World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

On this, my father’s birthday, he is kicking up his heels and relaxing against his will. As one of his dutiful sons, I am going to guest blog today. We’ll continue on the trend of technology and labor. The value added to the US economy by manufacturing as a percent of gross domestic product is a sizable 13%, Industry adds another 20%. And while Agriculture is a minor contributor to the US economy, it is significant for other countries. The World Bank is generous and has exposed its data to play with: data.worldbank.org, I encourage people to play around with it. Tables are fun!

Unlike services, debt, trade and other factors that influence the gross domestic product, manufacturing, industry and agriculture are quintessentially technological sectors; where would we be without the plow, the augur, the all new John Deere™ W235 Self-Propelled Windrower? So here are three technologies which are if not infantile, then juvenile, but will probably have a great impact on how we make things in this world. Since this is a world politics blog and I’m not a world politics guy, I’ll leave it up to the readers to see how shifts in balance might or might not change things. Ultimately it’ll be something we can only look back on. But until then, Prometheus, lead on!

First up is the bourgeois factory owner enabling Baxter from Rethink Robotics [http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/]. There are about 1.1 million industrial robots working (an International Federation of Robotics estimate), but unlike the huge, obstinate, rigid robots we’re used to Baxter is easily programmable, small, dexterous and $22,000. A wonderfully written article is in the MIT Technology Review last year [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429248/this-robot-could-transform-manufacturing/]. I’m not afraid of this iteration replacing all manufacturing jobs, but a couple iterations down the line and we might want to be looking into service jobs (not taxi driving, if the self-driving cars catch on [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/technology/self-driving-cars-for-testing-are-supported-by-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0]).

Second is the democratic 3D printer. Sure you can print a gun [http://defcad.com/], but you can also print cartilage [http://www.iop.org/news/12/nov/page_58984.html] or a rocket engine part [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJTkhXjywpQ]. The sky is the limit. Anyone with a 3D modeling program (of which there are free versions) can upload their design to a print shop (of which there are many online right now) and print a wide array of objects—with some limitations, as this is still new stuff. While I hope that eventually online retailers will add a “print” option next to their “ship” option so I can just print my new iPhone 30 when it comes out, we can see the havoc this would wreak on the distribution chains and more importantly the laborers who traditionally make things.

Lastly, in the context of the above paragraph, I give you the first baby steps to a Star Trek-like replicator:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0