UKC

Homes for bouldering? 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/30/dutch-couple-move-into-e...

In reply to Flinticus:

Smart but the article states it uses less cement than conventional builds, but then says its made of 3d printed cement.

It also raises questions about jobs in the construction industry. Once a machine is doing 80% of all the work, what builders meant to do? Reducing job opportunities in a growing population has always seemed like a recepie for trouble.

In reply to Flinticus:

Couldn't they print a more interesting looking boulder? Looks like a white loaf.

In reply to Tigger:

3d printing will allow a honeycomb or other partial fill structure to be used, which is not easily achieved with conventional cast concrete. I guess this will also provide some insulation.

In reply to captain paranoia:

Good point. It will also allow all of the channels for pipes, wires and ventilation to be part of the print too.

I don't see any gutters. In a few years it will look like a mossy boulder.

Isn't this essentially what cellular concrete blocks are?

I was hoping to see that the building had been printed on site but in reality this is just a fancy prefab.

And when they state that the building only took "120 hours to print" this is pretty slow when compared to concrete block production and very slow if compared to assembly of wooden framed prefab buildings that would also use significantly less concrete and probably be more environmentally friendly.

In reply to elsewhere:

Just get Dave MacLeod in to clean it.

In reply to Tigger: Something else.  Jobs change through time and always have.  It's not like the quality of a lot of current day home building is something to protect from improvement.

In reply to gethin_allen: Yes, but you also need to factor in the time needed to contruct the parts of wooden prefab buildings that are later assembled.  Though you are correct in reducing concrete usage as a good thing

In reply to wbo2:

This was my thought, their 120 hours was just to print the parts before then shipping, assembly and finishing. I'll guess a timber frame factory could build a small house like this pretty quickly leaving a bit of time to assemble the frame on site.

In reply to wbo2:

True, though I'm from both a manufacturing and construction background (plumber turned mechanical fitter/vibration analysis) for nearly 15 years I've seen jobs lost to cost cutting / out sourcing and automation. Sure a few jobs are created, but more are lost, the medium to high skilled trades seem to be diminishing, replaced by lower skilled positions or requring fewer people.

In reply to Tigger:

The usual pat response is to say they can all retain as programmers or, failing that, carers (like that's a career many people want or are suited to)

In reply to Tigger:

We could just ban MS excel instead and us builders could come a sit in the corner of the cozy offices and work out percentages and stuff by hand for the superior class’ reports.

In reply to Flinticus:

That's cool. Imagine Gaudi had had that technology

In reply to Tigger:

I guess some builders could specialise in things that a machine couldn't do, certain kinds of walling, or wood working, or transition into the more practical side of landscape gardening (working with somebody who knows their plants)? I've not met many practical people who are only able to be practical in one area. I know a guy who works as a stone mason.

Tricky to do with a mortgage and bills to pay, I would think...

In reply to Tigger:

Retrain & do something else? You can’t hinder technological progression that will lead to benefits for the many just because a few will have to change their job roles. 

In reply to Fozzy:

Retraining often requires a pay cut for a few years, once you've got a mortage etc... it isn't always that easy, unfortunately, you can be come easily pigeon-holed once you have a trade.

In reply to Tigger:

"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."

Buckminster Fuller

In reply to Ciro:

Yes that is a great ideal, though I can't see our government, or the currently capitalist model making it a reality.

In reply to Fozzy:

It depends what is meant by a few. Are we going to hit the tipping point where most jobs are automated away. Some jobs will remain hard but increasing numbers are coming close to it and we may hit the point where there isnt sufficient jobs to retrain into and those that remain will need very high skillsets.

In reply to mondite:

Increased automation is inevitable; less workers required, increased efficiency (& profits). I’ve not got an issue with it, but what to do with those who lack the intellectual ability to modernise their skillsets is definitely going to be a problem. Maybe this is where some form of universal basic income will start to emerge. 

In reply to Ciro:

Humans (and precursor hominids) have always had to 'work'; to gather food. We have simply specialised our work, including specialising food production. Our specialist work is food gathering by proxy.

In reply to Tigger:

We will have to change the model at some point, and I think that point is rapidly approaching.

In reply to captain paranoia:

That's entirely true, but it doesn't follow that we always will.

This is not entirely true - our work is increasingly focused on creating "wealth", not covering the basics of food, clothing and shelter.

