“The future is about gigs and assets and art and an ever-shifting series of partnerships and projects.” – Seth Godin

The world as we know it was created by the Industrial Age and it is now crumbling before our very eyes. We grew up in this world listening to common sense: learn well to get into fine universities, to land a well paid, SECURE job with pension, and to live comfortably until you die.

This path might have worked up until a couple of decades ago, but then came the 21st century which erased any remains of job security and the promise of nurturing Companies or the State.

We're almost there now. This country will literally stop unless we get a handle on energy which we produce. $5.00 for gas by May? Ready for $10.00 loaf of bread? No? Stop watching the reality shows and pay attention to what's happening in the world. Ever see the imaciated babies with flies buzzing around their lips? This will we the fate of your children unless you wake up and smell rot that's coming our way. Think it can't happen? Your dillusional.

The day that humans are no  longer needed is too far away for me to even worry about.  Sorry for my offspring but, I think they'll still be needed............

The world that we knew is slowly disappearing. Technology has already cost millions of jobs.  and will continue to keep the unemployed, unemployed. Millions of people will die from lack of food,  Man and his technology will eventually selfdestruct. End of story.

It doesn't bear thinking about what future generations are going to have to face up to. Things just seem to get worse and worse and I for one have never had and  never will have a desire to be reincarnated. No thank you, enough is enough.

Well, maybe to survie as a human I will not recycle anymore.

It's been happening since the first assembly line, since the invention of the wheel. You're correct that the pace in which it's happening is getting faster with the rapid development of technology.

The one thing humans are is adaptable, just as we are adapting now I'm sure it will continue in new and evolving ways. I suppose we will take a more passive role in physical labor and a stronger one in management.

“When a new technology appears those who fear the sweeping changes brought about by this technology see a sky that is about to fall. These “techno-pessimists” predict the death of the old order (which, ironically, is often a previous generation’s hotly-debated technology that others wanted slowed or stopped). Embracing this new technology, they fear, will result in the overthrow of traditions, beliefs, values, institutions, business models, and much else they hold sacred.

The Pollyanna types by contrast, look out at the unfolding landscape and see mostly rainbows in the air. Theirs is a rose-colored world in which the technological revolution du jour is seen as improving the general lot of mankind and bringing about a better order. If something has to give, then the old ways be damned! For such “techno-optimists,” progress means some norms and institutions must adapt-perhaps even disappear-for society to continue its march forward.”

The truth is somewhere in between the two.

Hm...back in the 50's and 60's they envisioned everyone flying around in their own personal aircraft, with Dick Tracy watches to talk to each other, and houses brimming with electronic gadgets enough to practically impregnate the wife and deliver the baby too! I see cell phones and computers, but certainly not the "don't need to lift a finger utopia" they were espousing the virtues of back then. Today is no different.

Yes, maybe someday they'll have melded robotics and computers into a dream force of perfect production, but they still have some hurdles to overcome. I don't say this out of ignorance of what already exists today, but more with one foot still firmly grounded in reality. The thing of it is, we will need to become more focused in what that changing world will demand and need, with specialized technical skills.

Anyone would have to be outright foolish, to think we could compete with the third world countires we've dumped our outdated technologies upon for sweat shops to flood our shelves with throw away merchandise, without utilizing computers and robotics. One only needs to look at our food processing plants, and fully realize just how much they pump out, twenty four hours a day and seven days a week.

So yes, progress is coming. But it is more something we need to assimilate and acclimate ourselves to. Little different from the way people have had to step up from horses to automobiles, or ledger books to computers, and from trains to planes. 

we're already there, check out the soup kitchens and unemployment lines.

The problem is too many people. Our present rate of increase is unsustainable, and people are beginning to realise that Malthus was right after all. We are well overdue for a catastrophic reduction in numbers, and only the Chinese, with their one-child policy, have grasped the nettle. They're a goodish fraction of the human race, and they're also set to become the dominant power by the middle of the century. Would they be able to impose their policy on everyone else? I rather doubt it. I doubt even more that they would try. Instead, they will let the rest of the world self-destruct, then take over the ruins and rebuild.

Of course, I've left out Russia and Japan. The Russians seem to have found a messy but effective way of limiting their numbers, and in Japan numbers are at last starting to fall. So you might find a troika running the rest of the world. The Japanese provide the wealth, the Russians provide the land and natural resources, the Chinese provide the personel. With a bit of luck, the whole world might wind up looking like Singapore. Not sure how it would look without luck!

Well we are getting there but the dumb as.... that are making it happen do not realize that they too will be obsolete in the end.