"Like it or not, there's no guarantee of job security even for the plumbers and electricians and carpenters."
Well, to the extent that there is no guarantee of anything.
What make you think that improvements in technology in the next 30 years will enable machines to crawl under sinks or behind furniture; make estimates about corrosion, or wood grain, or wiring quality; manipulate small, complex items in tight spaces; explain the options (fix now but risk breakage later; replace now, but pay larger cost upfront) and answer questions, and do all this in a timely and friendly manner?
There is a large human factor to much manual labor that is hard to replicate with machines or remote operation.
Most everyone I know who ends up dealing with a non-local telephone support person hates it. Trying to get a decent explanation of why I should have my plumbing replaced rather than repaired from someone with poor localized language sounds skills sounds like a nightmare.
A better bet would be for, say, North Americans to operate remote repair devices for locations in North America (and likewise for other language-unified locales).
Perhaps a local, unskilled person operates a device to feed information back to a pool of technicians in some other location; you get the human element, but centralized technical smarts.
I believe something like that happens now with medical imaging. Technicians run the scanning machines, send the images off to who-knows-where for skilled readers to interpret, the results are moderated by a more-skilled supervisor, and sent back to the lab or hospital.
Still, I get the feeling that fixing bikes is part engineering, part art, and transmitting sufficient information over the wire for remote viewing may a hard problem. Like cooking, some things are just better handled by real live people.
Well, you seem to be dissagreeing, then agreeing with me, which is fine. I don't know where your 30 year deadline came from. Betting against the accuracy, efficiency, scalability and lower cost of our tools hasn't historically been a smart move, and I don't see why that would change. It's easy to envision a scenario where you could pay n times as much for an artisan plumber (or ... Bicycle Repairman!). But I bet most would opt for the cheap, standardized service of a tele-op'd Mario9000.
> What make you think that improvements in technology in the next 30 years will enable machines to crawl under sinks or behind furniture; make estimates about corrosion, or wood grain, or wiring quality; manipulate small, complex items in tight spaces;
A trip to your local Home Depot/Lowes shows that a huge amount of that home construction and repair that used to be a service has already become a user-installable product.
Many of the tight spaces for this stuff is a design decision that can change.
Comments
"Like it or not, there's no guarantee of job security even for the plumbers and electricians and carpenters."
Well, to the extent that there is no guarantee of anything.
What make you think that improvements in technology in the next 30 years will enable machines to crawl under sinks or behind furniture; make estimates about corrosion, or wood grain, or wiring quality; manipulate small, complex items in tight spaces; explain the options (fix now but risk breakage later; replace now, but pay larger cost upfront) and answer questions, and do all this in a timely and friendly manner?
There is a large human factor to much manual labor that is hard to replicate with machines or remote operation.
Most everyone I know who ends up dealing with a non-local telephone support person hates it. Trying to get a decent explanation of why I should have my plumbing replaced rather than repaired from someone with poor localized language sounds skills sounds like a nightmare.
A better bet would be for, say, North Americans to operate remote repair devices for locations in North America (and likewise for other language-unified locales).
Perhaps a local, unskilled person operates a device to feed information back to a pool of technicians in some other location; you get the human element, but centralized technical smarts.
I believe something like that happens now with medical imaging. Technicians run the scanning machines, send the images off to who-knows-where for skilled readers to interpret, the results are moderated by a more-skilled supervisor, and sent back to the lab or hospital.
Still, I get the feeling that fixing bikes is part engineering, part art, and transmitting sufficient information over the wire for remote viewing may a hard problem. Like cooking, some things are just better handled by real live people.
Well, you seem to be dissagreeing, then agreeing with me, which is fine. I don't know where your 30 year deadline came from. Betting against the accuracy, efficiency, scalability and lower cost of our tools hasn't historically been a smart move, and I don't see why that would change. It's easy to envision a scenario where you could pay n times as much for an artisan plumber (or ... Bicycle Repairman!). But I bet most would opt for the cheap, standardized service of a tele-op'd Mario9000.
> What make you think that improvements in technology in the next 30 years will enable machines to crawl under sinks or behind furniture; make estimates about corrosion, or wood grain, or wiring quality; manipulate small, complex items in tight spaces;
A trip to your local Home Depot/Lowes shows that a huge amount of that home construction and repair that used to be a service has already become a user-installable product.
Many of the tight spaces for this stuff is a design decision that can change.