Technology and socialism

When robots take over much work previously done by human beings, how will the distribution of wealth be decided?

After decades of Western nations "offshoring" manufacturing to the Far East (so causing growing financial and social strains at home), the trend has begun to reverse in recent years, but without necessarily improving the prospects for well-paid industrial employment. Automation is taking over, not just on the assembly line but increasingly in the back office as well.

Now, the Engineer magazine reports on a "reconfigurable modular robot" that can change its shape and functioning to adapt to varying tasks and conditions (htp: Demetrius.)

This has implications for blue-suited management, too: “I want to tell the robot what it should be doing, what its goals are, but not how it should be doing it,” said Kress-Gazit, the leader of the research team. (Over 40 years ago operational analyst Stafford Beer held that management should set goals and provide resources, but leave it to the relevant department to decide how best to use those resources - a lesson still to be learned in many quarters!)

It could be argued that human labour will be re-employed in other fields but that is not guaranteed - did the Luddite weavers find other work in time to avoid destitution? - and the alternatives may be menial and lower-paid. I seem to see a lot of tattoo parlours and nail bars, fast-food outlets and discontinued-line shops in my neighbourhood these days. Billionaire Hugo Salinas Price predicts somewhere (I haven't found the reference yet) the return of domestic servants.

It may become harder to criticise the unemployed when work is not available. The question of economic justice will raise its head.

And at that point we will wonder how to restrict the multiplication of "useless mouths," limitless payouts of financial benefits and social-worker support etc., before the weight of public debt causes the economy to collapse.

Will the franchise revert to property-owners only? Will we need a militia to keep down the unfortunate? Will there be Chinese-style rules on breeding?

Or will Red Santa overthrow the whole system for a millennial age which will certainly never arrive?

_____________________________________

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reonshoring-manufacturing-has-begun-what-back-office-services-parmar/
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/reconfigurable-modular-robot/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Beer
http://www.plata.com.mx/enUS/enUS

Weekend Wonders: Atom-Sized Movie

FRIDAY MUSIC: Key Player - Keith Emerson, by JD

This year has been Leonard Bernstein's 100th 'birthday' and the BBC devoted a few programmes to his life and work. The old black and white TV interviews from fifty years ago were interesting and informative. Bernstein was asked in one of the old interviews if he liked any of the then current popular music. He replied that The Nice were very good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nice

Interesting choice because they recorded and issued in 1968 an instrumental version of Bernstein's 'America' from 'West Side Story' It was their most successful single. Several radio stations in the US refused to play it and most commentators 'knew' that Bernstein 'hated' it. But Bernstein denied that he had ever said that and his approval for the group would seem to confirm it.

Bernstein was a very talented composer and musician as well a lecturer on music. I believe his choice of The Nice was because he recognised the prodigious talent of Keith Emerson who played piano, organ and one of the earliest Moog synthesizers in the group.

So this post is a collection of Emerson's recordings in all of its many forms from jazz to classical. I have added also his eleven year old grandson playing piano in Birmingham Symphony Hall with a 60 piece orchestra demonstrating that such spectacular talent runs in the family.

There is also another Emerson composition played by Rachel Flowers; new to me but she sounds even more talented than anyone else in these videos and that includes Emerson himself or Oscar Peterson! There will definitely be more from her in the coming weeks.

Brexit to be completed on time?

The Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has said he expects a deal to be agreed with the European Union by 21st November.

Political Betting reports that this news has changed the odds:

"On Betfair it is now it’s 62% chance on the market that Britain will leave the EU as planned on March 29th next year."

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2018/10/31/the-pound-rises-on-the-forex-markets-after-the-brexsec-reports-that-a-deal-only-three-weeks-away/

Scottish Independence: a suggestion to Craig Murray

Craig Murray can't wait to get away from the farce south of the Scottish border:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/10/the-ignominious-death-of-the-united-kingdom/

I say:

"You compare Scotland's position with that of "Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden" but I still find it difficult to reconcile your passion for Scottish independence with your enthusiasm for membership of the EU. Indeed of the countries listed in quotation marks only Ireland has joined the Eurozone and now, I think, bitterly regrets having done so.

"I've suggested to you before now that there could be most interesting prospects for Scotland as a member of a sort of Northern League with Norway and Iceland, with almost exclusive collective control of a vast fishing area plus much to learn from Norway about hydroelectric power and energy storage - something which would fit well into the great tradition of Scottish engineering expertise.

"Add Sweden and Denmark...

"You must be well aware of the growing financial and politico-social strains in the EU (doune the plughole, you might say). Why not have a bolder vision for your country's future?"
______________________________
See also:

https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2014/04/could-free-scotland-manage-economically.html

Soapy Tales and Others, by Wiggia

All washed up

White goods, domestic appliances, from AEG to Zanussi we are buried beneath a mountain of technical marvels for easing the household day, or are we?

