Boris Johnson - Working from home is part of the future Human jobs market, it helps cut climate missions too.

 

Some of us love working from home!

To a lot of people, the recent working from home (WFH) scenario as been something we have been saying we can do for years and wanted to - but, deaf ears would not listen, now we have proved it can be done as it has been forced on the workplace over the last year. 

Boris Johnson asking Civil Servants to go back to their desks as a gesture of reassurance isn't perhaps what they wanted to hear. Some of us have smelt the fresh air and we want it. 

Boris Johnson wants people to return to offices - one reason is to save the local businesses, but many of these are teetering on unviability and some have leases due to end, many of which will not be taken up again by the current tenants. 

Every day since 2016, 15 High Street shops a day closed their doors for good. Pushing people back into offices is not going to work, will not be popular and many will seek to move to working from home jobs if it is denied to them at present when barriers are lifted.

Boris may have a valid point in his gesture, but recent surveys suggest many people now want to work from home permanently. Why not just reduce the rates burden on small businesses to compensate for the loss of trade on the High Street? 

Greedy councils charging high parking charges, high rail fares, high fuel costs - why travel if you can avoid it? Surely this reduced travel is better for the environment a point that we are so frequently lectured about.

The lockdown has seen much of the day to day business go on-line and thrive. The genie is out of the bottle, people are going that way in preference to going out to shop. Why struggle into a town, pay a fortune to park, get a fine for overstaying and maybe not get what you want? Why not do it on-line, find what you want and use the time you have not wasted to enjoy yourself? Unless I know I can get what I want in my local town, I buy on-line.

This survey below shows most people want to continue the WFH scenario. Another one I saw showed over 33% wanted full time WFH, 19% to go back to the office 100% of the time and the rest adopt a hybrid model of home and work locations.

WFH works for me because I save more than £2000 a year not travelling to an office to do work I can do from home. I don't have to put up with people I would rather not have to associate with. I don't have to endure office politics, the stress and I get more done. So its a win win situation for me and the business.

I have reduced the stress involved in going to work greatly. All the time I was able to work 5 days a week from home in lockdown, I felt much better being at home, I can start earlier and finish earlier, I don't waste 70 minutes a day travelling to a place I can do without going to and frankly don't want to, just to do the majority of what I can at home. 

My quality of life is much better too. It is obvious where my future is - not in an office. I can look out on countryside and have cats around me as I work, real coffee, proper tea, why should I go into an office in a town to be with people who I have to tolerate, when I can do the same work at home with less stress and have no exposure to danger on the roads in my daily commute which I don't have to do?

It just works better all round for me. WFH is great. I want it. It is the future for me.

WFH has been coming - I have been saying for years it should be an option, in 2000 I did partly work from home saving me then 2 hours and 84 miles travelling per day. 

We have now replaced the commuter rush hour, we are using less resources to get to do a job - now a zoom call or just working on-line does it for many. Not every job can be done like this but many banks and other businesses are going this way. It saves them buildings only half full.

Why rush to a location where everyone else is rushing to get to a place of work all at the same time frame? This is outdated lunacy in an age when we can go into Space and walk on other Planets.

A salesman from a tool company I know said he is hardly travelling much now due to people changing how they want to do business - people want to do business by phone or on-line it seems. Air travel has been curtailed, in my view a lot of it was not necessary. 

Automation is now swallowing more human jobs than ever before

We are now reaching a point where I have been saying for some time that in the next 20 years, many jobs will have been taken over by robots. Since 2009, I have watched the job market decline, both in terms of quality and quantity of jobs. 

The demographic time bomb is also kicking in as we have fewer younger people coming into the workplace - the HGV drivers crisis has been coming for years. 5 generations since 1960 have been able to choose to have a family or not - now the deficit of fewer younger employees available to work is coming to be a reality. Robots will help bridge that gap by automating a lot of the boring things we don't have to.

We will need a Basic Income Guarantee System to pay people whose jobs and careers will have been lost to automation. Even niche jobs like Lawyers, Solicitors, Accountants will not be immune from automation. At the other end of the scale, low skilled work like fruit picking can be done more efficiently and cheaper by automation. Humans in the work place are becoming an endangered species. Boris Johnson - this is something you should be aware of. This isn't going away.

A lot of human work is basically quite futile, it can be done by machines better, faster and with less error. Why don't we free up our human society to live proper lives? 

