[tt] [FoRK] Re: An armed society... (freakin' Canada.)

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from "Stephen D. Williams" <sdw at lig.net> -----

From: "Stephen D. Williams" <sdw at lig.net>
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 23:07:09 -0400
To: Friends of Rohit Khare <fork at xent.com>
Subject: Re: [FoRK] Re: An armed society... (freakin' Canada.)
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (Windows/20070728)
Reply-To: Friends of Rohit Khare <fork at xent.com>

And we aren't even in the "robotic age" yet.  You all realize I think 
that whoever wins the AI/robotic technology race will not only have 
unlimited power in general but also dominate all manufacturing, 
agriculture, and at least some kinds of services.  Hopefully that will 
be the US+EU+friendlies.  It's certainly not going to be backwater 
religious Luddites.  If they think they've been sidetracked, outpaced, 
and left in the stone age now, just wait.

China had better make a play to get modern quickly because it may or may 
not make sense to put those robotic factories there when they could just 
as well be in the American Rockies or desert or North Dakota or 
whatever.  Once you subtract labor, even nearly free labor, the equation 
changes completely, again.

World of Plenty indeed.  We're only limited now by the manual effort and 
human intelligence needed to harness natural resources.  That's a 
temporary issue.

sdw

Tom Higgins wrote:
>On 9/19/07, Kevin Elliott <k-elliott at wiu.edu> wrote:
>  
>>I think "World of Plenty" is a much better description of our world
>>today than "World of Scarcity".
>>    
>
>
>
>It is an amazing thought to ponder that a few hundred years ago most of us
>would be serfs sucking up to the local masa and bowing knee to god and king
>while only a percentage of the populace got educated.
>
>Oh wait..isnt that now as well?
>
>I keed I keed, well almost.
>
>It is a Land Of Plenty when a good chunk of one nation's kids (I speak of
>the US since thats the one I know best) are given the opportunity to an
>education many would have killed for 100 years ago but instead opt to "ya
>know just hang and stuff, don't be such a downer about homework and stuff"
>
>We have passed Plenty here and are well into the Land Of Squanderous Plenty
>
>-tom
>_______________________________________________
>FoRK mailing list
>http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>  

-- 
swilliams at hpti.com http://www.hpti.com Per: sdw at lig.net http://sdw.st
Stephen D. Williams 703-371-9362C 703-995-0407Fax 20147 AIM: sdw

_______________________________________________
FoRK mailing list
http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork

----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE