{"id":437,"date":"2012-03-20T09:33:09","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T16:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=437"},"modified":"2012-03-20T09:33:11","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T16:33:11","slug":"the-robots-are-taking-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/the-robots-are-taking-over\/","title":{"rendered":"The Robots are Taking Over"},"content":{"rendered":"

Probably not news to most of you, but the local company that sells everything under the sun just bought a robotics company (Amazon Acquires Kiva Systems<\/a>). <\/p>\n

Normally, I don\u2019t blog about news stories, but on the way to work this morning I heard an interesting discussion on a local talk radio station. It turns out that there are people up in arms over the purchase because using robots in the warehouse puts people out of jobs. To be clear, I don\u2019t like people losing their jobs either \u2013 but bear with me for another paragraph.<\/p>\n

The arguments continued with comments like, \u201cThe robots can\u2019t do all of the warehouse work \u2013 sometimes you need to use your brain to find a misplaced item\u201d, or, \u201cYou will still need people to verify with their eyes<\/em> that the right items were selected\u201d. Others countered with comments like, \u201cThe robots can work 24 hours a day\u201d, and, \u201cYou\u2019ll still need people to program the robots and give them directions\u201d.<\/p>\n

I laughed out loud in my car as I realized that these people calling into the radio station were having the same discussion many people have about test automation.I won\u2019t rehash or expand, but I will summarize with two blurbs of less than 140 characters each:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since I didn\u2019t use the word test in those tweets, I think my comments apply to Amazon\u2019s (probable) warehouse changes as well.<\/p>\n

I was happy to hear that a few callers recognized that robots (and automation) can be used to solve left-brained monotonous work \u2013 and do it pretty well. The future of work is (IMO) creative work**, and (again, IMO), automation (and robots) are what we need in order to enable us to find the time and insights to develop our creative thoughts into game-changing innovation.<\/p>\n

And that sure beats doing the boring shit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

**Daniel Pink wrote a whole book on this concept:  A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Probably not news to most of you, but the local company that sells everything under the sun just bought a robotics company (Amazon Acquires Kiva Systems). Normally, I don\u2019t blog about news stories, but on the way to work this morning I heard an interesting discussion on a local talk radio station. It turns out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}