But will there be Patlabor?
Oh No??...
Possibly, for those with the right mental attitudes and capabilities.
However, for several generations now, people have been relieved in practice of "physical and mental" toil in several communities.
British slums, American Indian reservations, US ghettoes.
Not much toiling going on in these areas.
Also not much "cultivation of the mind and body." More like their destruction.
Look I get the idea that there is much to gain, theoretically, from a world where the need for human labor has been largely or entirely removed. However, our actual history of groups for which that has been accomplished, even when provided with material stuff their ancestors never had, is not promising.
Ping.
I don't see automation effecting law, business and especially engineering any more, and probably less, than actors. Further, there are a LOT more unemployed "actors" than lawyers and engineers.
Just like anything else, the market will self-regulate. If there is too much automation, it won’t matter how low the production costs get, because without consumers with money to buy the products, those businesses will not succeed.
I think where this should go is for humanity to branch out to other planets, we need colonies in other places that will present us with sufficient new challenges. Heck, we could start by figuring out better the ocean depths and what is beneath our feet!
I want a robot that kills robots.
Just in case.
We are even examining our eventual mechanization of combat, with unmanned everything, using autonomous direction to eliminate human interference and disruption. There will be some of you who will be dismissive of this but we can't afford to be behind the rest of the world, particularly China, in this area of technological development.
The question really becomes, what will we do with people after this? Except for the exceptionally creative, there will be no work at all. We have that situation in a sense already in our urban areas. People with little education and few prospects receive subsidies to live a modest life and not hurt anybody. That obviously doesn't work.
Our "captains of industry" have adopted certain stopgaps to make sure that the money flows to themselves without any undue pressure to plan for the future by exporting many jobs overseas to China and other sweatshops or by rapidly importing "undocumented" and underpaid labor from Mexico and the rest of Central America.
All those actions do is delay the inevitable and make our country ripe for conflict.
The real question is, are there any leaders in our country, anywhere looking at where this is heading and what will have to do to make sure that there places in the workforce for our children?
The best part about the destruction of humanity by relentless and cruel robotic overlords, is that there will no longer be, anywhere in existence, histrionic, panicked, foolish blog entries.
Read some history. That is the historical reality for the region since at least 670 or so. Arabs slaughter each other and whomever else they chance upon. So do Moslems generally. It's in their blood. It's in their Book, the Mohammedan Operating Manual called, in transliterated Arabic, the Quran.
There are jobs that people will want other people to do:
The Great Shift Toward Automation and the Future of Employment
http://tamarawilhite.hubpages.com/hub/The-Great-Shift-and-the-Future-of-Employment
Very pneumatic. 620-555-1234 ask for YuriButlerian Jihad.