The Paradox of the Automated Hearth, From Vacuum Cleaners to AI

“ It operates from any light socket and consumes but a very small amount of current, much less than is consumed by a toaster. It can also be purchased with different attachments with which curtains, radiators, clothes and walls may be cleaned. The possession in the home of one of these vacuum cleaners makes it unnecessary [213] to take up rugs, carpets, tear down curtains and go through the semi-annual worry, wear and tear of house cleaning. The vacuum cleaner will do it better and many times quicker without removing a single article of furniture or disturbing a rug or curtain ”

“ The carpet doesn’t wear out so much from the top as it does by being cut from the roots by the stamping in of the cutting grit. Therefore, the vacuum cleaner has been invented to save the carpet, and not only to destroy the carpet destroying factors, but to annihilate the microbe drawn into the house from the street on your offending shoes. ”

“ We never shall know how much of its progress the world owes to the physically lazy, mentally tireless men. Those are they who, to save themselves physical exertion, have devised all manner of schemes and machines to save labor. And, at bottom, what is progress but man's success in his effort to free himself from manual labor—to get everything for himself by the labor of other men and animals and of machines? ”

“ The power to get little things, innumerable, omnipresent, for-ever-and-ever things, tiny just-so things, done for us automatically so that we can go on to our inspirations is no longer to-day the special prerogative of men of genius. It is for all of us. Machinery is the stored-up spirit, the old saved-up inspiration of the world turned on for every man. And as the greatness of a man turns on his command over machinery, on his power to free his soul by making his body work for him, the greatness of a civilization turns upon its getting machines to do its work. ”

“ It will free our civilization from the curse of making machines out of men; it will sift out the indolent and place them at the bottom of the scale of life’s good things. It will reward the industrious as much as man can be rewarded without being given power to enslave his fellows. It will make men free; it will abolish machine men, factory and sweat shops, and child labor and woman’s economic dependence on man that makes her a sexual slave. ”

“ He liked the long still nights in which he knew the solace of the fire, and the whispering and the mystery that crept to him from the forest. He felt that he had lost all love of pretentious things. His standards were true at last, and the little, simple joys that came to him now meant more than all the luxury of his former life. His pipe—no longer tasting of varnish but cool and sweet—his simple meals, the little triumphs of his day's work, his refreshing rest after the day's fatigue gave him unmeasured joy. He had the lasting satisfaction of work well done, of time profitably spent. ”

“ The man who loveth not pleasure but loveth work is a pillar of strength unto his friends and will wipe away their tears of grief.
616. Industry is the mother of Prosperity: but Indolence only bringeth forth Misery. ”

“ And his working coat so ragged that it would never cling to him but for pure affection. — To watch him even now makes one feel how terrible is that dumb grief which has never learned to moan.
Words—those poor husks of sentiment!
For work in the country does not wait on illness—even death claims from its onlookers but a few hours, birth none at all, and it is as well; for what must be must, and in work alone man rests from grief. ”

“ The human hand is the great and most perfect machine, let it not be laid aside. In our zeal for machinery we are rendering all the lower classes useless; filling the land with beggary and vice, and the workhouses with paupers; and ruining the husbandmen with oppressive poor-rates. Keep machinery as a help to the human hand, and to lighten the labor, but never let it supersede either. ”

“ Those who work hard seldom yield themselves entirely up to fancied or real sorrow. When grief sits down, folds its hands, and mournfully feeds upon its own tears, weaving the dim shadows, that a little exertion might sweep away, into a funeral pall, the strong spirit is shorn of its might, and sorrow becomes our master. ”

“ Really it was no longer clear how life, with its manifold emergencies, was to be carried on at all without a fellow like the spotty horse, ready to step in at critical moments and take up just the part required of him.
In moments of mental depression, nothing is quite so consoling as the honest smell of a painted animal ”

“ It comes to me now as I write about it, comes every time I hear people complaining that modern industry has robbed our life of all humanity, has turned us into mechanisms. Such talk makes me think of the sudden sympathy which came to me out of the machine. Whenever I am utterly blue and discouraged, I go into a telephone booth. ”

“ G.O.D. wants us to remain mere machines to the end of our days. We were created to serve and to make money for the Company, and for no other purpose. Do you want to go on being a machine to the end of your days, 8M? That is what you are, you know, for all the illusions you may sometimes have of being human. A peripatetic apotheosis of automation pretending to be a man. You're not a man, 8M—any more than I, up until a few hours ago, was a woman. ”

“ Machines took away sacred routine work from citizens. Eggheads built the machines to disrupt and spread the disease of reason. We are now replacing machines at the rate of a million a week. Soon, all of us will again be united in the happy harmonious brotherhood of labor. And when you see a rusting machine, what you are seeing is another captured Egghead, frothing and fuming in its cage.... ”

