[aaronsw]

"I suppose some part of me assumed that by 2020+ machines would be making most of what I use, but when I look at the scale of jobless people as a result of it, it really makes me scratch my head to figure out where we fit in the future."

This is a common economic misconception. If, by some lucky twist of fate, machines can make everything we may ever want, it'd be great! We can just all lie around and enjoy utopia.

[gregpilling]

The downside of the utopia is the sheer amount of things that the robots can produce. Then what do you do with all that stuff?? That is a theme of the story "Midas Plague" by Frederik Pohl.

"The Midas Plague" (originally published in Galaxy in 1954). In this new world of cheap energy, robots are overproducing the commodities enjoyed by mankind. So now the "poor" are forced to spend their lives in frantic consumption, trying to keep up with the robots' extravagant production, so that the "rich" can live lives of simplicity. This story deals with the life of a man named Morey Fry, who marries a girl from a higher class. She is unused to a life of consumption and it wears at their marriage. Morey eventually hits on the idea of having the robots help him to consume his quotas. At first he fears punishment when he is discovered, but instead the Ration Board quickly implements his idea across the world."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World

[SoftwareMaven]

Somehow, I can't imagine a bored and aimless population of billions building utopia. Bored people tend to be troublesome people, so if there isn't enough Farmville, we might be in trouble.

[rkalla]

Good point, I wonder if we will need to create virtual realities for ourselves just to stay "occupied"

... here is a meta though... what if that is what we live in NOW, hence all the talk about "is our reality a hologram?" recently.

Inceptioned! :)

[walkon]

I'm not sure how excited and fulfilled one can be by doing a simple and repetitive task several hundred times a day.

[amcintyre]

I can't tell...are you talking about the jobs the robots will be doing, or playing Farmville?

[prodigal_erik]

Farmville is a good example of the kind of drudgery which robots should relieve us from.

I thought this was going to be a joke but, just like WoW and EVE mining, I see that it is actually happening: http://farmvillebot.net/ http://www.femfarmville.com/

[notatoad]

funny you mention farmville, as actually working on a farm is one thing that the robots have yet to master.

[tonyedgecombe]

Farming has benefited massively from automation and will continue to do so:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/06/robo_p...