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After the corona virus.

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After Corona Virus -- Part Two


I am putting the finishing touches to a book about what is likely to happen after the corona virus has done its worst.
As far as I can tell we are living in an artificial society, doing outmoded things simply because our life styles cant keep up with the advances of technology.
Certain events tend to force us to start using that advanced technology. There are many ways in which the corona virus is likely to force that change.
This is an excerpt from a chapter in that new book. I will be adding a few more excerpts from the book over the course of the next few weeks. I hope you enjoy.

* * * * *

I maintain that if robots can be programmed to play football, they can also be programmed to be nurses, or nineyty-nine percent of the jobs out there presently being done with various grades of efficiency (or inefficiency) by humans.
If they cant be done well enough as of 2020 when I am writing this, it wont be long before they can.
What we have done is invent help-mates to assist us with our work-load. We have over the years improved those help-mates to such an extent that we have made them so good at their jobs they can now do that work without our help, and in terms of the work-place, we have largely made ourselves redundant.
We need a new paradigm to underpin our reason for living. We need to redefine what we are here for,
What's your purpose in life, given that you really aren't needed to go to work because a computer can do it better and faster than you can?
Somewhere along the line such a revaluation is going to have to be made. And maybe some decision is going to be forced on us by something like the corona virus.
Such a change cant possibly take place over-night.
You could say that such a change is being (temporarily) forced on us overnight right now. (I am writing this in April 2020.)
What is more likely to happen is a gradual change.
Let's start with the simple jobs, like standard office work.
What happens at the moment (or would happen if we were not under a curfew which we politely call a lockdown)?
Jim and Joan get up at seven o'clock, go through their morning routines, run for the bus, and chug slowly, painfully, and irritably, into work. The person next to them has a cold and keeps sniffing and occasionally sneezing.
Two days later Jim and Joan have raging colds.
But I digress. Or do I?
They get to work. They chat to their work-mates, and do a spot of work. That work is done sitting at a desk in front of a computer.
At lunch time they walk to a local lunch takeaway, pay an exorbitant price for a couple of rolls and a plastic cup containing something labelled tea.
The afternoon is spent once again in front of the company computer.
Five o'clock comes round, and our pair rush for the bus, and get carried almost home.
It's raining, and the last ten minute walk soaks them.
The get indoors, change, and flop.
Can we perhaps re-write this sordid little story?
Jim and Joan get up at eight o'clock, have a leisurely breakfast, and switch on their respective computers. They link into the company network, and do exactly the same job they would have done if they had gone into the office.
The can stop for lunch, which they can have in their own kitchen, and they have a more flexible approach to when they stop and start.
They don't have to run for a bus. They don't need to get wet or catch a cold. They don't have to pay over the odds for lunch, or buy a travel-card.
The employer is over the moon. The company no longer has to buy or more likely lease a twenty storey office block to house people that don't need to be in that particular location, thus saving millions.
They no longer have to supply all the things that government regulations require them to supply to keep their staff happy.
Why, for pity's sake, why do we need office blocks?
The obvious answer to that question is that we don’t.
Ninety-nine per cent of all these workers can stay at home, which is exactly what is happening across the country at the moment.
The biggest bunch of office workers can be organised from one room, and kept together by the office computer network.
What's the problem?
Achieve that move and we are ready to make the next move.


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