数字制造 (Digital Manufacturing)

3d printing isn’t what most people think it is… it’s slow, it’s hard, and most of the time you need to baby your printer, maintain it far, far more than you think you will have to. It only produces plastic things, and often they aren’t all that good. Certainly, they aren’t as good as the injection moulded plastic things we get from China.

3d打印并非大多数人所想的那样……速度慢，难度大，并且在大多数情况下，您需要对打印机进行保养，维护，远远超出您的想象。 它只会产生塑料制品，而且往往不是那么好。 当然，它们不如我们从中国获得的注塑塑料产品好。

A few months ago my tripod broke. Not a big deal, just a little plastic catch. It holds the camera in place and it’s easy to take off. My tripod is older and replacement parts aren’t exactly common, so I did the best I could to keep using it without the catch, but it meant I often skipped it, even if it was absolutely needed for the shot I wanted.

几个月前，我的三脚架坏了。 没什么大不了的，只是一点塑料陷阱。 它可以将相机固定到位，并且易于取下。 我的三脚架比较旧，更换零件也不是很普遍，所以我尽了最大的努力来继续使用它而不用抓住它，但这意味着我经常跳过它，即使我想要的拍摄绝对需要它。

I opened up my 3d modelling software and did up a new version. It took about five minutes and another five to print. My tripod works again, I didn’t have to search and nothing had to be shipped from China. That’s the key bit right there. Nothing had to be shipped from anywhere, my plastic catch was made in my own home.

我打开了3D建模软件，并制作了一个新版本。 花了大约五分钟，再打印五分钟。 我的三脚架可以再次使用，无需搜索，也无需从中国发货。 那就是关键所在。 无需从任何地方装运，我的塑料渔获物是在我自己的家中制成的。

咖啡馆生活 (Cafe Life)

Right now I’m working with friends to get a makerspace/cafe off the ground. It’s a fledgling business and we opened right at the start of Covid-19. Not great timing. It’s going better than I thought, but it’s still a struggle. One of the things we have is a Glowforge. It’s a laser cutter/engraver. I put a piece of wood into it (wood is what we use the most often) and hit the glowing button. I get a flat packable version of something in a few minutes. The software is pretty easy to use and most of the modifications I’ve done to existing designs have been simple. Maybe not something with zero training could do, but something most people could pick up in a few hours. We have been using the Glowforge to create kits that customers can put together in the cafe, or boxes, or signs (most of our signage in the store comes off the Glowforge — wood-engraved signs lend a distinct feel to our space). We can also cut fabric, acrylic, leather, a bunch of other things. A lot of stuff we do is incredibly detailed scrollwork. Literally beyond human capability in some cases.

现在，我正在与朋友合作，开创Makerspace / Cafe。 这是一个刚刚起步的业务，我们在Covid-19刚开始时就开业了。 时机不佳。 它比我想的要好，但是仍然很挣扎。 我们拥有的一件事是Glowforge。 这是激光切割机/雕刻机。 我在里面放了一块木头(木头是我们最常使用的木头)，然后按发光按钮。 几分钟后，我得到了平板包装的东西。 该软件非常易于使用，我对现有设计所做的大部分修改都很简单。 也许没有经过零培训的培训就可以完成，但是大多数人可以在几个小时内完成。 我们一直在使用Glowforge制作套件，客户可以将它们放在一起放在咖啡馆，盒子或标牌中(商店中的大多数标牌都来自Glowforge-木刻标牌给我们的空间带来独特的感觉)。 我们还可以切割面料，丙烯酸，皮革等一堆东西。 我们要做的很多事情都是非常详尽的滚动。 在某些情况下，超出了人的能力。

We also have an embroidery machine. You load up your pattern, thread it, and a couple of minutes later you have something incredibly detailed, possibly beyond the skill of any human to produce by hand, possibly just kind of nice.

我们也有一台绣花机。 您加载了模式，将其穿线，几分钟后，您得到了难以置信的详细信息，可能超出了任何人手工制作的技能，可能还不错。

软件将吞噬世界 (Software Will Eat the World)

These things are the start of something, or rather, the next phase of something. Software started it. Computers that allowed us to do things more easily, more quickly. Before the seventies publishing was a very, very labour intensive process. You would take pieces of metal with letters on them and arrange them in such a way that they created the words you wanted to print. You did that for each page, then you put ink on the metal and slammed it into the paper. Typewriters, the thing you used to actually write the work, was much the same.

