I am not a futurist, I do not wish to be one and I do not
want to be mistaken for one. But Steven Rattner has written an article that
touches on many subjects I always wanted to write about, and I could not pass
up the opportunity to add my two-cent worth to the debate he started. So here I
am. The article by Rattner came under the title: “Fear Not the Coming of the
Robots” and was published in the New York Times on June 22, 2014. He wrote it
from an economics point of view; what I like to do is look at the related
subjects from a different angle.
At first, the energy that human beings used to create the
wealth that was necessary to feed them and protect them from the elements was
the energy produced by their muscles. For example, a grown human being in good
health produces about 100 watts of power, and can work as much as 6 hours a day
going “full steam.” This comes to a total of 600 watt/hours a day. When he
domesticated animals such as the donkeys, horses, oxen and elephants, he added
to the store of energy he could now put to use. And this helped him produce a
great deal more than before considering, for example, that the horsepower is by
convention taken to equal 756 watts.
As technology developed with the passage of time, man built
the windmill and the waterwheel which he exploited to add to the store of
energy he used. This allowed him to increase the production of goods and
services needed to maintain a style of life that was now different from the one
he led in an earlier era. But the massive quantum leap in the amount of energy
he used and the corresponding wealth he was able to create did not come about
till he invented the steam engine, and followed that with the internal
combustion engine, the turbine, the electric motor and all the peripherals that
came with them. It was the advent of the Industrial Revolution.
All that was made possible when man discovered the many ways
by which to convert the chemical energy that nature had stored in the
hydrocarbons: coal, petroleum and natural gas, into the kind of work that
produces the goods and services he needs. For example, the average modern
industrial man consumes about 24,000 watt/hours of energy a day, a far cry from
the 600 watt/hours consumed by our ancestors. This is a ratio of 40 to 1 which
tempts us to say we live 40 times better than our ancestors. But this would be
a distorted view of reality because what our ancestors did with the wealth they
created, and what we do with ours are two different things.
The reality is that our ancestors consumed all the wealth
they created whereas we consume only a portion of what we create because a
great deal of what we produce goes into maintaining the modern line of
production. For example, the ancestor may have spent 60 watt/hours catching the
chicken which he ate on the spot. In contrast, we might spend as much as a
1,200 watt/hours raising the chicken on a farm that is equipped with machines;
on taking the chicken to the processing plant where it is killed, packed and shipped
to the supermarket where we buy it, cook it, eat some of it and refrigerate the
rest. And a big part of the remaining 24,000 watt/hours allotted to each of us
goes to service what we call commercial and industrial concerns.
Seen from that perspective, Rattner's observation: “Call it
automation, call it robots, or call it technology; it all comes down to the
concept of producing more with fewer workers,” takes on a different meaning. To
begin with, saying that more is produced with fewer workers – although
technically correct – can be misleading. It would have been better to say more
is produced with the same number of workers. And contrary to the belief of
those who fear that the machine puts people out of work, the fact remains that
more workers are needed with the advent of every new machine because a whole
lot more has to be produced to keep the machine based system running. This is
true since all that is made in an industrial economy is not end products
consumed by the general public. A great deal of it goes into the fabrication
and maintenance of the line of production that ends up making the products we
identify as being consumer goods and services.
Even if we cannot determine precisely how much energy goes
into producing the goods and services we need to sustain life in a modern
industrial economy, we cannot escape the conclusion that our consumption has
grown in a straight line over the ages, whereas our use of energy has grown
exponentially … and this means that the need for more workers has also grown
exponentially. Expressed differently, it says that to double the standard of
living in real terms, we may need to multiply the number of workers by 4 or 5.
And this brings us to the subject of efficiency, especially
in what concerns the use of energy. The hydrocarbons and uranium being finite
quantities produced by nature over millions of years, something was done to
prepare for the day when there will not be enough of them to sustain a modern
economy. It is that many on Earth got engaged in exploring the subjects of
renewable sources of energy, more efficient machines and conservation.
What this has entailed during the past few decades was the
design of energy efficient buildings, of machines and of consumer products. It
was a move that helped to improve the ratio of energy usage versus the amount
of products and services delivered. But the rule of thumb being that a better
design calls for less workers, the result has been that the production of goods
and services has increased, the economy has grown and yet, less workers were
hired during that period of time. But this trend is about to reverse in my
view.
Several factors conspire to create a new reality. One, the
non-renewable energy resources are dwindling. Two, a limit has been reached to
making the products we use today more efficiently. Three, the making of future
products by the method of three dimensional printing will use nanotechnology
that requires a great deal of energy. And all of that will launch a new
industrial revolution that will rival the old in its impact. A consequence of
this will be the need for more workers.
There is something else that may happen. Many of the new
workers will go into the business of researching the renewable resources and
the business of producing them. Since fusion power proved to be a
disappointment, the old idea of cold fusion will be revived. This time,
however, nanotechnology will play a major role in the research, and may achieve
a breakthrough.