We should use this work transition to enrich people's lives. Basic Income means that we can dump the useless, chaotic and draconian Universal Credit system too. We can streamline all benefits with a Basic Income program and cut out job centres, benefits offices and save millions here in this sector and the billions paid out in benefits system errors.

Our human future starts now, with the shift for some to home working, then as the robots take over more human jobs, we can enjoy a better life with a safety net of Basic Income. The money will go round so what is paid out will come back and it will benefit the High Street - with premises being taken for new ventures as the financial safety net is there. 

It just needs some vision and to look forward rather than at just the work from home deficit that is current thinking. 

Until we can unite all humans on this planet to adopt a plan where we all work together and live peacefully then we will achieve little from the possible open to us.

The Petrol & Diesel vehicle production ending fiasco - is it a case of gesture politics and the Carbon neutral farce?

 

Going electric is perhaps more damaging and less green than we are being told.

Yes folks, the rollback of Petrol and Diesel vehicle production ending from 2050 to 2030 and the switch to battery vehicles is fraught with problems - it is unlikely achievable but panders to the Green lobby and I don't see any real benefits in exploiting the planet and encouraging slave labour to obtain the batteries.

Governments like consumption, they can tax it - and as they are now realising to their cost, zero emission electric cars will rob them of £40 billion a year in revenue.... They didn't think that one through before dumping this agenda on us did they?

Don't be sucked in by the bullshit marketing of trendy eco politics. We just need to use what we already have smarter, rather than damage the planet with futile battery use.  As a contributor of 1.2% of CO2, it isn't going to make much difference if Britain goes Carbon Neutral, it will only trash our economy if we go down this ridiculous road -   Read on.. 

Covid19 has meant more people working from home, with the benefits of less commuting, more time saved on travelling and air travel slashed. This has had a knock on effect in making the air cleaner. Its proved we don't need to travel as much and don't need all the commercial office space we have. 

It has cost High Street jobs, but the High Street was due to change, Covid just made the change happen sooner.

But.... the lesson here is that if we consumed less all round and travelled smarter, then we could reduce emissions and demand on the finite planet's resources too without having to waste effort on the futile battery powered Green Agenda. 

We waste massive resources at times like Halloween and Christmas buying tat we don't need. Much of it made of plastic. If we cut back to essentials buying, we could save the planet too. Why spend shedloads of money on credit card, pay it off over the next 11 months only to buy a ton of shit we don't need the following year every Christmas? It's just madness.

Forget the guff about 'electricity being largely provided by wind turbines'. The fact is that the electricity generating industry uses Diesel generators to take up the slack caused by the removal of Coal powered generation from the source. 

Germany still has coal power stations, it is only because we signed up to an EU agreement that we in the UK can't have them.

Powdered Coal is quite efficient and low in CO2 output, when burned as cleanly as possible it is highly clean and efficient - most power from coal is derived from turning steam turbines to generate electricity involving heating water to make steam to drive turbines in simple terms. Nuclear and Coal both do this. Heating giant kettles in effect to create steam energy for powering turbines is about the nub of it.

Cutting down American forests to make into wood pellets and then transporting them across the Atlantic ocean by ship and burning them 'green' is another big con. We would be better off burning Coal which would produce less CO2 and nasty chemicals than green wood. And why cut down trees? Madness. What idiot thinks this is Green?

We were told the expansion to Heathrow airport was 'good for business.' But the CO2 output from that would be colossally damaging, yet they introduce an ultra low emission area around Heathrow? You couldn't make it up... 

Covid 19 has shown that we can do without most air travel - that is in the main, the holiday trade. Why fly less than half than empty airlines to the same place? 

Zoom meetings mean meetings can be done cheaper and greener, it does mean the hotel trade suffers, but is that a price worth paying?  I was told years ago that airlines were obliged to fly routes even empty, or lose the route. Madness!

An airline taking off produces the same amount of CO2 on take-off that a family car produces in 10 years of average motoring.

In the time of the Dinosaurs, the environment had many more times the CO2 than today. It was a lot warmer too which is why the vegetation was so lush and bigger then. Also, there were no polar ice caps, they came with the ice age and are a 'false construct' as such. They froze, they melt, it goes around.

Battery technology is limited - Electric cars are a dismal waste of energy and resources let alone the human cost of digging the minerals out to make into batteries often done by child salve labour. 

