An army of robot baristas could mean the end of Starbucks as we know it

"...Starbucks’ 95,000 baristas have a competitor. It doesn’t need sleep. It’s precise in a way that a human could never be. It requires no training. It can’t quit. It has memorized every one of its customers’ orders. There’s never a line for its perfectly turned-out drinks.

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It doesn’t require health insurance..."

More at: http://qz.com/134661/briggo-coffee-army-of-robot-baristas-could-mean-the-end-of-starbucks-as-we-know-it/

No more cowboys, GPS will do just fine!

Herding and fences are so last century, a GPS unit can do it!

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671913/gps-sensor-tags-that-make-cowboys-and-fences-obsolete

Robot named Baxter Promises to Bring Jobs Back to US

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509296/small-factories-give-baxter-the-robot-a-cautious-once-over/

Paul Krugman on Automation and Third Industrial Revolution

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/is-growth-over/

"Better Than Human" article in Wired

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/12/ff-robots-will-take-our-jobs/

Paul Krugman on the Rise of the Robots

A must read NYT editorial: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robots/

The End of Work

The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era by Jeremy Rifkin is an intellectually stimulating piece of non-fiction that is right up this blog's alley. Written in 1995 is talks about many issues we are facing today in early 2000th: rising "technological" unemployment, governments trying to fix the situation, trickle down non-effect and many others.

Cannot agree more on the "the robots are replacing the working class" thesis, the question is of course not how to save all the worker from loosing their often dehumanizingly repetitive jobs. Could it be: how to retrain the workers to make them a productive force of the emerging knowledge economy?

I am sure, we will see this book referred to more and more in the coming years, so read up!