Recent events (the wife's knee problems) have meant that I have had to get down and dirty and up close to these modern necessities. Much of what I discovered I could have found out by simply asking the wife in the first place but we don’t work like that so the hands on method has revealed shortcomings that are accepted but not acceptable, or shouldn’t be in the 21st century.

Not all is bad in this white goods world but little has changed with machines like the modern day washing machine in its 120 year history.

The worst offender in the "could do a lot better" stakes is the dishwasher, supposedly saving your good selves of the drudgery of time in elbow length Marigolds at the sink. Yes, time is saved, your time, but that machine takes forever to clean your plates, plates that you have to remove the worst excesses of food from before you put them in the machine. Some items it can’t manage without marking them, such as decent glass, so they are hand washed and dried; no saving of time there.

And reliability is a big factor with these as well: we may have been unlucky but two we have owned, both built-in, have been the car equivalent of a Friday night version. One had a ten year guarantee and every single item on it was replaced, some more than once. When the door fell off ten minutes after the repair man had left having replaced three items in one go, we got a call saying we could get an allowance and trade in on a new one - as if we would want another the same ! So as we had two years of guarantee left we beat them down to a token payment  and moved house soon after. I have no idea if the new one behaved and I didn’t go back to ask.

And why (for it is the reason I am sharing this) do you have to get on the floor to fill the bloody thing with salt and ditto the ‘special’ detergent? After all these years you would think that there would be a way of filling both from the top, not have to crawl into a tunnel to put the salt in. The truth is no one likes washing up despite it being quicker by hand and saving a lot of money for the machine, the water and energy used and the cost of ‘special detergents, salt and the anti-limescale treatments.

Washing machines do not have the same problems but again unless you have a space for a top loader you have the chore of filling and distributing the clothes to avoid the drum going through the side of the casing. It is a job carried out at just above floor level, which is all right when you are 25 but not so much when you are older and the creaking back makes such manoeuvres difficult.

Stacking solves that problem - if you have somewhere to stack; and why are there so many programmes. They are like motor cars in that all the extra bells and whistles help sell the product despite the fact that few are ever used. To me all these items are something extra to go wrong and the noise like a lorry reversing whilst it sorts out the clothes distribution prior to spinning for five minutes could drive you mad.

And very few people realise that the bigger load carriers demand a bigger drum in the same size casing. This has two problems: the lack of wobble room when the thing vibrates, resulting in banging on the sides; and extra loading on the drum bearings, both with the extra load weight and the increasing spin speeds. Factored into that (as I have been told by the washing machine repair man) is that nearly all manufacturers use the same bearings and motors regardless of the machine's make or price; Miele were the exception to that but no more, only their very top end machines still have the heavy duty bearings and their ten year guarantee.

Fridges and freezers can be ignored. The fact they can alter their settings when a power cut has shut them down is not their fault, though why some suffer this fault and some don’t is a mystery. Apart from that the only down marker is if the potential purchase doesn't have automatic de-frost.

The humble tumble drier, usually relegated to the garage or shed, seems to be the one machine to come out with merit stars. Long forgotten in their damp abode they usually go on seemingly forever. Unless, that is, you are the unfortunate owner of one those Whirlpool and associated makes that catch fire if you don’t unplug them after use: apparently there are over 2.5 million in use in this country and we had an example of that about four years ago when a house three doors away lost the whole garage to a fire when the tumble drier burst into flames in the night. So the humble tumble drier may be cheap and reliable but it makes up for that by being a potential killer.

The smaller appliances are mainly reliable and do their job reasonably well. There is a certain amount of total BS spoken about the performances of vacuum cleaners: turbo motors and space age cyclone fizzy things don’t seem to make any difference to the actual performance of these other than in the adverts and your bank balance.

But there is one really annoying appliance: the kettle. We have never had a kettle last more than an average of two years, whether it is an own brand supermarket version at £20  or an Italian designer one at over £100: they all fail and fall to limescale one way or another. Usually they fail to turn off and steam the kitchen, or they turn off early and fail to boil. or they simply will not boil at all. None is repairable and all end up in the bin. The answer is of course to return to boiling a kettle on the stove yet few are willing to go this route; retrograde it may be but you can keep on doing this without fear of failure or the alternative of another trip to the electrical superstore where you can browse rows of models with variable boil settings, flashing lights and designer styling with silly lids in the knowledge they will be in the bin about two years hence. For such a simple appliance I have yet to see one with a guarantee longer than 12 months - I wonder why ! 

Toasters almost get away with criticism. Well, the better ones do but the cheaper models as in the days of yore are incapable of toasting unless the slice of bread is a certain width, otherwise it will be underdone or burnt; even with sensor controlling they manage to behave that way, I don’t actually believe they have any mechanism to “read” the toast as none of them work. Only the expensive catering quality ones do the job so you have to justify that expense against the cost of a slice of toast, or use the oven grill and risk flames when you forget it is in there.