We are already sufficiently technologically advanced that we could provide the world with food, clothing and shelter if we chose to. Further advances in energy harvesting/generation and robotics will soon have us to the point where a fairly small percentage of the world's population could supply those needs.

Energy will be harvested from space, nuclear fusion will be achieved, and self repairing farm machinery/production lines/trains/drones/etc. will be built.

In reply to Ciro:

The world is waiting for you to buy a farm and start giving all the produce away, while working to fully automate it.

In reply to David Riley:

Funnily enough I did once fully automate myself out of a job, but it was only the owners of the software house who benefited.

Buying a farm and giving the produce away is clearly a nonsense idea. It will take a great pooling of resources for that to happen.

Clearly not going to happen under capitalism - but as a species we spend an amazing amount of our resources on factionalism and warfare... more than enough to feed the world and explore the galaxy. At some point, we'll give ourselves a shake and move towards a more collaborative future.

In reply to Ciro:

Why ?   That's what you've proposed others do.

In reply to Fozzy:

There's a theory that jobs involving 'people skills' are what will remain during increasing automation. It's not an overlooked side to me wanting to get into doing something in conservation related to community engagement, helping to get people enthused about/enriched through interacting with nature (so they might want to look after it too). It doesn't hurt that I like people.

In reply to David Riley:

I have proposed noting of the sort.

I have proposed that collectively, humanity will need to get together and organise the distribution of essentials such as food, clothing and shelter, as the world becomes increasingly mechanised.

This will not come about by individual action. It will be a collective action.

The alternative will be mass unemployment leads to widespread starvation and civil unrest within the western (and other global power) societies, and further escalation of wars for resources between us and the rest of the world.

In reply to Ciro:

Ha.

I'd love us to get our act together, but doubt it'll ever happen. I guess until it does, all we can do is 'try and be good and helpful'.

In reply to Timmd:

Well I'm not saying it will happen next week, but either it will happen eventually or humanity will wipe itself out.

I remain optimistic that we'll get our collective finger out before we annihilate ourselves.

In reply to Ciro:

What part will you play in the "collective" action ?

Do you just mean someone else ?

In reply to Ciro:

One would like to think so, most definitely. I think I've decided to only think as far as the end of my lifetime, so I don't ponder it too much, but hopefully how humanity lives will change.

In reply to David Riley:

As a software developer, I imagine the part I'll play will be developing software.

No, I mean all of us, by collectively voting for a new system that takes the priorities away from individual ownership of the assets and resources that humanity needs to survive and prosper, and towards the common good.

 Are you struggling to understand what "collective" means?

In reply to Ciro:

We've gone all politics.

You, comrade, want the farms seized, and given over to Party control by non farmers. The Party will decide the specification for the software you have to write.  It will therefore be rubbish and you will be paid the same as everyone else, even if they are just criminals. The farms will become unproductive. There will be no money.

In reply to David Riley:

Life is politics.

Capitalism will not provide for the people, when capitalism no longer relies on human workers.

How do you think the world is going to function once we have to robots to do the work, and robots to repair the robots that do the work, if we don't have some form of collective distribution?

Genocide of most of the people by an elite few who own the robots seems like a fairly lonely way to go...

In reply to Ciro:

Perhaps pause the revolution until then ?

In reply to David Riley:

That's a cop out reply. 

In reply to David Riley:

Ironically, I think pausing such a revolution would probably require the kind of collective action Ciro is talking about.

I'm more positive that people (not necessarily the same people) will continue to find new roles or jobs as old ones disappear. Has this not happened throughout history? I certainly don't think 3D printing is going to remove the need for builders in the short term and in the very long term, there will be plenty of time for re training. Meanwhile, 3D printing development is still in its infancy and the programmes used to control the print heads movement require a lot of development for each new product to get high quality output, so there'll be lots of jobs in it, especially if people see the selling point to be a customised shape of house.

In reply to wbo2:

We're going to end up with universal income.

We can't half progress just to keep jobs. People will just import houses printed from around the world.

But soon delivery drivers will go.

It's going to be tough for the youth of today the boomers love to call lazy. Jobs will come and go, careers will change faster than ever before.

My Grandad was an engineer, left school, took a job, worked the same job for 50 years. Those days are getting rarer. I have had kids who think they'll just drive snow plows like their Dads, those jobs will probably be automated soon.

In reply to Si dH:

"Has this not happened throughout history?"

To some extend but I don't think at the pace of today no. Technology is advancing rapidly.

