Personal Service Units

How will people relate to people once there is a personal service robot in every home?

   

"Thank you, Thing", from the old Addams Family show will become a social reflex with no meaning.

   

As a tiny robot like the Zumba (R) moves silently throughout the house, no one wll have any issues.  (Except maybe for your cat, but that is another article.)  A PSU (Personal Service Unit) will silently bring you a beer--"Thank you, Thing"

   

Or the Service Unit at the local eatery will bring you a tray

with your order of Whopper and fries--"Thank you, Thing."

with your order of Kentucky Fried Chicken-- "Thank you, Thing."

with your Taco Bell takeout--"Thank you, Thing."

When people do the same job, the relationship won't be the same.

A robot may replicate a human, but a human won't replicate a robot.  This will set the stage for an outbreak of class warfare.  This, the same way the industrial revolution set the stage for the eventual outbreak of the labour movement.  Case in point: The West Virginia Mine wars or the Harlan County Coal wars in Harlan County, Kentucky.  "I was born a coal-miner's daughter" by Loretta Lynn does more to conceal than to reveal the hardship that young Loretta endured.

As more people who are more or less affluent enough to afford a PSU, more and more people will become more and more desensitised to people in any aspect of the service industry.  When this happens, there will become a justifiable resentment directed toward the robots and toward the people who own them.  This push-back will instigate an unjustifiable resentment against the service worker class.  These contentions will spread to those in the tech-class: those who work behind the robots.  Those who build the robots, maintain the robots,  repair the robots, and those who "load the robots".  The people who make it possible for the robots to deliver goods.

In an automated warehouse, people receive products, and deliver them to the stocking stations. Here is where people sort products into the cubby-holes of the unit that delivers the goods to the picking stations.

Picking stations are where people remove the products and place them in the shipping boxes.

Robots deliver the boxes to the checking and sealing units where people check and seal the boxes,

Robots bring the boxes to the shipping dock.

This is a discrete process out of the public eye.  The Burger King, or Taco Bell, Or Kentucky Fried Chicken....the presence of the robot is revealed to the public.

People with their own PSU, will see, or not see, the people involved as "invisibles".

At first, poor people will be excluded from the PSU class.  The same way Civil Rights Advocates fought for the phone booth because poor people had no other option. However, now that the cell-phone is ubiquitous, the fight ended.  The same will happen with the PSU.

Simple, affordable PSUs will be developed to perform simple tasks.  This will be to create a buy-in among the less affluent. This will become the New Normal.  It won't be new for long. And neither will it be normal.  Once this happens, the working class will never be able to enter the job market with any sense of dignity.

Soon, our homes will be structured like the automated warehouse.  The work will be done by contract workers who, say, stock pantry shelves to accommodate the service robot.  The human will have no direct contact with the employer.  In substance, the human will be working for the robot.

As we watch society move to personal devices--eg, the smart-phone--everything will become a personal service unit.  The demand will become insatiable.

Solar panels on roof-tops will provide electricity.  Natural Gas will power personal electric generators.

Food orders will be placed over the phone, prepared by ingredients delivered by robots who will cook them, then be turned over to a robot that will deliver it.

Personal Service Unit

Personal Energy Unit

Personal Utility Vehicle

Personal Entertainment Device

Plastics and solar power will give rise to the Personal Utility Vehicle.  Solar powered plastic cars that drive themselves (or not).

Somewhere between Les Bicycles de Beijing and Mercedes Limousines, Millions of Chinese people will be driving pollution free personal utility vehicles.  No Yugo this, but rather mass produced, solar powered, 4-seat, pollution free vehicles many of which may well drive themselves, and operate at the most minimal cost.  Cheap to make, cheap to operate.

Soon, the Personal Service Unit will be just another gadget in the store that moves individuals to an individual, personal world that will have a very serious encroachment on those business that either cannot adapt, or become irrelevant.

Warmest regards,

Slim.

slimviews@gmail.com 

slimfairview@yahoo.com

Copyright © 2016 Bob Asken

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