Category: automation

automation, culture, environment, films, Life, Politics2 Comments

Look & See – Rural America

Mark Cathcart

I’ve written a number of harsh posts about those living in rural America, mostly based off the perception that is pushed by the Republican party, that is, rural Americans don’t understand, and resent urban Americans. That rural Americans are the god-fearing, backbone of America and urban and city dwellers are welfare dependents, and worse still, socialists. Certainly, the Republican party continue to push this agenda today, dividing sub-urban and rural communities from the cities. As shown here, rural Americans claiming benefits has sky rocketed between ’96 and 2015; increasingly, the programs getting cut, adversely hit rural America harder, as rural … Continue reading Look & See – Rural America

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Google and Voice

Mark Cathcart

You’d think given the proliferation of voice activated home technology like Alexa, Siri, Google Voice Assistant, Cortana etc. we’d be on the home stretch for voice activation in cars, where distraction is a real life threatening problem. I don’t travel much now, I don’t drive more than 6k miles per year, which is a good thing based on today’s experience with Google. I’ll admit, I didn’t do any scientific research, I’ve no idea what other brands do, but I got stuck in traffic today heading into Boulder. I asked Google Assistant to read a web article from Vox. My Google … Continue reading Google and Voice

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The Popularity Of ‘Westworld’ Points To Our Anxiety About AI

Mark Cathcart

“If things play out with AI the way that they have done with Facebook, we’re in a lot of trouble.” Jonathan Nolan Source: The Popularity Of ‘Westworld’ Points To Our Anxiety About AI, The Show’s Creators Say | Here & Now Continue reading The Popularity Of ‘Westworld’ Points To Our Anxiety About AI

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Fear of Automation

Mark Cathcart

ZDNet has a good summary of a few recent reports on automation, a subject I’ve covered here more than once. The more interesting survey report is from a Harris Poll for ZipRecruiter, an online employment marketplace. ZipRecruiter’s nationwide data shows 60% of job seekers believe fears around robots taking away jobs are overhyped while 2 in 5 employed job seekers (41%) believe their current job will be automated within their lifetime. This is more than likely because workers asked, don’t see the big picture. They don’t get involved with decisions and discussions about how to cut cost and risk from … Continue reading Fear of Automation

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Bringing Jobs Back to the USA

Mark Cathcart

As the GOP push through their tax bill, without any transparency, one of the big ticket items is corporate tax breaks. My opinion is the government are really wasting their time, and our money giving tax breaks, especially to companies to repatriate their overseas earnings, in some kind of swap for jobs. No such thing will happen, sure there will be a few winners here and there, but nothing substantial and certainly nothing overtime. If the government wanted to do this, they’d have been better creating an incentive program, which gave them tax deductions for each net new job they … Continue reading Bringing Jobs Back to the USA

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The machines are coming – 2049?

Mark Cathcart

It is notoriously difficult to predict the future. I lived my life at IBM, following Alan Kays 1982 aphorism The best way to predict the future is to invent it In my career I got many things right, and many things wrong. While Amazon was still a small time bookseller, and Youtube for the most part didn’t exist, it was obvious both business models would thrive. While I couldn’t convince IBM to pursue either of these opportunities with ny success, we demonstrated the technology perfectly. My “Wired for Life” Presentation contains some of my wins, and many of my losses. … Continue reading The machines are coming – 2049?

automation, Life, Politics, politics, technology, transport2 Comments

Giant fleet of small scheduling nightmares

Mark Cathcart

In tenuous link between my recent posts on automation, here and especially here, where back in November I discussed autonomous vehicles and their impact on employment. I also said: While many cities are salivating over the ability of self-driving, autonomous … Continue reading Giant fleet of small scheduling nightmares

automation, banking, Life, Politics, politics, tax, technology, transport2 Comments

Bring back what jobs?

Mark Cathcart

Look, the jobs that are lost, are not coming back, get over it. When Trump claims he’ll bring back jobs, he either has no idea what he is talking about, or he envisions some dystopian future where Americans are more like slaves than they’ve been since, well, slaves. I will bring our jobs back to the U.S., and keep our companies from leaving. Nobody else can do it. Our economy will “sing” again. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2016 China and Mexico are not the problem, automation is. Even if Trump were able to force companies to bring … Continue reading Bring back what jobs?

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Will self driving cars save Austin from itself?

Mark Cathcart

If you had 100 destinations you’d have removed some of the major bottlenecks, but we don’t. We have the Central Business District. It’s a major constraint and getting people in cars in and out of it no matter how automated the cars are will have the same fundamental problems and constraints. Anyone who says otherwise really doesn’t understand the problem. Continue reading Will self driving cars save Austin from itself?