>>The information on the automat was pretty fascinating stuff. In the late 1970s, early 1980s we replaced much of our automat food service in the plant for hot cooked meals during contract negotiations. These mechanized food dispensaries were a source of headaches with workers losing much money when the machine malfunctioned and delivered no food.<<
Most likely a lack of maintenance, or an inability to maintain or upgrade because the manufacturer was gone and could not provide new parts. Happens all the time in the world of technology. How many of you could get a floppy disk read right now? >>Advanced robotics is the application of a new technology to "advanced >>automation." It is not one device or invention that constitutes a new >>technological regime. It is the coalescing of new technologies and new inventions that begins and accelerates the revolution in the productive forces. << One point is that new automation simply replaces old automation. For example, we now have Coke machines in Japan that use Java programming, communicate with the company when they need refilled or are malfunctioning, and provide machine-read information to customers using mobile phone cameras. They can even debit an account (so you don't need to use change or a bill) that is set up through the phone service provider and processed through the Coke machine interacting with the mobile phone. But I would bet the most time-consuming aspect and therefore one that uses a lot of labor is someone has to go clean up the waste receptacle area placed next to such machines (Japanese often, as soon as they see a trash bin in public, dispose of everything they can, including the kitchen sink). The materials facts of this world as we now live it include realities like Haitians piling up pieces of rubble to build their new houses. Or that over a billion people (at least) suffer from malnutrition. That 1 in 10 Americans goes to bed hungry while the country suffers from an epidemic of obesity. That much of the world lives in physical conditions not much different than what Dickens described in the Victorian era. I'm not sure what all this leads up to, but I don't think a revolution in productive forces quite captures it. CJ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
