Things robots can't do

 I woke up at 4.  I'd stayed up most of the night, and read more of the book "Frightful's Mountain" and practiced octaves for an hour or so on the shinobue, and so I woke up at what I thought was 5, but turned out to be 4. 

Last night I'd gotten down what I thought was an empty, plastic cheapo tool box Ken had put 'way up high on top of the stacked parts drawer things in the shop here. I figured it was empty and I could clean it up and use it it to put flute stuff in. 

I have three tool boxes, all good metal ones, and wanted to free up one of those but they were all too full of stuff to think about it - even the "bike parts" one. 

The "empty" plastic tool box turned out to be heavy, and full of soldering stuff we'll never use and that I can put on Ebay so that's a win. But the tool box itself was really cheapo and the top was filmed with dirt and crud; it was kind of disgusting. So I put it outside, the only thing in it a crusty old roll of solder with like 5 turns of wire still on it. It was funny because later two bums fought over the thing. 

I figured I'd get up, pack the smaller of the things that have to go to FedEx but not so big that I'd need the trailer. Things I could carry in Whole Foods bags, hanging off the handlebars. There were 4 things like that and I packed them up. Then, it'd be logical to stop at Lowe's on the way back and I'd find a tool box or tool bag to buy, to put my flute stuff in. 

I took off at a quarter after 5, dropped off the packages, then locked the bike up at H Mart. I got some garlic, celery, and a little package of pork gyoza. I ate the gyoza sitting out front, then decided it was a really good idea to walk over to HomeGoods and Ross and see if they have one of those "art/craft" boxes I could use. It was not a good idea. 

I walked back over to H Mart and rode around to the back and the organic dumpster was a veritable cornucopia. I got all involved loading up two Whole Foods bags, one for Tom and one for myself. The one for Tom was literally heavy, on bananas and plums and melons, and red and Rainier cherries. Mine was veggies and since I like cherries, red and Rainier cherries also. 

As I rode out of there, I remembered that I was supposed to stop at Lowe's. Then I thought a bit more and realized, the "bike parts" tool box is one I hardly get into. It's tools I have never used like a bottom bracket puller and things like that, and spare light sets of which I have about 3. Plus a lot of other stuff. I could take a decent cardboard box, label it "bike parts" and put it where that tool box is kept, then clean up the tool box and I'll have a "flute parts" box. And not have to spend a penny! 

So I blew right past the turn off to go to Lowe's and went right over to Tom's. He was glad to get his load of vegetables and was hung out and talked until the sun went down. The guy who's been living in the back had a commercial-grade barbeque, the kind you set up at a fair or a farmer's market or very large party. He'd wanted something like 10 grand for it, and supposedly had gotten a business license for it, which would be part of the deal. He's left for Arizona or Texas, Tom and I can't agree, but he's gone and the thing got left and Tom got it for $50. They'd (Tom's wife was over) just cooked on it. So that's a neat story. 

We talked about suchlike things, and the story of the barbeque came about because I asked if they'd eaten, thinking I might dash on my bike and get something for the three of us, on the "You buy, I fly" plan. Tom's "car" is a big commercial truck that probably costs $1/mile just in gas. So if they hadn't barbeque'd, they'd probably have been happy to have me dash and get us gyros or something. 

I got back here, put things away, and sorted through my veggies and fruit. After that, and the cherries and peppers were washed and drying I cooked and ate a shrimp curry. I'm getting to the point where the food I cook here at home is better than almost anything I can get at a restaurant, plus cooking at home seems to be saving me a lot of money. 

On the radio today there was some weird puff piece about how "robots" (in most of the cases, pieces of software) were replacing humans and putting humans out of work. But there was hope, they said, and had a speaker who'd been in charge of writing up reports on how much this company made, and that company made. And a "robot" (software) could do this, so who needed him? So he became a personality, writing little poems about companies' revenues, and doing pieces like how he "lived like a billionaire" for a day and so on. 

I listened to this pap and thought about how things that are "human" and "artistic" have been proven to be very easily accomplished by software for years, in some cases a decade or two now. Inventing things, writing music, creating visual art, doing 1:1 talking therapy, etc. The things people are most sure robots can't do, are in fact things robots can do just fine. 

There are, however, things robots can't do. They are things humans can do quite well. They are: 

Continue working just fine without electricity or fossil fuels. That list is long, so as shorthand I'll just day everything people did before about 1850. 

Produce more of themselves without "high tech" or much tech at all. 

Do useful work on 3000-5000 kcal a day. 

Self-repair to an astounding degree

Work in conditions that tend to utterly fuck up machines. Cold, heat, dust, it's the machines that break down. 

The thing is, robots are not going to "take over the world" at least not in the way a lot of people think. The closest they might get is a situation like the Marshall Brain's neat little short story, "Manna", where there's a burger chain called Burger-G, where the kids who work there put on headphones and the computer tells them what to do. It's almost relaxing, to just put their minds in neutral while the computer tells them to empty the trash or get out more buns or what-have-you, and they get little rewards like breaks or their favorite music. Burger-making gamified! 

Even this only works with everything is working smoothly, no supply chain hiccups, no pandemics, no computer network outages, and so on. 

All of this, even if the "robots" are largely just software in computers, depends on a firehose of energy and parts and materials. This is where these future-thinkers make a huge mistake. They think energy use per capita will keep going up exponentially like it has been in recent history. 

Even as recently as the 1970s, conventional middle-class life was very low-tech compared to now. Living on Portlock Road with the millionaires when I was a kid, we had one black-and-white TV and a lot of books. We had one phone. We had one clock, in the kitchen and perhaps a mains-powered alarm clock in my parents' room. Dad had a record player and a collection of records. We had one car, and we kids had bikes. The electricity might go out for a few hours and we'd not notice until it was clearly becoming evening and the kitchen clock still said it was 3 in the afternoon. My older sister may have had a manual typewriter. 

We have to prepare for a life more simple than that. Scrap the car, more riding around on bikes and walking. Envisioning that Portlock Road place, that big back yard and the front yard also, would be gardens. Instead of dialing 543-3211 on the phone to get the correct time, we might consult a sundial to correct a wind-up clock  where the electric one was. 

It's fairly easy for me to imagine living a few rungs lower on the energy ladder than we did even in the much more energy-thrifty 1970s, but I'm an oldie. Someone who's 30, born in 1992, has grown up with everyone having their own computer, cell phone, a car per family member, computer gaming as the most popular sport, etc. If they can't imagine living like the 1970s, how will they cope with a step down from there? 

I watched a documentary last night about Cuba. It's been rough over there and one of the guys they featured is a shoe-maker who makes very good shoes. He's lucky, luckier than most Americans, because he has a skill he can take anywhere. He's leaving for somewhere else in Latin America like a lot of Cubanos are. (He was originally a gov't statistician I believe, and did shoes on the side, and his gripe was that the Communists didn't allow self-employment. I think they're doing Communism wrong if they're driving this guy out; they need guys like him.)

So Americans are worried about robots taking their job, and the kind of jobs robots *can* do are going away anyway. When the electricity's only on for a few hours a day, and you have to walk a few miles with a homemade trailer to go get water and living a basic 3rd-world lifestyle, who cares if you have a comp. sci. degree? Just like my case. The electronics technician jobs are gone and they're not coming back. Will Americans be willing to learn actually useful skills? Like gardening/farming and building soil, making and repairing essential things, and living like their ancestors did 200 years ago?