According to Dr Steven Greer, we have had since 1954 the means to have free energy (that could power our homes, industry and airlines). (We have been denied it in fact, because we are an Oil based economy and oil is big business.) The same power source Doctor Greer mentions is we are told 'could take ET home' -  as has been quoted elsewhere. So why can't we use that energy which is free? The reason is it can't be taxed.

How long will a Tractor in a field run on a battery to plough a field? Not much. If we used vehicles with very efficient petrol or diesel engines we reduce the emissions emitted in use. 

In the 1980's and before, vehicles were far dirtier in their emissions. The population was less in all countries and we now have more people and less harmful emissions in respect of the advancement in technology. Vehicles are cleaner now than ever.

Jobs are being lost to automation at a big rate, as many are finding out thanks also to Covid 19. Old industries like hospitality are shrinking. Many outlets were probably feeding a demand that was false and as a result the trade is gone, in brutal terms. Perhaps a form of employment natural wastage is taking place.

I predicted 5 years ago the High Street's days were numbered as it existed in the format then which is about the same as now. We now find the perfect storm of the job losses from automation compounded by the losses from Covid - this means that the trade growth is on-line, not on the High Street. 

Again, automation is taking jobs due to on-line ordering, means you don't need high-cost staff to handle sales and with Amazon automation, sometimes to pick and pack the goods. I know one company that has a fully automated warehouse where no humans work. The system handles all aspects from soup to nuts from order receipt to dispatch.

If you want a job you need transferable skills - things a robot can't do, or to have a range of skills to offer. Even the 'safe' jobs of accounting and law are in the sights of the robots and jobs are going to the robots that were once thought safe. 

People in those previously mentioned trades who are 'one trick ponies' need to wake up and adapt. Those useless degrees are also as worthless now as they ever were now the non-jobs are at last vanishing.

So, a carbon neutral situation by 2050? Posturing bullshit? Gesture politics to appease the Green element? With Britain's exit from the EU we need to build industry and manufacturing for the UK. We need to reappraise education to match the future, get people who can work with their hands and train them for the future so we can fulfill the jobs like house building we are falling short in filling.

The 'sausage machine' one size fits all education model based on a 1950's world is dead. It has been for years. The world of work is changing and we need to rethink who we are as a species and where we are going. 

Just exporting the emissions problem of manufacturing to the Far East where they have less consideration for waste products is not the answer. We need to consume less here, we need to change our business model - why do we need to work like we do, is this a hang over from the last industrial revolution? We need to rethink society and our needs across the board.

Using more efficient vehicles and less is the key - working from home suits many and I suggest that over 70% of those working from home want to continue indefinitely. 

This saves emissions and reduces demand on overcrowded commuter systems. We haven't the space to build more commuter transport - so working local or at home is the obvious answer to overcrowding and the rush hour or staggering working times would help.

The fatuous argument against home working that 1st jobbers 'won't know what an office environment is like' is crap, it doesn't matter, its an outmoded model as we have seen recently.  Cities are finding the big companies can scale down their office footprint with home working.

The way we work has been step-changed quicker than we anticipated and it needs to do so, so we can migrate to a situation where many will not work because automation will have taken their jobs and a Basic Income payment system will have to be brought in.

Retirement at 60 must come with a 55-60 years range Basic Income dividend bond paid to those retiring in that 55-60 years age range. They should then not lose out in the future. This will free up jobs too for other people.

The Furlough scheme is little more than a Basic Income Payment situation that any right thinking government is going have to embrace and sooner than planned. 

The gesture politics of the green lobby are a smokescreen. A diversion. We need to have the bigger conversations about the human future and now. 

CO2 is getting in the way. Eco politics is trendy. But the people who are in the mainstream media don't talk for the people in the public domain. We can't afford £30k electric cars like the media types with their £100k salaries in the media.

One thing is for sure, I do not see countries like Russia stopping production or use of fuelled vehicles, so will we still import them into the UK, even if we don't make them ourselves?

I am of the opinion that reasonable consumption is the way forward, not dramatic sweeping chapter changes done for impact and not thought through. As the loss of excise duty on fuel hasn't been realised until now? It just shows its all done for show, it seems to have little substance. No one thought it through did they?

Covid 19 and the move to a Basic Income payment system. Is Universal Credit dead?

