Sunday 5 October 2008

Taxing Robots

I have joined a self-sufficient ‘sharing’ community. At the outset, community functions were divided equally and tasks allocated to everybody. Community ‘credits’ are earned based on the completion of tasks and debited when the services of another are consumed.

My role, like that of a few others, is to wash and dry dishes. I love it. Normally, I could turn around about 240 dishes per day, which is a few more than what my counterparts can do. However, on Tuesday I finally commissioned my new invention that washes and dries 5000 dishes in 12 hours.

So now I do all of the dishes. I have far more credits and free time so I have launched a few initiatives. I have opened a bank for people who want to borrow credits to also work on inventions. I have started a charity for ex-dish-washers and others who no longer have enough work in their specialised fields. I am also opening a psychological advice practice to help the spiralling number of problems arising in the community.

These days, community life sucks. Relationships are abrasive and tensions are high. If I could turn back time to that Tuesday and make different decisions I would. Should I have shared the benefits of my automation in another way?

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1 comment:

sputnik said...

two wonderful characteristics of automation are:

1. increased processing speed and
2. the creation of possible concurrent activity

these are great for things like 'performance' and 'efficiency' but i am yet to be convinced that either of these has value in the kingdom of God.