这些事情是事物的开始，或者更确切地说，是事物的下一阶段。 软件启动了它。 使我们能够更轻松，更快速地执行操作的计算机。 七十年代以前，出版是一个非常非常劳动密集的过程。 您需要在金属板上贴上字母，然后以某种方式排列它们，以使它们产生您想要打印的字词。 您对每一页都进行了此操作，然后将墨水放在金属上，然后将其砸入纸张。 打字机，实际上是您用来撰写作品的东西，几乎是一样的。

Software sped that up, it made it so that you could write what you wanted, change it, modify it, instantly. You didn’t have to commit, and we created much, much more written words as a result.

软件加快了这一步，使其成为现实，因此您可以立即编写所需的内容，对其进行更改，对其进行修改。 您不必承诺，因此，我们创建了更多得多的书面文字。

Math went the same route. The computer can do the calculations for us, we just have to figure out what we want calculated.

数学走了同样的路。 计算机可以为我们做计算，我们只需要弄清楚我们要计算的是什么。

This led to a great change, our work became virtual — software is now how we do most things… but not how we make physical objects. I mean, it is — but only at the highest level. When industrial CNC machines started to become computer-driven a lot of what humans did in manufacturing became a matter of drafting the 3d model, transferring it to the machine, and then seeing the result. It was all expensive though, those kinds of machines cost hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars. They needed warehouses and experts to run them.

这带来了巨大的变化，我们的工作变成了虚拟化-现在，软件是我们执行大多数工作的方式……而不是我们如何制造物理对象的方式。 我的意思是，但仅限于最高级别。 当工业CNC机器开始由计算机驱动时，人类在制造过程中所做的很多事情都变成了起草3d模型，将其转移到机器上然后查看结果的问题。 尽管那都是昂贵的，但这类机器要花费数十万甚至数百万美元。 他们需要仓库和专家来管理它们。

软件使之脱离计算机 (Software Makes it out of the Computer)

Anything that software can do will get faster, smaller, cheaper. Now we have the Glowforge and other similar machines. They are a few thousand dollars, not exactly a household item yet, but something a small makerspace/cafe can have in the back room. Ten years from now you might find that there are better 3d printers, ones that don’t need constant work to run. 3d modelling software that is easy and intuitive. Laser cutters that sit nicely in the garage. Embroidery machines that are cheap enough that they live next to the old singer sewing machine.

软件可以做的任何事情都会变得更快，更小，更便宜。 现在我们有了Glowforge和其他类似的机器。 它们是几千美元，还不算是家用物品，而是一间小makerspace / cafe可以在后室摆放的东西。 从现在开始的十年后，您可能会发现有更好的3d打印机，而这些打印机不需要持续的工作即可运行。 简单直观的3D建模软件。 激光切割机可以很好地放置在车库中。 足够便宜的绣花机，可以住在旧歌手缝纫机旁边。

Right now, most of the things we buy come from far away and they are finished products. As these digital fabrication tools become more widespread, that will change. The things that are small, common, everyday — increasingly we will create them either in our home or just down the street. Instead of shipping them from half a world away, we will make them locally.

目前，我们购买的大多数商品都来自遥远的地方，它们都是成品。 随着这些数字制造工具变得越来越普遍，这将改变。 日常琐碎的小事-越来越多的我们将在家里或在街上创造它们。 与其将它们从半个世界运送出去，我们将在本地制造它们。

The externalities of our dependence on shipping are staggering. Ships coming from China to North America produce an unbelievable amount of greenhouse gases. If we included that in our price calculations we would see that our trinkets cost far, far more than we are willing to pay for them.

我们对运输的依赖的外部性令人震惊。 从中国到北美的船舶产生大量令人难以置信的温室气体。 如果我们将其包括在价格计算中，我们会发现小装饰品的成本远远高于我们愿意为之支付的价格。

It does change the equation though. If we can make much of what we use, what we rely on, it means we don’t need to shop like we do now. The problem is that most of us rely on consumerism not only for the things we buy but for the jobs that supply the money we use to buy things. If the machines can make most of the things, there is no reason to buy most of it, at least not beyond the raw materials (it will be a long time before its all the things, for a while it will be the small things, the easy things). Everything becomes software, and software is infinitely replicable.