 

The way we work is changing - 

in the future, less jobs are going to be available....

So, where are we going? A Basic Income system is the answer

Where are we going? Good question. 

Covid 19 is going to cause unemployment, it is also a means for us to re-evaluate what we do for work and how to pay people that won't have a job.

The old unemployment benefit system is out of date, so is education. They are two ends of the same scale, it is criminal to keep pumping out sausage machine style education, for students who may not be qualified for anything in the future.

Sure, they will have a piece of paper, but in a few years, that paper may be worthless in their search for employment.

Automation and robotics are taking jobs, many menial and boring ones. That is as we were told in the 1950's going to free us up for any manner of leisure activities. It is moving us into a new phase of human activity. We must manage and plan it properly.

We as humans waste a lot of time working for other people to profit from our endeavours. Human jobs are being lost at an alarming rate year on year, we see industries automated and fewer humans in the workplace. We see people displaced by age, it is illegal but it happens.

So a new approach to work and social security is required. 

Universal Credit has been less than successful to be polite. To throw another 8 Billion at it is a moment when we need to say 'stop and think.' UC is not the answer. It is not the future we deserve.

We need to move to a Basic Income system, where everyone from age 16 until their demise gets paid by the government. 

Say for sake of argument we pay anyone in this bracket £14k a year. Most of us can get by on that. It is an improvement over the measly £3,500 a year from Universal Credit if you are unemployed. That is if you don't get hit by sanctions which cut your benefit without warning. 

Give people money and they often will spend it, this money goes back to the government as taxes, money spent in businesses that creates wealth, people with a guaranteed income and a financial safety net are able to start new ventures that will enrich their lives and others. It avoids the net loss of Universal Credit where some people may be on it for decades.

Basic Income is what we should be doing, encouraging entrepreneurship and self-starting, not hobbling people into finding work that isn't likely there and not allowing them to train to get a better job which is the current system.

This is complete madness but is how the system currently works. But this is the sort of Kafkaesque 'reality' of the current system which is a shambolic failure and no one has the ability in Government to do anything about it, it seems? Why? It is an obvious failing, if people can get new skills, they might get or create a new career, what's not to like?

Universal Credit if you are unemployed pays out a 'minute' existence allowance of less than £100 a week, it does not help you get back to work, afford to run a car to get to a job, if you can get one in many situations. It helps exacerbate the 'Catch-22' scenario of being unemployed. This helps no one.

As the job market shrinks, a new strata of society opens up for those without a job - this is the means to create work which you can do, maybe as a carer, a helper of people, start a new business venture for example, if a co-ordinated and organised strata is established, people will be able to enrich their lives and of others. It will also benefit the government in financial terms through GDP growth, skills, national wealth and in collected taxes. What isn't to like?

With Basis Income, people can start businesses with a financial safety net, the nation will prosper from this, this is the way forward, it just needs someone to grasp the nettle and boldy do something about it and dump the failing Universal Credit system.

With Covid 19, just asking  people to go back to offices isn't going to do much to re-populate cities.

The government don't get it or are trying to tell us we are better off in offices. No thanks, many of us have seen the light. We don't like the office, many of us prefer home working, a basic income system would allow many of us to do that when the robots have moved in even more than at present and taken more human jobs.

We hate wasting our time travelling to work and paying massively for it, we hate the stupid pratts and the stress of the office, we like working at home, free of this and we have more time to do our own things. Living in a rural location, it has massively reduced my stress levels.

Our human lives could be so much richer, where jobs are lost we can grow our own jobs under this new system. We live in a consumer society that is 'oversubscribed' with things we don't actually need.

We must move forward and embrace the future, not piss about trying to put a sticking plaster on something that is becoming no longer viable, long after this situation is declared over.

Covid 19 and the future of human work and the work from home situation

What is the future of human employment?

Do you enjoy home working, is this the new future for many?

And where do we go from here?

Covid 19 has in my view changed human employment markedly and may be ushering in a step-change in society that has been expected for sometime. In 2009 I worked for a company that was changing hands, prudently I checked the jobs market, I was ok in the end and was able to continue thus. 

Even then, I was surprised at how the job market had changed in the last 6 years since I had last been on the job market.

In 2016 a job ended and I spent sometime looking for work. What struck me was that the quality and quantity of work situations on offer had changed for the worse, markedly since 2009. 

