ShaneKaiGlenn

ShaneKaiGlenn t1_je7uiwv wrote

In Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, he envisions a society in which there are wards of the machines, and everyone else "works" in a state-owned labor corps called the Reeks and Wrecks.

Here is a synopsis from a WaPo article in 1982:

>My own favorite dire view of the economic future comes from Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano." It's a world in which automation has advanced to the point where only a handful of managers and technicians are needed to keep consumer and defense goods streaming off the production lines in a cycleless pattern of economic growth. There's also a large and dispirited standing army and a small class of artisans and service workers--writers, painters, bartenders and the like--living on the fringes of society.
Everyone else is a member of the "Reeks and Wrecks"--the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps. They putter around the cities and countryside doing minor maintenance work in outsized battalions and with primitive tools. The state provides all the trappings of suburban life--replacements are timed to avoid perturbations in the production process--and they get a small allowance for recreation and luxuries. But the Reeks and Wrecks are strictly excess baggage and they know it. Everyone is very depressed. Even the managers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/07/21/reeks-wrecks-and-robots/c3b63ac8-a823-4c41-89b6-fd7785ff67ec/

I imagine we may end up with a situation like this, or on the more optimistic side, a form of UBI in which every citizen earns income from the economic output of the machines (think like a dividend fund), and there are additional opportunities in niche markets and entrepreneurial pursuits, but also financial incentives for participating in certain pro-social activities, etc.

Society could be structured almost like a university system, with different "clubs" to keep people engaged and active.

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ShaneKaiGlenn t1_je6w8mf wrote

>Do you think the last humans to die have already been born?

Definitely not. Everyone will still eventually die, even if they can no longer die of natural causes. Now instead of a graceful demise at the end of a long life, we'll just die in gruesome ways via accidents and murder.

And if you are buying into the transhumanist obsession of a digital eternity in which you transfer your consciousness into a machine, well, I've got bad news for you... it won't be "you", only a copy. You will still experience death the same exact way as you otherwise would.

Not to mention, your digital consciousness would still be susceptible to death via viruses, destruction of data infrastructure, etc.

Death will come for us all, mercifully. Eternal life would become mundane rather quickly.

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