Technology

You may find my discussion yesterday not new - Charlie Chaplin made an elaborated demonstration in the Modern Times.

But there are more things popping out from the Pandora box.

With James Watt and the first industrial revolution, only the most masculine jobs were affected. There was in fact still a huge need of semi-skillful workers to handle the machines. Productivity was greatly increased and the effective price of many daily needs did come down. On the whole there was actually an improvement in the quality of life, and most people with an average (or average minus one standard deviation) intelligence could make a living - that's how a society could be sustained.

The unfortunate truth is, however, machines and information technology make a much faster evolution than our genome. With the advance in computers and artificial intelligence, more and more jobs could be handled by cold-blooded gadgets - leaving only the top niched tasks for human brain. The result is simple: a small group of gifted people gets the control and therefore the lion's share of all social resource, while the majority with normal intelligence struggle between unemployment and under-paid. The gap between the two ends of the society widens, and less than ever the environment is suitable for the survival of normal human beings.