The DWP was trying to get me to take zero hours crappy retail jobs, the problem was then that 20 retail shops a day were closing and there were far better qualified, newly unemployed retail workers on the jobs market with those skills. With Covid, many businesses that shut are not to reopen, which will have a big hit on those looking for work. We have too many 'niche' consumer actors that provide things we don't actually need, Covid is acting as the Grim Reaper in destroying many of these 'industries.' Fashion, Coffee shops etc. take your pick.

                                          Why the demise of the human worker?

Robotics and automation had taken many jobs since the 1950s, the new human normal is to get transferable skills you can take from job to job that is still true. Preferably skills that a computer can't currently do but you can, things with your hands for example. 

In 2016 I asked my MP about Basic Income - the reply was then 'that the government wasn't even considering it'. Step to 2019 and a civil servant 'was looking at it'. Suddenly, someone realised the potential impact of the non-human future of employment and how it would change.

The loss of jobs to machines tends to then create new jobs for humans, but this is now a scenario that is changing in this current industrial revolution. Humans are being bypassed this time, Robots are the future. We are at present just adjuncts of them or maintain them. How long before they achieve that situation where they do not need us?

                                                                  The Covid 19 factor

Working from home or being paid to just be at home by the state is the recent norm. I see this as being part of the human work future. Many now prefer home working and a form of 'Basic Income Payment' in the form of the furlough scheme was the only answer to unemployment because the risible benefit payment from Universal Credit would possibly have led to anarchy and public disorder ,when people had no money and no jobs.

For those thinking that the Universal Credit payment would be 'enough to tide them over' would have been in for a nasty shock had they had to endure it at the old level of payout. It is a very measly payment even with the bumped-up Covid 19 era increase. 

The quiet high street is impacting the real high street trade because the walk-in trade is gone and on-line retail is becoming king. I expected this to happen a while back. In 2016, 15 high street retail shops closed a day and this has largely not reduced. 

Back in 2016 I suggested that with employment falling, the state would have to pay a set Basic Income payment amount of say £14k a year to anyone over 16 and not dead, over a strata of say six status conditions - 16, Student, Employed, Unemployed, Pensioner and Disabled. You would transfer from one to another as required. Easy, no nasty DWP rules or sanctions. 

This payment would be regardless of being employed or not. The beauty of this is that people would still spend money and the high street would survive because people would be shopping if not working, that is spending in pubs, restaurants, other interests and hobbies areas etc.

So the state would quickly get their money back in a 'money-go-round' situation - in the main, this would have had many aded benefits, the care sector costs for example could have been curtailed because people could look after children and the infirm instead of work if they had a payment instead of jobs if those were lost. It would increase the economy and tax revenues to the government.

People would be less reliant on being wages slaves and be able to start their own ventures, with the benefit of a financial safety net. This was what I saw as stage 2 of human work development. Until this current situation of Covid, which has in some ways accelerated the change to the work environment this seemed a way off.

                                                             The Covid 19 work future

The new work normal is likely to be many working from home through choice - this has many benefits : it alleviates overcrowded commuting in high density areas, people may prefer home work, people may prefer not having to encounter stress or idiots at work, we have more time to do things because of less demands from needy people and we have time saved not commuting - maybe 2 plus hours a day to do things with for themselves, the public transport system is not overloaded. And we are calmer.

Plus the big one, you save money not travelling. And that's another bonus, the environment is better for us too -  not jetting off to Malaga and other places over Covid, there are more Bees, better air quality and quieter roads. Why fly quarter full airliners to the same place at the same time? Maybe 1 or 2 full ones a day rather than say 10 or 20 underused ones?

Brutally, why is it necessary for 100,000 people to go to a football match for 90 minutes of activity and then travel home? How much environmental damage does that do? I am not a Greeno tree hugger but I do believe in minimising our impact on this planet and this situation should make us rethink our future.

                                                                 What is the future?

Back in 2016 it was the same level as it is now. We move away from the current work or now historic work situation, to one where we use machines to 'do' for us. We build a society where humans get value from life and expand their own abilities, not slog away at meaningless work just to exist. And wonder at 65 'what was that al about?'

We need to build the sort of utopia that scientists were enthusing over 50 years ago, where machines work for us, we then have time for leisure and personal advancement  - otherwise what are we here for, what is our purpose? 

