[tommiegannert]

This really sounds like great progress. If a clogged up toilet is considered something of a big problem to highlight, we've come a long way.

Farming is highly automated both in terms of pre-made bulk chemicals and machines on the fields.

We mass-produce cars. Indeed, we have cars that we can leave months on end without maintenance. And they run both faster and further than a horse.

We have automated labs that can produce and test medicine in high pace.

We have seriously large industries (gaming, cruising, performing arts) that do nothing but give people something to do now that we don't have to worry about having enough food by end of winter.

[kazen44]

In historical context, this is all thanks to industrialisation and the specialisation of industry. The effects of the change of agriculture should not be understated. The industrialization of agriculte has made it possible for the majority of the population to do something else then farming. (be it substance or tenant farming).

Having an abundance of food and not relying on substance farming for the majority of your needs also has the knock-on effect of kids not being needed on a farm, but getting education instead. Which in term will eventually lead to more industrialisation etc.

[athinggoingon]

I didn't interpret the parent comment's reference to "automation and robotics" to include "industrialization and specialization". Sounds like a bunch of brogrammers coding up useless growth tech, funded by clueless VC funds. FTX and Upstart comes to mind.

...but what does Upstart do? https://youtu.be/WWxl4W_eVUA?t=110

[Apocryphon]

Industrialization and specialization has been the direction of society since agriculture, if not earlier. Automation and robotics is supposed to be the stage that came with industrialization, then digitalization. Those brogrammers coding up useless growth tech are just a big soap bubble in a much larger stream of the direction of society.

You are mistaking a (large, obnoxious, all-encompassing) trend of the economic moment (albeit a moment that has existed for 1.5 to 2 decades now) for the greater direction of civilization. A mistake in scale.