I haven’t mentioned ovens: most do their job relatively well it would appear. My only grumble would be one of choice: floor standing ones bring back the "I can’t see what is going on without bending double" problem, and with big roasting joints there is the difficulty of lifting that weight up to table top level - all problems the more elderly of us suffer from.

The built-in eye-height models make more sense but I am not entrusted with that area in the kitchen yet - my perfect boiled eggs (without timer - smug!), are the limit of my culinary genius.

There is another set of kitchen gadgets that fall into the GAS category: Gadget Acquisition Syndrome. If all those items that fill the likes of Lakeland catalogues were purchased you would need another house to put them in. Years ago, a Kenwood mixer was a luxury item that was multi tasking; now the relegated humble food mixer is joined by a myriad of "specialist" mixers of all shapes, sizes and price tickets.

No home is complete without an ice cream maker, bread making machine, foamer (if you follow that chef with the strange name that rhymes with a cycle mudguard producer), pasta machines, various fruit de-pippers, de-corers  and on and on, all topped by the must-have genuine and very expensive coffee machines which in most cases you could send out for coffee for life for the cost of them. After their brief time in the sunlight being discussed over the garden wall they are dismissed to some dark corner of an unused cupboard never to be see the light of day again, but there will always be another new and exciting item coming along to quench your thirst for GAS.

My new take on white goods and appliances as someone who is now a user rather than an observer is not a flattering one: paying more is no guarantee of any improvement as so much of the same inner working is the same in all of them. And in terms of functional design not much has moved on over the years, especially in the areas highlighted above.

Still, I can escape the chores inside for a while: I have to sweep the patio clear of fallen leaves. At least not much can go wrong with a broom. Or can it?

Pornographic violence

Michael Caine, who came from the London slums and later served in Korea:

"There's a danger, when making films, of romanticising violence. I know only too well what the other side of violence looks like and I wanted to show that other side in Get Carter...

"Violence has consequences and you don't often see that in movies. It's a sort of pornography: people are struck time and time again and the next time they appear they just sport a bit of Elastoplast, not even a black eye or missing teeth. If you were a real victim of the violence you see in some films, you would be in hospital or dead. In Get Carter you see the effect of one whack, although we never cut to the gore. I'm worried by the sorts of computer games kids play these days when their characters smash someone over the head and there's no blood - what sort of generation are we bringing up? And I'm amazed at what you can see on television even before the watershed. People seem to glory in it and that scares me."

- From his autobiography "The Elephant To Hollywood" (pp. 153/155)

That was published in 2010, so written probably a year before; things have moved on. 

Some may make a libertarian issue of it, and argue that research shows no connection between commercially-produced fantasies and actual violence. I doubt that and think that a general review of such research is overdue. For British obscenity law is about the effect, not on people generally, but on people who are susceptible. The Internet allows echo-chambers to develop, drawing together the like-minded into isolated groups with propaganda and exciting visuals, grooming the select audience into an ideological drift towards committing atrocities (why else beheading videos?) Then there are the many cases where people "gee themselves up" by consuming pornography, spurring themselves into action; it's a feedback-loop process and we can only hope to control one end of it.

I'll admit that policing the Internet is a can of worms, especially since we are seeing censorship on a political basis in e.g. Facebook and Twitter. The Dark Net, though - are there not many rats'-nests in it to be cleared?

But at least we can start looking at TV programming. The "nine o' clock watershed" is a joke - many children stay up far longer than their teachers. The BBC's principal channel can scarcely wait to cross that time-border before screening the obscenities of "Killing Eve", which combines appalling murders with shots of the villainess not merely unmoved but instead joyfully observing her victims' suffering, a pleasure we are invited to share as voyeurs.

Similarly, computer games are age-rated like movies, and it's nonsense. A child can easily get hold of them for private enjoyment, but fathers and older brothers will often play alongside and think there is no harm because they don't see anything happening in their home as a result.

What if pre-watershed TV soaps like "Eastenders" showed a fist fight and followed through with a hospital visit where the doctor explains to a white-faced roughboy that no, the brain damage isn't going to get better. Shots of remorse, helpless apology, the long-term damage caused to the victim's family (people giving up work to take on the role of carers; separations and divorces as the weight gets too great...)

Propaganda? We have that already, in the other direction: desensitisation, glorification of the power of violence. The State and the movie industry has long done this to make war acceptable; now we are fermenting micro-wars among the people. Look at the developing gang culture in Britain, and the soaring rate of knife crime.

JS Mill argued for liberty, but acknowledged that liberal values can only exist in a society that has learned restraint. If we allow the culture of self-restraint to rot, we will see harsh behaviour restrained by harsh oppression.