the first wave of fast food robots did not replace all of the burger flipping employees as everyone had expected. The robots replaced middle management and significantly improved the performance of minimum wage employees. All (Location 109)
Manna is telling you exactly what to do every second of every day. If it asks you to go to the back and get merchandise, it tells you exactly where to walk to go get it. And here is the weirdest part — I never see another employee the entire day. The way it makes me walk, I never run into anyone else. I can go for a full shift and never see another employee. Even our breaks are staggered. Everyone takes their breaks alone. We all arrive at staggered times. It’s like Manna is trying to totally eliminate human interaction on the job.” (Location 129)
Manna uses us as its eyes to constantly look for problems. I am also looking for customers in the aisles and asking them how I can help — customer service is huge to Manna, as long as it takes less than 30 seconds. (Location 136)
the Manna software in each store knew about employee performance in microscopic detail — how often the employee was on time or early, how quickly the employee did tasks, how quickly the employee answered the phone and responded to email, how the customers rated the employee and so on. When an employee left a store and tried to get a new job somewhere else, any other Manna system could request the employee’s performance record. If an employee had “issues” — late, slow, disorganized, unkempt — it became nearly impossible for that employee to get another job. (Location 177)
You can imagine what would happen. Manna fires you because you don’t show up for work a couple times. Now you try to go get a job somewhere else. No other Manna system is going to hire you. (Location 185)
When you said, “OK” to mark task completion for Manna, Manna would say, “Your time was 4 minutes 10 seconds. Industry average time is 3 minutes 30 seconds. Please focus on each task.” Anyone who lagged consistently was fired. (Location 199)
The most surprising part of the Manna system, however, was the effect it had on wages. As Manna spread to so many businesses, your choice was to work for Manna or to be unemployed. When you started to work for Manna, it paid you minimum wage. There was no reason for it to pay you any more — your choice was minimum wage or zero. There was no way to ask Manna for a raise. You could quit, but when you quit you would be applying to another business that used Manna. It was going to give you minimum wage too. (Location 204)
Then there were all the unemployed people. Between Manna improving efficiency and forcing out the managers, plus overseas outsourcing taking out white collar jobs, plus machines like the automated checkout lines and burger flippers coming on line and so on, there were plenty of people who were unemployed. Unemployed people went around all day applying to jobs. But in a sense, that was pointless. (Location 214)
Manna was starting to move in on some of the white collar work force. The basic idea was to break every job down into a series of steps that Manna could manage. No one had ever realized it before, but just about every job had parts that could be subdivided out. (Location 223)
Soon there were no human airline pilots and no human air traffic controllers in the system. (Location 276)
The switchover to robots was proceeding with remarkable speed, and for some reason it seemed like no one had really thought about the effects of the transition. All of these people being replaced by the robots needed some form of income to survive, but the job pool was shrinking. (Location 318)
The American “service economy” was what replaced the “factory economy”, and America now had about half of its workers wrapped up in low-paying service sector jobs. These were the jobs perfectly suited for the new robots. The question was, what would happen to the half of the population being displaced from their service sector jobs? (Location 320)
The government had finally figured out that giving choices to people on welfare was not such a great idea, and it was also expensive. Instead of giving people a welfare check, they started putting welfare recipients directly into government housing and serving them meals in a cafeteria. If the government could drive the cost of that housing and food down, it minimized the amount of money they had to spend per welfare recipient. (Location 329)
you are living a comfortable life in a comfortable neighborhood with a swimming pool in the backyard, what do you care about anyone else? You are immune to their problems, so you keep on splashing and swimming. It never occurs to you to help them, because it is so abstract. (Location 410)
New highlights added September 3, 2024 at 5:05 PM
“The same place Cynthia’s outfit came from. It’s the same thing. Robots take recycled resources, add energy and robotic labor and make new robots. The robots are free, the energy is free, the resources are all completely recycled and we own them, so they are free. Everything is free.” (Location 581)
What am I passionate about? What do I most enjoy doing? What have I always wanted to try but had never gotten around to? How did I want to spend my time? In what sort of environment did I enjoy living? What kind of people did I like having around me? What kinds of hobbies did I enjoy? How far did I want to take them? Were there any that I would want to do constantly for a period of time? (Location 747)
Essentially, everyone in Australia is living on a gigantic, luxury cruise ship. The trip is already paid for, for life, and you are free to do whatever you like with your time. The robots are doing all the work, and you get to partake freely of their output. In other words, for the first time ever, everyone is truly equal and everyone is truly free. (Location 753)
The majority of people have a talent and, if they had the time, they would cultivate that talent and use (Location 772)
Thousands of scientists, engineers and designers came together and worked 18-hours-a-day to make the moon shot happen. Did they do it for the money? No. None of them became millionaires. They did it because they loved it and believed in the idea. Einstein did not create the theory of relativity for the money. The Wright Brothers did not create the airplane for the money. Creative people create for the joy of it. (Location 801)
During the first couple of days it was miraculous. Each new feature was surprising and amazing. But after a week or two you got used to it and it became a part of your life. Think about any technology — the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, the refrigerator, the home computer… These were all miracles the first day people saw them and used them, but a week later they were passe. (Location 1041)
New highlights added September 4, 2024 at 9:02 PM
One of the more interesting features of the economy from a psychological standpoint was the fact that no one had more than you did, or less, and everyone knew it. That removed entire layers of negative emotions. (Location 1068)
The fact that you could have pretty much anything you wanted, anytime you wanted it, meant that you placed far less importance on material things. You would expect that, given essentially free access to everything, people would go nuts. Actually, the opposite happened. Suddenly there was no condition of “want” or “envy,” so people had no need to show off. (Location 1070)
Innovation was incredibly interesting and important, and in orientation we discussed it extensively. I had never really thought of innovation as a part of society. Here it was actually something that people thought about and talked about as part of the “better and better” principle. (Location 1077)
If you’ve been caged your entire life, actual freedom is a completely new experience. (Location 1083)
In a profit-driven society, a huge range of innovative products never saw the light of day because they could not make a profit. (Location 1103)
We can continue down our current track, where everyone who loses a job to the robots ends up on welfare and living in a place like Terrafoam. Or we can chart a new course, where robots do all the work and humanity lives in freedom and equality while on perpetual vacation. (Location 1150)
