Re:The threat of technological unemployment
by coldtea on Wednesday December 28, 2016 @02:39AM
(#13269056)
>If you accept that as valid, then 20 years is a preposterously long timeline, and nobody could take seriously a prediction that far out.
I accept it ("things are changing so much faster now than they used to be") as valid AND I don't find 20 years a "preposterously long timeline".
"Much faster than they used to be" is not instantaneous, it just means that in the ancient world it took millennia, in the industrial world centuries, in the electronics world decades, and in the internet world years.
But self-driving cars are more in the electronic's world than the internet world. It's not like they are some new website or web business that takes over in a couple of years or so.
They need engineering work, safety tests, government compliance, infrastructure, etc, which take decades.
>in 20 years time, Hyperloop could easily become the dominant form of transportation
No, it wouldn't.
>20 years out? Unrecognizably different.
Hardly. 20 years is a perfectly good horizon to make realistic predictions. 1996 to 2016 for example: more mobile, more internet (which tons of people rightly predicted) would be totally correct. Policy decisions work in even larger timelines than that. Only superficial crap wouldn't a 1996 be able to recognize about 2016.
I accept it ("things are changing so much faster now than they used to be") as valid AND I don't find 20 years a "preposterously long timeline".
"Much faster than they used to be" is not instantaneous, it just means that in the ancient world it took millennia, in the industrial world centuries, in the electronics world decades, and in the internet world years.
But self-driving cars are more in the electronic's world than the internet world. It's not like they are some new website or web business that takes over in a couple of years or so.
They need engineering work, safety tests, government compliance, infrastructure, etc, which take decades.
>in 20 years time, Hyperloop could easily become the dominant form of transportation
No, it wouldn't.
>20 years out? Unrecognizably different.
Hardly. 20 years is a perfectly good horizon to make realistic predictions. 1996 to 2016 for example: more mobile, more internet (which tons of people rightly predicted) would be totally correct. Policy decisions work in even larger timelines than that. Only superficial crap wouldn't a 1996 be able to recognize about 2016.