Meeting notice: The 02.02.06 meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the 
Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge), a block down from the corner of 
Main St. and Mass Ave.  If you're new and can't recognize us, ask the 
manager.  He'll probably know where we are.  More details below.

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Suggested topic:  

	"The major domestic challenge of the Sixties is to maintain 
	full employment at a time when automation is replacing men." 
			--President John F. Kennedy, 1962

There is nothing novel in experts making fools of themselves trying to read 
the future, but the automation hysteria that swept the country in the 60's 
and 70's was something special.  Constituencies usually immune from 
futurist intoxications (like Presidents) became possessed with the idea that 
fully automated workplaces, labor- free aside from a handful of highly 
skilled programmers, were both imminent and revolutionary (perhaps 
literally so). 

Not much happened over the next forty years to confirm these forecasts; in 
fact employment is at record levels. How come?  Neither of the basic ideas
undergirding the hysteria, that computers can emulate human decision-making 
and that labor efficiencies are desirable, seem wrong on their face. Lord 
knows productive enterprises bought plenty of computers over the last 40 
years. So why is employment so high?  Possibly because capital released 
from labor efficiencies is usually reinvested, creating new jobs at a rate 
that nets out at a bit better than one to one.  Why a bit better? Because 
humans can be programmed in less time than computers (so far), so an 
economy with a high degree of job turnover and therefore new job creation 
is inherently biased towards human employment.

You could also argue that automation as envisioned by these prophets never 
really arrived; that there are very few, if any, totally automated 
enterprises. Why is that?  Perhaps because, no matter how smart machines 
get, they never get so smart that a skilled human operating in partnership 
with a smart machine won't perform better than an equally smart machine 
acting alone.

The first phase of the industrial revolution might be characterized as one 
in which the human factors of production were local -- humans often 
actually lived at the production site -- while resources (power, materials) 
were imported.  It increasingly appears that the next phase will be one in 
which resources are local while it is the human factors that get delivered, 
often from a real distance.  NT is the logical culmination of this trend 
-- with replicators drawing up molecules in situ and directed or controlled 
from anywhere on or off the globe --  but there are many contemporary 
illustrations. Extractive technologies are growing more sensitive, with 
seawater extraction clearly on the horizon. Local sources of energy - - 
solar, wind, microbial fuel cells, biogas turbines -- are attracting more 
investment. Sensors are improving, while networks are growing more 
hospitable to remote management tasks, such as high definition 
operational video feeds.  

is this a real 'law' of industrial development?  Does it have exceptions?
Are there interesting implications?



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Announcement Archive: 
http://www.pobox.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html.

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Legend:

"NSG" expands to Nanotechnology Study Group.  The Group meets on 
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which refers to a restaurant located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  

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