Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

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Here's a big task that is a) not directly related to computers, and b) the coming wave of automation can't take away - maintenance. All those buildings, tracks, machines, etc. can't clean and fix themselves. We can't jump over everything with the standard market approach of making cheap disposable crap and replacing it wholesale when some component breaks. There's infrastructure. Like water mains, electrical conduits and cabling, etc.

We need one more breakthrough before we can free people from jobs - self-maintaining machines. Which will probably involve self-healing materials. Imagine if you could simplify maintaining underground cables to just making sure there's enough nutrient-rich fluid around them. Then we could automate the production and delivery of such fluid, and we'd be done.

The future without jobs is the future where our infrastructure heals itself, just like our bodies do.

I don't have an analogical example in mind, but I think that often-times, what happens when a revolution gets past a hurdle like automation vs maintenance, is that the hurdle gets worked around.

In this case, I think that, to a large extent, maintenance can be side-stepped by recycling and rebuilding. A bit like how the current world works: we can fix anything, but for most things, it's simpler to throw and buy a new one because the labour is more costly than the product itself. One example is asking a computer repair shop to fix your laptop screen (particularly so if said screen is touch-sensitive).

In a world where energy is free (fully solar for example), this is awesome: oh, you just got a month old car but a better design just came out? No problem, you'll get the newest one when your turn comes.

I doubt I'll see this kind of world (if it ever comes) in my lifetime, but it doesn't seem so far-fetched, I think.

Maintenance turns out to be a subdiscipline of logistics.

And if your instrumentation is good enough, it really becomes a subdisicipline of logistics, plus maybe the machines can begin to defend themselves from ordinary abuse.

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