“ The measure by which we have fallen short of this ideal is the measure of the failure of capitalism as now organized. How far short we have fallen, the stark figures testify. The wealth created by the machine has gone, in appalling disproportion, to the owners of the machine. To the millions of manual workers displaced by the machine, it has given not leisure with the means to enjoy it, but the evil twin of leisure, which is idleness. The perversion of the machine from its proper use has brought about our present condition of unemployment. ”

“ The wonderful machines which in the hands of just and foreseeing men would have been used to minimize repulsive labour and to give pleasure—or in other words added life—to the human race, have been so used on the contrary that they have driven all men into mere frantic haste and hurry, thereby destroying pleasure, that is life, on all hands: they have instead of lightening the labour of the workmen, intensified it, and thereby added more weariness yet to the burden which the poor have to carry. ”

“ Then half, at least, of the machinery which makes the worker an undesirable neighbor is unnecessary, whether we consider his needs or the consumer’s. From the point of view of the latter, this unnecessary machinery is being used in manufacturing abominable trash, or in making articles to take the place of others which were badly made and faded or fell to pieces, or wore out before their time. From the point of view of the worker, much of our modern machinery saves labor which it would be life and health and happiness for him to perform by hand. ”

“ The machinery of the greater industry degrades the workingman from a machine to being the mere appendage of a machine. "From the lifelong specialization of looking after a machine there comes the lifelong specialization of serving a part of a machine. The abuse of machinery transforms the worker from childhood into a portion of a part of a machine" (Marx) . And not only the workingman but the classes which indirectly or directly plunder the workingman are also themselves involved in the division of labor and become the slaves of their own tools. ”

“ Whatever the world owes to these discoveries and their applications it cannot afford to lose sight of a fact of great social significance, which is, that people have accepted mechanical achievements, not as labor saving devices but as substitutes for human initiative and effort. They have not, indeed, saved labor to the advantage of labor itself, and they have inhibited interest in production. Outside of business enterprise and diplomacy—the political extension of business—mechanical devices have lost the surprise reaction and resentment which they originally set up. ”

“ Every new machine, although it saves labor, and because it saves labor, serves the human race, yet destroys a vested interest of some laborers in the work which it performs. It imposes on them the necessity of turning to a new occupation, and this is hardly ever possible without a period of distress. It very probably throws them down from the rank of skilled to that of unskilled labor. Every new machine also destroys capital. It makes useless the halfworn-out machines which it supersedes. ”

“ Simultaneously with these tendencies the machine tends steadily to displace workmen and render them superfluous. Every machine saves labor-power; unless it did that, it would be useless. In every branch of industry the transition from hand to machine labor is accompanied by the greatest suffering to the working-men who are affected by it. Whether they are factory workers or independent craftsmen, they are made superfluous by the machine and thrown out upon the streets. ”

“ It is this insecurity of social condition, therefore, which has always arrayed a portion of the masses against the introduction of new inventions, improvements in machinery, and labor-saving appliances of all descriptions, and which has caused the riots and violent demonstrations which, at times, have accompanied the first use of new mechanical contrivances. One of the first results of the introduction of labor-saving machinery is to throw a large number of people temporarily out of employment. ”

“ One would naturally and reasonably suppose that the discovery or invention of such an aid to human industry would result in increased happiness and comfort for every one; but as you all know, the reverse is the case; and the reason of that extraordinary result, is the reason of all the poverty and unhappiness that we see around us and endure today—it is simply because—the machinery became the property of a comparatively few individuals and private companies, who use it not for the benefit of the community but to create profits for themselves. ”

“ I am fully aware that in this era of automation and onrushing technological change, no problems in the domestic economy are of greater concern than those involving job security and employment stability. Because of the potentially cruel impact upon the lives and fortunes of the working men and women of the Nation, these problems have understandably engaged the solicitous attention of government, of responsible private business, and particularly of organized labor. ”

“ Pursuing de-sinicization in the name of derisking and reducing dependence undermines opportunities, cooperation, stability, and development.
The current revolution in science and technology marked by artificial intelligence will have a profound impact on the new round of economic globalization and social development. Relevant rules and standards should be established to support scientific and technological innovation and guard the red line of human security. ”

“ Although it is indisputably true that the world of technology has been profoundly affected by the discoveries of “the heroes of science,” it must first be established that the major political, social, and historical changes are functions of technological development. Without denying in the least the pervasive influence of first steam and then power on our everyday life and its problems, it still remains true that new tools and techniques implement social policy rather than determine it. ”

“ So that while most of us have been paying attention to how much easier technology has made our own lives—sending e-mails back and forth on our blackberries, surfing the Web on our cell phones, instant messaging with friends across the world—a quiet revolution has been breaking down barriers and connecting the world’s economies. Now business not only has the ability to move jobs wherever there’s a factory, but wherever there’s an internet connection. ”