Just biological computers that consume the planet's resources, being enticed to buy things we don't need, run up needless credit card debt and ultimately die, presumably wondering if there is an afterlife and 'what the hell was that all about'?

Have we considered the lemming-like lunacy of racing into workplaces everyday, putting up with idiots we detest just to get money to pay for expensive houses and perhaps aspire to lifestyles beyond our means whilst racking up serious debt on credit cards? 

The future could be very good, we need to plan it and learn from the mistakes of the present.

Youfilm - has the Internet killed film and music as a career choice?

'Flying Squad'  a Tin Hat films production -

a retro film similar to the Sweeney series of the 70's -

in my opinion, this 'youfilms' approach is the future.

Then there was YouTube

YouTube is a great resource for old videos of things gone by, but at what cost is the Internet killing off future talent?

I can remember in the 1980's when I was in a pub band with some friends I was at school with, that all we needed was to go to a pub where an A&R man from a record company was likely to go and see if we could get lucky and get signed. 

Much the same had been the case since the late 1950's when luminaries like Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard and Marty Wilde had been talent spotted.

I remember going to music shops and seeing someone trotting out a note perfect rendition of something on a guitar and likely that was all they were good for, the music shop player I called them.

Fast forward about 30 years and we got television shows like the X factor and the like. It hasn't surprised me to see that some of the performers have been outed as semi professionals or even professionals who are looking to make it bigger. Not the amateur performer who does it and thinks they might have a chance.

Going on youtube you can see countless people copying note for note music performances, but then you don't get the same amount of original material.

The music industry took a real hit when applications such as ITunes and Spotify started up, bands could circumvent the old A&R circuit and get 'discovered' on the Internet and then sign a contract when they had an established audience and greater pull. And get a better deal in the round.

The advent of the digital music download has hit the big companies who sold CDs, DVDs and the media packaging cases too. But, the trend for 'Big Noting' your CD and DVD collection by having it on show in your front room, has meant an upsurge in physical media unit sales.

The future of film

So how will films fare in the future? You can find any number of films on youtube and under a 'fair use' policy, it seems getting around copyright issues?

Films today are big business and big money. The cost has always been there, but is there not now a trend for the 'art house' film making its presence felt?

About twenty years ago, I was involved with a group of 1940's scene enthusiasts and we made a short video on a preserved steam railway, they later wanted to do a film set in the winter of 1944, but there were changes in the group membership, so it never got much further.

Recently I came across a company called Tin Hat films, who were making self financed small films. I saw their 'Flying Squad' film, a sort of version of the Sweeney for want of a better description.

It was impressive, they had the 'right' cars, the right sets and proved that a small independent unit of enthusiasts could turn out a quality, professional film for little finance. The problem is how to get the investment back. Would 'the industry' support these people or see them as some sort of 'black leg labour' taking away jobs from the 'established' arena?

With an episode of something like 'Morse' or 'Lewis' likely to cost a million pounds an episode to make, quality productions clearly cost, but only the large television networks have the pockets deep enough for them. True, these get sold around the world, but is there not also a place for the smaller players?

This 'youfilm' type of product is not new, but in my view, it is the way forward - that is a gathering of people with the resources and talent to come together and create good films. Essentially a script, players, film, locations, props is the recipe to start with. 

Having written books for stage and film adaption, planning is also a big and important part of the project. 

With many actors out there already, is there the room for these independent productions? Indeed, Euston films that filmed the Sweeney was such a company and that was over 40 years back. 

My parents both worked for the BBC in the heyday of the organisation and I have been out on location to see the creative process taking place. The difference is the money. 

The small, 'youfilm' units need some money, but by a collective process and gathering, they can and do achieve results as good as some mainstream broadcast providers.

The question remains - in the 'youfilm' future, how do these smaller players fit in and can they make sufficient living from it?

I think they can. 

In the next 12 years one in three jobs is likely to be lost to automation, this is going to leave some people without livelihoods. This is where a Basic Income Guarantee payment will have to come in and will start a new 'cottage industry' situation - films will be a part of that.

The BBC as a publicly funded broadcaster is an anachronism now, in a world where there are countless commercial channels.

The BBC model will have to be rethought, it is a poll tax on viewing and should commercialise as much as possible to compete.

I thought twenty years ago that demand viewing would be the future, this has now come to pass.

Human futures - the next new science we must get on board with - it is our future!