它确实改变了方程式。 如果我们可以充分利用我们所依赖的东西，那就意味着我们不需要像现在这样购物。 问题在于，我们大多数人不仅依赖于购买商品，而且依赖于提供购买商品所用货币的工作，都依赖消费主义。 如果机器能够完成大部分任务，那么就没有理由购买大部分任务，至少没有超出原材料的范围(所有任务需要很长时间才能完成，有一段时间是小事情，简单的事情)。 一切都变成软件，并且软件是无限可复制的。

I’m not saying we won’t still buy things, but fewer of them, and usually only more expensive, more valuable things. For instance, a car… we will still buy cars. The day where digital manufacturing of something on the level of a car is possible is still a long way away.

我并不是说我们仍然不会购买东西，而是减少购买，通常只会购买更昂贵，更有价值的东西。 例如，一辆汽车……我们仍然会购买汽车。 可以在汽车水平上进行数字化制造的日子还有很长的路要走。

Clothing though, that might not be so far away… right now the laser cutter can cut the cloth to pattern, the sewing is mostly automated, the finishing too.

但是，衣服可能不会那么遥远……现在，激光切割机可以将布料切割成图案，缝纫大部分是自动化的，整理也是如此。

A cell phone? Well, no… but that’s mostly because of the chip fabrication. Most of the rest of it, that can be produced using digital manufacturing at a consumer scale.

一个手机？ 好吧，不……但这主要是因为芯片制造。 其余大多数可以使用数字化生产在消费者规模下生产。

其他自动化领域 (Other Areas of Automation)

Self-driving cars are the next thing. That’s going to happen faster and slower than people think. In the short term, they are not going to replace as many drivers as we might think, but they are going to allow those drivers to accomplish more, and they will reduce accidents, which will have another set of societal impacts. Jobs will vanish as accidents decrease. It’s as simple as a truck driver not getting into an accident because he wasn’t the one driving when he started to drift off. Later the driver will start to go away and the vehicle will do the trip solo.

接下来是自动驾驶汽车。 这将比人们想象的更快和更慢地发生。 在短期内，他们不会取代我们想像的那样多的驾驶员，但是他们将允许这些驾驶员完成更多的工作，并且他们将减少事故的发生，这将产生另一组社会影响。 随着事故的减少，工作将消失。 就像卡车司机没有发生事故一样简单，因为他不是开始下车的唯一驾驶者。 之后，驾驶员将开始走开，并且车辆将独自旅行。

Then there are the creative industries. We keep saying that those are going to be where people keep their jobs. Nope, sorry. Look at the state of deepfakes. They aren’t perfect, not yet… but they are getting there. I can see a decent actor who’s a bit lazy and a bit greedy deciding to license their image to a studio, some kind of long-term deal where the actor doesn’t have to show up. At first, it will be stand-ins getting their image replaced by the better-known star. Later, as the software improves, the stand-in won’t be needed. The AI will create the performance — possibly lending it more pathos, more feeling, more depth than the human could have had they been present.

然后是创意产业。 我们一直说，这些将是人们保留工作的地方。 不，谢谢。 看一下深造的状态。 他们还不是完美的，还不是……但是他们正在到达那里。 我可以看到一个体面的演员，有点懒惰，有点贪心，决定将自己的形象授权给工作室，这是演员不必露面的长期协议。 首先，将是替身拍摄，用更知名的明星取代他们的形象。 后来，随着软件的改进，不再需要替代。 人工智能将创造这种表演-可能给人类带来更多的悲哀，更多的感觉，更多的深度。

Eventually, that will be the whole movie. Someday a movie director on a feature film might be a one-person show. A single human at a computer and the result is exactly their vision, created for tens of dollars, not millions.

最终，这将是整部电影。 总有一天，一部长片电影的导演可能是一个人表演。 一个人坐在一台计算机上，其结果就是他们的愿景，他们的愿景是花费数十美元而不是数百万美元。

It’s already happened to music. It is what is killing the studios, not piracy, democracy. Anyone can create music at home on a computer and distribute it to the world. They don’t even have to be good at it. At the same time, AI is getting good at creating music. In many cases better than the humans it is replacing.

