Do you know of any resources that explore this potential in depth (books, articles, etc..)? I'd be very curious. It's one thing to just say "building machines that can do the work for us" but what are all of the implications of this? Will the machines self maintain? Will they build themselves? How would we avoid needing massive teams of people to maintain all of this technology? How would power management and costs work? Even if it is semi-fiction I'd love to read others thoughts on the subject.
The future I and many others envision is one in which that's all taken care of by machines. From power generation to maintenance, etc.
I believe we have yet to fully appreciate the ability of a developed economy to produce jobs and work for people to do. Even if we automate the entirety of the food production, mining and energy generation industries, new forms of work will spring up to absorb anyone that may have been displaced by automation.
Whenever some work is automated, people insert themselves on top of that layer of production to form a new layer. This process continues ad infinitum. At least that's been the case for the entire history of organized human society.
I understand what the future you and others envision is (it comes up on HN all the time). What I was asking is if you have any references to someone who has actually thought very deeply about this to see if it is even feasible.
It's easy to just say machines will take care of everything. That is a long stretch from it actually happening and I think there are many fundamental problems you'd encounter trying to achieve that. Just looking for books, novels, whatever that might explore the idea a lot further.