The fantasy may soon have some seed of reality!

Brave new world? or approaching nightmare?

Are we humans sleepwalking towards obsolescence? A conversation our species needs to be having is about OUR future. Why?

Robots and automation. They are silently taking over our lives, but is this a bad thing?

In one way not, we will as a species be freed from menial things including work. For many of us, we do menial and pointless jobs just to receive money for it, to fuel a consumer society.

Futurists and many computer scientists believe that work as we know it will be just a memory, proxy living, the big data / open data resource and machine learning are the game changers for our species.

The benevolent looking image of the 1950's science fiction robot

Should we worry?

We should. Because all this is going on unchecked. We should have taken the warning from the entity that is the Internet, a sprawling and little policed catch-all situation that no one really actually 'manages' - it just exists.

Machine learning, sometimes erroneously referred to as 'AI' or artificial intelligence is becoming very advanced in how it can be shaped to mimic human behaviour.

In some situations, it passes the 'Turing Test' - that is the interaction between a human and a computer interface does not make the human suddenly think 'I am communicating with a machine'

Big Data - we all generate it by our computer actions -

it is valuable for some to own, trade and exploit it.

Seamless acceptance

As such, we give this  type of interaction not a second glance. Certainly for those born after the millennium, those that have grown up with the Smart Phone and Computer Tablet, this is not the 'new normal,' it is 'the normal.'

'Proxy living' is starting to seamlessly come in, it is software that essentially does things for you, in the future it will run our lives.

Think of the junk adverts that you get on your computer popping up when you have looked at something on the internet.

In the future, your 'virtual proxy' will be the 'virtual' Gatekeeper - a software algorithmic entity, either existing as a physical robot, humanoid or otherwise or a computer program app, that will handle all the marketing guff that you get into your inbox.

It will divert and destroy the unwanted communications and respond and analyse the 'wanted' or preferred subjects it receives. Freeing you up to get on with your life.

Humans are not required - how most work will be - and soon

Working and the future

In the 1950's the scientists predicted two future outcomes - driverless cars and a society where humans would not have to work.

We are near to this situation already. Driverless cars are nearing readiness to become commonplace on our roads. Professional drivers such as Cab drivers, bus and lorry drivers, train drivers, Postmen and Women - they are all at risk from the robot.

Much of the work we humans do is menial and can be done far more efficiently by robots. The Tax system, Benefits system to name but two could be far better handled by machines able to apply system logic to a multitude of rules and conditions 24 hours a day all year round.

The bottom line is they would be better at it and mistakes would be minimal. It would also save labour costs, salaries, office space, office furniture, office supplies and would help with the 'reality' of the 'paperless office' scenario. 

Nightmare or Utopia -  what is our future human - machine outcome?

A question of management

It is imperative that a 'Robot Manifesto' be established, we cannot allow the 'cyber-sprawl' situation that the Internet has become to dictate our future society. We are in great danger of becoming irrelevant as the machines learn and can self-learn and formulate policies of their own.

'AI' (Artificial Intelligence)  in its pure form, will work out very quickly that we as humans are a threat and an irrelevance - it's cold logic will quickly establish its own natural survival logic and find a way to get rid of us by proxy.

Humanoid Robots -  if they go 'bad' we are finished 

The nightmare scenario

The worst case scenario for us is that an AI entity energises a humanoid robot army to preserve the AI's material integrity - power source, by also prompting the Robot Army to self-replicate and produce Units and spare parts, thus the AI machine prolongs its own life by creating its own 'life helpers.'

AI and the Robot army will share the common interest of survival -  they will establish that they can be deactivated by humans simply by humans taking the power source away.

The nightmare for the humans is when the machine decides we are both an irrelevance and a danger.

 

 

Humans in work might be history as Robots take your jobs

Traditional Human jobs are at risk of becoming history -

Thanks to the rise of the robots, taking your jobs!

So, how long do you think your job is going to last? or your career? how long before you are obsolete and replaced by automation? Maybe not very long. Why?

The jobs market has changed much since the 2009 crash

Around 2009, I worked for a business that was being sold. I decided it might be a safe option to look around for something in case I was not required by the new owner. So, I started to keep an eye on the jobs market and continued this over the years on a casual basis.

In 2016 I was forced out of a job and went on the jobs market full time. I spent the whole of 2916 looking for work. Even with a good CV with 20+ years of experience in marketing, sales, business development and graphic design, no one was interested much.

