The majority of those who own smartphones seem to be addicted to them in one way or another. Husbands and wives and lovers sit beside each other in bed for hours engrossed in their own digital world in search of meaning and entertainment. But smartphones and their apps are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of how human lives will be restructured and rearranged as automated technology and robots take over more and more of the tasks required by highly computerized societies.
According to the editors at Big Think, authors of “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet: Three Forces Shaping the New Machine Age,” new science fiction-like technologies being developed today including AUVs, NLP, robots, stem cells, the internet, nanotechnology, etc., are just the beginning.
Long Waves of Social Evolution (Image Courtesy https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Long_Waves_of_Social_Evolution.jpg#/media/File:Long_Waves_of_Social_Evolution.jpg)
Ethical Problems in the 2nd Machine Age
Some tout the progress and prosperity created by brilliant new technologies while others believe these same technologies will steal our jobs and wipe out the world’s middle-class. There is likely to be a decades-long struggle for societies to strike the right balance between automated technologies and the needs of people.
PBS digital studios recently created the video “The New Rules of Robot/Human Society” that lays out the the human impact and ethical implications of robots that are likely to be used in military situations and in wider society for delivery, journalism, medicine, you name it.
