Hacker News Reader

Comment by mckee1 | Hacker News Reader

>The argument is essentially technological. Computers and robots are getting much better. Soon enough, your local McDonald’s will be entirely automated

If technology is ever increasing and replacing manual jobs

>These are abstract, constructed jobs. If we had to, we could make do with far fewer software programmers

Then how on earth is a software engineer a "constructed" job? This an awful example.

I think the overall premise is probably correct though, as human beings we need goals, we need structure and something to do, so we will always "make up" jobs for society to function correctly. And there are menial jobs that aren't going to be automated any time soon.It's pretty tough to automate a call centre for example, human's are not going to buy a product from an automated voice, and we're a long, long way away from AI being an effective sales person (ie perfect human voice, able to make a "connection" with someone.)

Edit:Grammar

View on HN

I've always thought that call centre jobs are exactly the kind of thing that (google + apple + microsoft's) voice recognition software will soon largely replace.

They're one of the few professions that could painlessly be replaced given sufficient advances in software. Other professions, such as fully autonomous hairdresser or shelf stacker, would require mechanical advances and investments as well.

The problem with IVR is not that its voice recognition is bad, it that it doesn't really do anything a simple menu driven system couldn't do. It can't understand what you want to do, something that for a human is trivial. Why are companies so afraid of talking to their customers?

>If technology is ever increasing and replacing manual jobs >These are abstract, constructed jobs. If we had to, we could make do with far fewer software programmers Then how on earth is a software engineer a "constructed" job?

Well, it's obvious to me.

Some software engineers are essential to this "ever increasing technology" that is "replacing manual jobs" -- e.g those writing code for industrial robots, etc.

But the vast majority of programmers are doing non essential (to substinence and hard, pragmatic value) BS coding, that just creates a huge pile of additional services and soft businesses.

Creating robots that can build cars: useful. Creating yet another social sharing site, etc, not so useful. Plus a lot of programming only caters to needs artificially inflated by bureaucracy and additional regulations.

Creating robots that can build cars: useful. Creating yet another social sharing site, etc, not so useful.

Truly - why did anyone ever invest any communication effort after dialup BBS and the TECO editor.

Communication efforts afters BBS and TECO editor: useful. Yet another social sharing site, etc, not so useful.

I don't see what's that hard to understand about it.

Or did you think that when I wrote: "Creating robots that can build cars: useful" I meant as some kind of axiomatic math robot that THAT AND ONLY THAT is useful?

Just because you and I can't imagine a social sharing site that is to Facebook what Google is to Altavista doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We don't know until the alternatives have been tried, and "yet another social sharing site" are those attempts.

No, we do know that it doesn't exist. We'd see it.

And making "yet another social sharing site" are NOT those attempts.

Just because they share the same segment ("social sharing sites") doesn't mean of them are attempts at improvement. Just as making yet another car is not an attempt to build the next kind of car. E.g. Chevy Malibu 2013 edition is merely a re-hash, not an "attempt to build something new", like, say, Tesla is.

Google was an attempt to build something better than Altavista from the moment it was still an algorithm (not even a website yet). It wasn't just some me-too web search engine that evolved into better than Altavista -- it attempted to better it in it's very design intentions.

The other day I had to call in a power outage to ComEd. A computer asked for my location (account number / phone number), then said that there is a crew that has been dispatched and the ETA for restoration was 2 hours.

Didn't talk to a single person.

so don't sell to people, sell to robots

Reply on news.ycombinator.com