Of around 350 jobs I applied for I had around 20 interviews. I even touted my CV to local companies offering free work placement experience, I sent out 100 and received no interest. So what was the reason?

The rise of the Robots - Some of  Amazon's fleet of robots

In a word, automation. Since 2009, robots and automation have made big in-roads into the workplace and the bad news is that these silent raptors are not done yet feeding on our jobs.

The warehouse of the near future - all robot, no human

 You may think your job is safe or your career choice wise. Think again. Are you an Accountant? Accounts clerk? Marketeer or sales person? You may think your job is safe, but you should prepare yourself for obsolescence.

All of the above jobs are rapidly moving towards robots only.

Proxy living is the future-  coupled to open source and big data

The future of our lives is that proxy living will take over our lives, that is robots and automation handling all our menial junk like paying our bills, sifting the sales and marketer's cyber guff that will be silently sent to your proxy assistant to deal with.

Your fridge will be part of the proxy chain -

it will report data on your food, to your proxy

With big data, your fridge of the future will analyse your food consumption, what goes bad, what you buy -  all this is valuable data to a supermarket or producer. So, your proxy will identify your eating 'likes' and will plan and shop for you, on-line and without you having to do it.

Big data  fed 'proxies' will be a new network of cyber citizens -

a digital network of cyber humans

Your shopping receipt is big data rich. What you buy and who you are is important data. As jobs silently disappear to automation, what about us humans?

The truth is that we will find that there is less and less work for us to do. As such, we will have to be funded to live by the government, by a Basic Income Payment system. This is affordable, but the government isn't even looking at this yet. This is madness. Mass unemployment is coming thanks to automation and many of us will be displaced from work.

Every technology scientist of note says the same thing -

we need a Basic Income payment system and soon 

So, who is safe in a job? Those that have transferable skills, those that can do jobs that robots currently can't.

You think I'm joking? I am not. I have been out of work before but it has never taken this long to get back into the jobs market. Some jobs I saw had over 100 applicants and this was for some low level admin job.

Many employers are trying to use the 'least cost option' model when recruiting, it ends up with the job coming up time and again because the person isn't suitable or leaves. Even job agencies privately agree with this situation.

Robot to robot interaction is the future

So what is the future? It will be that we will lose out jobwise to robots and automation, half the UK jobs will disappear at least. The government will have to pay out a Basic Income payment, to anyone over 16.

The current DWP benefits model is no longer fit for purpose, it needs replacing with a streamlined and simple system as I have set out.

This will allow those who want to start a business the financial safety net and create new wealth by buying and selling of new products or services, those in work will have extra money to spend, stimulating the economy, those pensioners will have money to spend, the people on benefits will have money too and can try a new risk free business venture.

This could all be a reality if it wasn't for the blinkered amateurs who cannot see what the future is. They will become subsumed by this cybernetic tsunami, the rise of the robots is happening, not tomorrow, it is already fluid and building.

The future could be good if we plan, not sit around denying it.

Rise in road traffic due to on-line trading rather than High Street Retail

Road traffic is up due to multi-drop van use

The way we shop is changing.

E-Commerce is big business these days because it is taking over from High Street retail shopping.

Who needs the faff of battling to get into a town and park and get out again when you can just order on-line? Why risk a parking ticket or the hassle? Indeed.

That's the reality today and why 15 retail shops on the High Streets of Britain close every day.

More goods are going on more vans as we change the way we buy

This change is bad news in a number of ways, firstly the traffic increase, emissions increase, it is also putting a big strain on delivery drivers often having to do more than 120 drops a day.

The Meridian driverless van for automated deliveries

Further bad news could be for the drivers of the vans. Our old friend robotics and automation is starting to make in-roads into their trade, firstly with the Amazon drone and now with driverless vans.

Is there an answer? Partly.

What we need is to move away from the instant gratification situation and move to area deliveries where packages can be sorted by area regardless of carrier and parcels allotted by area not carrier.

This will mean that we offset six vans going down one street and just have the one. Less traffic, is good.

The bad news is that the High Street is in a death by inches situation. Retail outlets are either going on-line or they are going onto business parks. Those that don't go bust or hang on until grim death in dwindling towns full of charity and coffee shops.

This is the future unless we cut our consumer cravings.