May 16, 2017--Where's Waldo?

Flipping through the Sunday New York Times, I was struck by a dramatic photo on the first page of the business section.

It was of a Ford Motor Company "assembly line" in their new plant in Hangzhou, China. I put assembly line in quotes because my notion of an assembly line is a slowing-moving conveyer belt where cars are assembled by workers one stage at a time.

From what I could tell from the picture of the Hangzhou plant the cars being assembled were moving along but there wasn't a worker in sight.

See if you can spot one. I couldn't.

Ford Assembly Plant, Hangzhou, China

Workers are nowhere in sight.

This reminded me of Where's Waldo?, a series of children's books created by the English artist Martin Handford in which there are detailed illustrations depicting dozens of people doing a variety of amusing things. Hidden in their midst is Waldo. Though he is always wearing his distinctive red and white stripped shirt and a bobble hat with a pom-pom on top and large, Harry Potter type glasses, it is not easy to locate him.

Where's Waldo?

As our economy continues to struggle with the decades-long decline in good manufacturing jobs, and as politicians point out the off-shoring of so many jobs to sites such as Hangzhou, all the while pandering to worker fears of global unfairness--how foreign wages are artificially kept low in regrettable efforts to undermine the workings of the free market--there are in fact larger forces at work that are not as widely discussed and much more difficult to ameliorate.

Yes, many high-paying manufacturing jobs have been lost because in places such as Hangzhou the workers that are employed at the Ford assembly plant make on average only $4 an hour, more disruptive--even to the Chinese economy--is the exponential proliferation of robots.

Robotics more than low wages is what is fundamentally transforming the nature of work.

And not just manufacturing. Modern forms of automation are also altering how work is organized in corporate offices. Thus the question the world faces, as we see the global economy undergoing a paradigm shift, is what kinds of jobs will be available, even exist, by the middle of the 21st century.

To adapt we may need to experiment with different ways to help support employees, or permanently displaced workers. Guaranteeing a minimum annual income may be one such approach. This has been suggested, counter-intuitively, by some of the economically conservative members of the free-market-oriented Austrian School of Economics.

It is being tried in Canada among other places and it may also be time to begin to think this way here.

March 18, 2014--03/17/2014 07:13:35 PM

Talk about being under surveillance.

We drove to the Fort Lauderdale Airport to pick up a friend and planned to park in the close-in hourly garage. Just as we were approaching it I remembered that we could bypass the traditional entrance by using a special lane for cars that have a Sunpass, an electronic device that also allows cars to speed by toll booths on the Florida Turnpike. No need at the garage's Sunpass entrance to slow down, stop, open the window to reach for a parking ticket, all the while letting in a carfull of hot and humid air. And on the way out, I remembered, it would as well be automated. No need again to stop to pay cash and get change from the attendant.

"It worked!" Rona said as I glided in. But ever the skeptic she added, "Now if it works just as well on the way out, I'll be impressed."

We picked up our friend and indeed it did. We were able to avoid waiting in the cashier's line with a half dozen others as they crawled forward to the booth, enviously watching us zip through.

About 45 minutes later we were back at our place and I went right to the computer to see if there was any news from Ukraine or if they had finally managed to locate the missing Malaysian Airlines jet.

No news on either front, but waiting for me in email form was a parking receipt from the airport.

"Look at this," I said to Rona.

She looked over my shoulder. "What would anyone want that for?"

"Maybe to see if we were overcharged or for our records?"

"I suppose," Rona said, not sounded very convinced. "I'm tired. Let's go to bed."  Which we did.

The next morning, this morning, I looked more carefully at the receipt. Yes, there was a way to calculate if we were overcharged (it appeared that we hadn't been) and, yes, if I were inclined to keep records of these kinds of things--if I was traveling on business--I would want to print it out so I could be reimbursed.

But what about the section of the receipt marked Entry and Exit Information?

Entry Information
------------------
Transaction Date : 03/17/2014 07:13:35 PM
Plaza : FLL - Palm Hourly Entry
Lane : 12 

Exit Information
------------------
Transaction Date : 03/17/2014 08:20:12 PM
Processed Date : 03/17/2014 08:20:13 PM
Plaza : FLL - Main Exit Plaza
Lane : 05
Amount Charged* : $4.00

Do I really need to know that I entered at 7:13 PM? Much less at 07:13:35 PM? It was important for me to know how many seconds after 7:13 I entered the garage and then exited 12 seconds after 8:20 PM? 

I was impressed, though, to know that it took only a hundredth of a second to complete the transaction. 

I also thought that the next time I picked someone up at the airport there would no longer be a human cashier. I suppose this represents progress.

And I guess this is just another example of living in a Big Data world. 

Wouldn't it be good, I also thought, if we had as much data about that lost Malaysian plane? When and where it exited? That would be something worth working on.