Construction Firm Balfour Beatty Considers Drone Workers 129
cagraham writes "International engineering and construction firm Balfour Beatty is considering using drones in order to construct walls and monitor work sites, among other things. Beatty CIO Danny Reeves, speaking at the Fujitsu Forum, said drones could improve efficiency and safety on sites. He also talked of implementing sensors that would monitor worker's stress levels and bodily functions, and notify management when they became less effective, or mistake-prone, on the job."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:reminds me of the story "manna" (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that if you look closer at it, the utopia isn't a real utopia. If you don't follow the rules, you get re-educated ... where did I hear something like this, again? Ah, right, from communist countries. Where people really did not enjoy their re-education. And you get an operation which essentially gives the system complete control over you (the system can control your body for you, cut off your sensory perception and inject arbitrary artificial perceptions. And it is installed operatively, so you cannot just remove it. And apart from the word of a single person (who itself has that system implanted, so how can you trust that person, or even that you are really speaking to the person herself, for which you also have nothing but her word), you have no guarantee that it really will work for your best.
So why would this be set up? Well, to deal with the potential trouble makers, of course. The narrator of the story has several times tried to leave the zone she has to remain in. She's clearly someone who might cause serious trouble sooner or later. So she gets the control system implanted. Like all the other potential trouble makers. And to make sure they don't resist it, they get told this nice story about the Australian paradise. When they notice that they have been tricked, it is too late: They already have that system implanted in their head (and also, they have to remove something from the brain to install it; what function does this removed part normally perform? Maybe something related to critical thinking?).
Re:what about a basic income CEO / EX pay caps / t (Score:4, Interesting)
what about a basic income CEO / EX pay caps / taxes and a OT limes can all help in that.
Why should some be on the disability bench while others are pulling 60-80 hour weeks?
I'm going to take a lot of heat here, but the fact is, people have different talents. Unless your job is exceedingly simple, you aren't going to just plug another person into it. Not everyone is cut out to be the CEO, and not everyone is cut out to work on construction or work on the highway.
The Disability issue is an extremely interesting one. Many of the recipients are 50 plus year olds who have been displaced from local factory jobs. While they usually want to work, they have essentially no options. Training that they might have is in a field that doesn't exist any more, and where they are at, there are no where near enough jobs available. And packing up and moving somewhere else is a bad option, their best hope would be to gat a jobe at a fast food place making near minimum wage. Even if they were to do that, fast food is becoming the new province of college graduates, while once upon a time it was entry level work for the young. Now the average age of a McDonald's woeker is 30. Fast food has become a career option. But it is a career option that qualifies you for food stamps and other subsidized living.
So these thousands of virtually unemployable people need some option. So enter disability. Most people in their 50's have some physical issues. But like other 50 year olds, most are capable of working. But of what use is packing up your life, moving to another city, still not getting a job, or if you are lucky enough, you'll still be on the federal or state dole?
Alternatives are letting these people starve, or perhaps churches can open soup kitchens ala the Great depression. Then they can go live under bridges or something.
There really aren't many good alternatives.
Re:Ahh, predicting the future... (Score:4, Interesting)
Uhm, that'd be wrong. The basis of capitalism is the ownership of the means of production.
Yes, it also implies that since everyone owns their own bodies, they're free to trade the labor provided by their body - be it mental pr physical - to capital, but that is not what the ideology is founded upon.
You're entirely correct in that western societies are fast approaching a point wherein the need for low skill (ie. uneducated) labor will be zero. This means that we societies at large need to figure out how to best handle the masses of people who don't want to or cannot be educated and thus cannot employ themselves in a future where there is no need for manual labor. Personally I think that a person's ability to live and enjoy a decent standard of living should never be dependent on how much they are able to work.
However, it is important to realize that even if we agree to this, it does not mean the end of capitalism. Even if we an use machines to do work faster and better, those machines need to be built. And even though we will most likely end up at a point wherein we use machines to build those machines we will still need raw materials to do so. Even if we figure out a way to build a machine, which will produce anything we can think of, that machine will still be limited by 2 factors:
1) the resources available and
2) the energy needed to run the machine
Now, theoretically we can even eliminate the 1st one of these. But supposing we manage to build a functioning replicator, unless we figure out a way to get unlimited energy to the replicators it will still be constrained in how much stuff it can produce. As long as this is the case, meaning; as long as there exists any sort of material and/or energy-production scarcity, some form of capitalism will exist. Why? For the simple reason that if we need to utilize some finite resource to produce stuff, somebody will need to provide those resources.
Using the example of star trek, supposing we have the capability to replicate anything, I want to replicate myself an entire starship. If we have unlimited resources this will be no problem, because we can simply replicate entire starships or even fleets of starships to anyone who wants them. But if we have limited resources, producing a starship for me will mean that we can't produce a starship - or anything else using the same amount of resources - for anyone else.
That is to say as long as we don't have infinite amounts of energy and materials, we cannot simply give anyone anything they desire. So if both me and Bob want a straship, but we can only manufacture 1 of them, what basis do we use to decide which one of us gets it? There needs to be some way to determine how the finite resources are to be allocated unless you're just advocating for a model of society in which anyone can ask for anything and someone randomly chooses which items get produced (and for whom). This doesn't necessarily mean we'll always have a money based economy - simply that as long as there is any type of scarcity there will also be supply and demand, and the demand has to be quantified in some way. I can say I need a starship more than Bob does and therefore I should be the one who gets it, but need is an entirely subjective concept and is of no use unless I tell, why I need it. I can say I need the starship to explore the galaxy and seek out new materials and life, and Bob can say he needs it because he really likes piloting a starship. Both are valid reasons for wanting a ship, but if we only have the resources to fulfill either my wish or Bob's, whoever controls the starship-factory will have to decide who he'll listen.
This is where the true basis of capitalism lies: the ownership of the means of production. Whoever controls the manufacturing, controls the supply. If Bob owns the replicator, he can simply build a ship for himself no matter how good arguments I might present to him for why I
Re:And do what with the unemployed? (Score:4, Interesting)
The only reason technological advances have benefited the working class in the past is Luddites.
That is, the working class organizing into labor movements saying "give us a cut of the improvements in production, or we'll bring your wage-destroying, employment-destroying factories to a grinding halt." The wealthy elite love spinning a narrative where technological improvements come along, and the elite generously hand out the benefits to the working class (so everyone should uncritically love technological improvements). But, throughout history, the only reason technology hasn't been an unmitigated disaster leading to starving masses of the unemployed is that those potential starving masses of the unemployed *fight back* and demand things like minimum wages and maximum working hours to re-distribute the benefits of mechanization. We need Luddites (who, rather than misunderstanding technology, understand its impacts best) to keep up the good work of striking fear into the hearts of the ruling oligarchy, and making sure We The People aren't left in a post-employment, post-getting-food-on-the-table dystopia of maximized profit.
I am a Luddite, and proud of it.