Report Card for Donald Trump

[David Horn]

(12-30-2016, 06:33 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: And no, Dave does not have a point, because he has been arguing for the inevitable replacement of ALL jobs within 30 years by machines and clever software programs.  This claim has not been proven here, and I have very little faith that it will be, judging on what I've seen thus far.

Is the time horizon your only issue?  If so, I'll move it out into the future to some undefined time. Are you happier with 50 years?  It's academic in any case.  If the end game will be the same regardless, the interstitial issues are still the same. 

• 50 years ago, I was in the Army.  The technology trajectory in that 50 years started pretty flat, even allowing for the space program and all the R&D it funded. 
  
• 35 years ago, I was working in the satcom industry, and 99% of the material being moved around was analog.  
  
• 30 years ago, I was working in the trunked radio/cellular world, and the material was still analog. 
  
• Then the digital revolution hit in earnest.  It hit because the mathematicians worked through the algorithms needed to support reliable digital data transfer in a commercially viable manner. 
  
• Then encryption got a lot better. 
  
• So did voice recognition, and computer vision. 
  

All this in the last 25 years or so.

My first computer had 64kB of working memory and used floppy discs that held 90kB.  Now, memory is almost free and storage is virtually unlimited.  The tools had to come first.  They're here.  Now, it's just getting them to do everything we wish.  They are already capable if properly programmed.  So yes, the horizon may stretch out to some future time because we choose to do that ... or not.