotic nurses and doctors.
One should consider the future carefully before giving birth to any more humans. In time, the use of robots
will be less expensive than Chinese labor and manufacturing will come back to the United States. People
will direct robots and robots will do most of the labor. People will provide intentions and robots will carry
out orders. We will only need people to direct the robots and perhaps we will need human entertainers.
Leisure time will become the rule and I suggest that you invest in theme parks, entertainment centers,
resorts, etc. Humans are going to have a lot of spare time on their hands.
Donbot
Time Cliffs in the Future
An old science fiction story tells of the 60 year trip of a spaceship from earth to a planet similar to earth
circling a distant star similar to our sun.
When the travelers get to that planet they find that it is inhabited by English speaking humans. It seems that
after the first spaceship left, another advance in technology allowed the trip to be repeated by a second team
with the total travel time being only one year. Space is so vast that it was not possible for the second ship to
contact the first ship with this information. By the time the first ship got to the planet it had already been
colonized by the second ship and two generations of humans had been born on the earth-like planet.
This is an example of a “Time Cliff”, or perhaps “Technologically Induced Discontinuity (TID).” (Please offer
any other name you feel is more apt for the concept.) A TID is a discontinuity created by an outpacing of an
old technique with its delay of implementation by a new technology whose implementation can be made
more quickly. By the time the older technology is delivered, a new technology has made it obsolete. If
someone sets out to bring up a daughter to sew clothes by hand and during her upbringing the sewing
machine is invented, then the plans made for her life should be changed. One must bring up a generic
daughter and let her decide which profession she is suited to when she is old enough to see what is available
at the time.
It seems to me that we are now facing a TID with the birth of most humans because most jobs now performed
by humans will be obsolete in 20 years.
If you set out to create a human neuro-surgeon starting today, you might want to consider that robots to do
this surgery are already at the stage where human hands are no longer used directly because the human
fingers are much too large, clumsy and shaky. By the time you raise your child and educate her to be a
neuro-surgeon, the profession will be totally given over to the specialized robots for that function. At best,
humans will be refining the programming of the neuro-surgical robots. Consider the job of joining millions
of nerves in a broken spinal column. Would you expect a human surgeon to be capable of doing this in one
sitting? Only a specialized robot whose “hands” are designed for such a job and whose speed is adequate to
the task will be capable of performing such a miracle.
Now consider the following scenario: two sisters are reared by the same parents who guide them both into
the field of surgery. When the oldest sister is 35, she completes all of the necessary education and passes all
of the qualifying exams. At that point in time, the younger sister is 18. The year is 2030 and the ability to
connect computers to the brain has evolved to the point whereby in one year the younger sister is attached
to devices which allow her to learn at an accelerated rate. At the age of 20, the second sister passes all of the
same qualifying exams and becomes a surgeon just like her older sister did, but she is 15 years younger.
The younger sister has better memory retention than the older one because of the use of digital electronics.
Meanwhile the parents have given birth to a son who is a clone of a child prodigy and graduates from
medical school at the age of 12. He does his residency using virtual reality machines which give him
realistic situations and allow him to gain the practical knowledge of residency in only one year. They all
come home for Thanksgiving dinner at their parent’s home. How does the oldest sister feel at 35 years-old
when discussing medicine with her 13 year-old brother and 20 year-old sister who have met all of the
qualifications that she has? How do they all feel when most people are having their surgery performed by
robotic surgeons made by Dell?
The situation is similar for parents who are raising a child to flip hamburgers. McDonald’s is already
starting to use robots in their restaurants. Building roads? This will be totally automated as well. Driving a
taxi? Cars will drive themselves and the accident rate will plummet. By 2025 it will be illegal for a human
to drive an automobile or truck on an Interstate highway unless they are a service vehicle such as a tow
truck, etc. Safety considerations will mandate such laws. Most accidents are the result of human error.
The only solution is to remove the human element. We have air bags because we don’t trust people to fasten
their seat-belts. If we don’t trust someone to fasten their seatbelt, why do we trust them to drive an
automobile which is potentially a lethal weapon? The only automobiles and trucks allowed will be those
which drive themselves. Central computers will be able to track such vehicles for security reasons lest a
truck bomb be sent by some radical. Computers are beneficial to the world and society. Some humans
generate viruses which can be very harmful. The tendency will be to look on computers and robots as
beneficial and to look on humans as something not to be fully trusted.
Dell Computers currently manufactures 140,000 computers per day. Once you have a single robot that can
perform the duties of a nurse, such a robot can be duplicated by a manufacturing process similar to the
manufacturing of a Dell Computer and any nursing shortage will be alleviated. Training human nurses
will be much more expensive and have a greater time lag. Having a human nurse will be a luxury that only
a few can afford just like a hand sewn suit costs more than one made using a sewing machine. The high
cost of taking care of the elderly now appears to be situated to bankrupt the economies of North America and
Europe over the next few decades. In actuality, this problem will be solved by the use of relatively
inexpensive robotic nurses and doctors.
One should consider the future carefully before giving birth to any more humans. In time, the use of robots
will be less expensive than Chinese labor and manufacturing will come back to the United States. People
will direct robots and robots will do most of the labor. People will provide intentions and robots will carry
out orders. We will only need people to direct the robots and perhaps we will need human entertainers.
Leisure time will become the rule and I suggest that you invest in theme parks, entertainment centers,
resorts, etc. Humans are going to have a lot of spare time on their hands.
Donbot
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