In reply to Roadrunner6:

People keep banging on about a universal income but what level do you set it at? Too much and no one will do the shit jobs, too little and it's not a universal income, it's just rebranding the current unemployment benefits. 

In reply to Flinticus:

Bucky was ten sorts of genius but lived in the common fantasy world of the 50's that saw endless growth towards utopian living with flying cars and mass equal human development. Quaint by todays perspective but unrealistic. Some may want utopian progress but most either don't or don't have the choice themselves.

I'd not worry too much about automated redundancy in construction in the near future. There's still a few generations left in repairing and maintaining what we have and as automated as anything can get there will always be organic ways of putting it all together. Building will evolve but won't cease for a long time. Communism and Capitalism both proved people don't all want to live in prefab cookie cutter suburbs, and  for half of humanity it's never been an option.

Humanity tends to upgrade by folly and opportunism rather than any plan, something Bucky tended to overlook.

In reply to Si dH:

Retrain to do what? Over the coming decades more and more will be automated and job opportunities will become less and less. Hysterically as work has been automated new sectors have opened up, a lot of it in the service industry but technology is close to the point where that much could be automated there won't be enough left for people to do. 

I have said this before and it always gets lots of down votes, the future is the 200AD comic vision of mega cities where 99.99% of people are out of work, it's illegal to have more than 1 job and riots kick off when a job becomes available. 

In reply to Dax H:

Enough so people don't grow up in poverty.

And yes, that's the point. Nobody will have to do shit jobs, those low paid jobs are increasingly disappearing. They'll all be automated. 

Of course it is still a universal income. It's just an additional income to keep people afloat. If people don't have money they won't buy goods.

how it'll work will be Debatable. You can relate it to hours worked, so its more of a wage addition or as a basic income. But I don't think many expect it to mean you won't have to work at all.

In reply to Si dH:

Today I spent devising a new automated process to cut a rectangle from a sealed ABS box, and re-seal it, after servicing the electronics inside.  Saving a replacement box.  The cut is made with a 1mm CNC milling cutter.  The 1mm of plastic lost cannot be replaced by 3D printing into the space, since the head cannot print down the 1mm gap.  So a "picture frame" with a width of 0.7mm is printed, put in place, and welded.
The utopia of nothing left to do is not going to arrive for hundreds of years.  As innovation increases, so do new jobs and opportunities.  Those jobs and opportunities are not going to be spotted and brought into being without the chance of reward for investment of time,  money and hard inspired work, against the majority that oppose anything new.

In reply to David Riley:

I'm not sure it's 1 for 1 though.

Automation is killing manufacturing jobs. Boeing just opened that factory in sheffield. I think it created 80 jobs which was largely cleaning and security and other low paid jobs. 

That doesn't mean we should oppose automation though, that's how we lose the industry. Sheffield actually creates as much steel as it ever did, yet most people think the steel industry is dead just because it doesn't employ many.

Delivery drivers are currently a well paid job. They can't work all day and make mistakes and need paying. We're years from them being redundant.

In reply to Roadrunner6:

Certainly is.  Almost any job you can think of was created by technology and the cost reductions of automation.

Roll on 3D printed housing.    I'd use swarms of drones printing carbon.

In reply to Flinticus:

quite a lot live in boulder

https://www.eventbrite.com/d/co--boulder/live-concerts/

In reply to David Riley:

If you say so. That's just not the case. We know automation is destroying jobs. If it isn't, why have it?

In reply to David Riley:

So you think we should wait until we're on the brink of societal collapse before we start planning for the huge changes to society that will be required?

I know we've been "on the brink" of removing the requirement for a working class since I was a kid, but a lot of the technological building blocks are now in place, and the technology for a lot more of those blocks has been developed and just needs to come down in price, so I think we are actually on the brink of it now.

We can either start planning for that future, or we can carry on pretending that the societal norms of today will carry on working, and wait for them to collapse.

The former seems a wiser choice to me.

In reply to Roadrunner6:

If there was no automation, food, clothes and housing would be so expensive people would be able to afford nothing else. So with everything else gone, the only jobs would be manual farming and textiles.

In reply to David Riley:

Im not arguing against Automation at all. We have to welcome it but face the challenges it brings. I think this next generation have a tough future with automation, climate issues and various other things.

In reply to Roadrunner6:

Counter-intuitive, but consider the diversity of jobs people do.  All down to surplus provided by automation.   More automation, more diversity, more jobs.