音乐已经发生了。 这是在杀害制片厂，而不是盗版和民主。 任何人都可以在家中使用计算机创作音乐并将其传播到全世界。 他们甚至不必擅长于此。 同时，人工智能在创造音乐方面也越来越出色。 在许多情况下，它要比人类要好。

Then there’s human interaction. Chatbots are getting good enough that we can’t tell the difference between them and real people. To top it off, some people are more comfortable with the machine than with their fellow humans, and that’s increasing. Therapy is actually becoming automated.

然后是人类的互动。 聊天机器人已经足够好了，我们无法分辨它们与真实人之间的区别。 最重要的是，有些人对这台机器比对他们的同伴更舒服，而且这种情况正在增加。 治疗实际上正在变得自动化。

Software is eating everything.

软件正在吞噬一切。

救恩 (Salvation)

Why do I start by saying automation might be our salvation then?

为什么我首先说自动化可能是我们的救赎呢？

Because everything that is happening with AI takes fewer resources than the things it replaces.

因为AI所发生的一切占用的资源少于它所取代的事物。

When I make something on the Glowforge I really use that wood, I use every bit of it I can. More importantly, though, I don’t ship it, I don’t warehouse it, it’s all produced locally — even the wood itself.

当我在Glowforge上做东西时，我真的会用那种木头，我会尽其所能。 更重要的是，尽管我不发货，也不仓库，它们都是本地生产的，甚至是木材本身。

A self-driving vehicle that is delivering the last few things that can’t be made locally will waste far less than a human driver. The vehicle will be cheaper to make because it won’t need to keep human comfort in mind and one that is a passenger vehicle will only need to keep comfort in mind, not human control.

无人驾驶汽车提供的是本地无法制造的最后几件东西，其浪费的程度将远远少于人类驾驶员。 这种车辆的制造成本较低，因为它不需要记住人的舒适性，而乘用车则只需要记住舒适性，而不是人为控制。

Virtual therapists won’t require an office that is heated, with electric lights, a lobby, etc.

虚拟治疗师不需要加热，带电灯的办公室，大厅等。

We will be able to use less.

我们将能够减少使用。

Then there is the human cost of our activities.

这就是我们活动的人力成本。

I have a bad shoulder, I’ve been working in IT for more than twenty years. I do physio for it, but it hurts, it hurts a great deal. It is the result of years and years of working with a mouse. It’s a common injury in our society, once of the most common in fact.

我的肩膀不好，我从事IT工作已有20多年了。 我为此做生理疗法，但是很痛，很痛。 这是使用鼠标多年的结果。 这是我们社会中常见的伤害，事实上曾经是最常见的伤害。

Work has always broken us down. Hunter-gatherer tribes didn’t have that list of physical maladies, in fact, they tended to be healthy for far longer than one would think and were also happier.

工作总是使我们失望。 亨特-采集者部落没有这些身体不适的清单，事实上，他们的健康状况往往比人们认为的更长，而且也更加幸福。

That’s because they could choose work — or not. Most of the time hunter/gatherer tribes worked around twelve hours a week and their activities were highly varied. Right now, if you choose to work twelve hours a week you will starve to death and society rewards specialization.

那是因为他们可以选择工作，也可以不选择。 大部分时间，猎人/采集者部落每周工作约十二小时，他们的活动差异很大。 现在，如果您选择每周工作十二小时，您将饿死，社会将奖励专业化。

新观点 (A New Point of View)

Automation will lead to a different way of looking at work. It has to. There won’t be enough jobs for everyone to work forty hours a week, so we have to figure out some way of apportioning resources that isn’t the current capitalist model. Maybe a UBI, maybe something else entirely. Hell, maybe Star Trek style post-scarcity. No matter what, it will be different, and maybe that will let us enjoy being human, living in this world, spending our time with those we love and doing work we genuinely enjoy, because we are doing it for the joy, not for survival.

自动化将导致一种不同的工作方式。 它必须。 没有足够的工作让每个人每周工作40个小时，因此我们必须找出一种并非目前的资本主义模式分配资源的方法。 也许是UBI，也许完全是其他东西。 地狱，也许是星际迷航风格的后稀有。 无论如何，情况都会有所不同，也许那会让我们享受人类的乐趣，生活在这个世界上，与我们所爱的人共度时光，并做我们真正享受的工作，因为我们这样做是为了快乐，而不是为了生存。