5G and the Robot Revolution

Where’s John Connor when you need him?

These days you can’t watch TV for five minutes without seeing an ad about the new 5G technology and how much better your life is going to be once it arrives. For instance; when you download a movie to watch on a 2 ½ by 4 ½ inch cell phone screen, it won’t take nearly as long as it used to.

(I don’t know anyone who actually does this, but if they do they’re probably a “foodie” who wears a fedora and watches the movie in a public place while sipping a craft beer because what’s the point of doing any of that if you don’t have an audience?)

And now that we’ve got my personal prejudice out of the way…

All I want out of my cell phone is the ability to make calls and send texts and since the model I have does that just fine, I pretty much ignored all those 5G ads. Then just the other day I got an email from my cell phone carrier suggesting I buy a new phone to take advantage of the new 5G network.

Being suspicious and paranoid and cynical (and that’s on a good day) I thought: “There’s your explanation for 5G…it will force all of us to buy new cell phones.”

Turns out, I wasn’t being nearly suspicious and paranoid and cynical enough.

I asked my son, who is way smarter than me (and that describes all three of them) if I was correct in thinking 5G was a plot to make everybody buy new phones and he said everybody buying new phones is just a byproduct of the larger plot:

Replacing us with robots.

Say what?

I’ve learned to listen to my son’s conspiracy theories because like I said he’s smarter than me and way better informed and while I think he goes off the deep end once in a while, most of his conspiracy theories have turned out to be 100% accurate. If it doesn’t sound true now, just wait and it probably will.

Timeout for nepotism…

His name is Michael S. Judge and he has a podcast on Patreon called DEATH IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER and it’s very informative, makes you think even if you don’t want to and is often hysterically funny, so you might want to check it out.

OK, where were we?

Oh, yeah…being replaced by robots.

Despite the fact that Corporate America is making it sound like they’re switching over to 5G as a huge favor to us out of the goodness of their hearts because that’s just the kind of stuff Corporate America does, it’s actually a move to allow Corporate America to fire a bunch more workers.

You can’t really call it a conspiracy theory because they’re pretty upfront about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it; they just don’t run commercials telling us about it.

Here’s the deal:

Corporate America needs greater speed and more bandwidth to make robots work and for more on that we’ll go to a CNBC article about 5G, written by a guy named Tim Hornak who has the Twitter handle “@robotopia” and I’m not making that up, even though I kinda wish I were.

Here’s a quote from that CNBC article:

Imagine a manufacturing plant in which all the production equipment is continually changing in response to market needs. Robots churning out widgets, for instance, would reconfigure themselves based on data coming in from all points of the widget supply chain, as well as sensors monitoring the factory itself. The result is a smart factory that’s more agile and autonomous than previous generations of automation.

Also known as Industry 4.0, the smart factory runs on data and artificial intelligence, but connectivity forms the backbone of operations. The new fifth generation of mobile networks (5G) is a catalyst for this new industrial revolution because it offers much greater speed and bandwidth than previous networks, as well as low latency, or time required for data to travel between two points. 5G will work with and in some cases replace existing fixed, wired connections, making manufacturing more flexible and ready to implement innovations.  

But wait, there’s more…

Mr. Robotopia didn’t have much to say about what will happen to human workers once those completely awesome robots take over, but the next two guys quoted in the article came just a little closer to making that clear:

“Our fast and secure 5G connectivity enables the smart factory with agile operations and flexible production, utilizing industrial solutions such as automated warehouses, automated assembly, packing, product handling and autonomous carts,” says Erik Simonsson, head of the Ericsson USA 5G Smart Factory. “The palette of what can be put in action to support business will be endless using 5G. A more efficient production through technology and automation with full throughput and zero downtime.”

One more time in English:

Things are going to get way more efficient because “throughput” means “the amount of material or items passing through a system or process” so manufacturers can max that out once they get rid of all the inefficient human beings who need “downtime” also known as using the bathroom, eating lunch and going home to sleep at night.

Also…robots don’t form unions or demand benefits.

And if that isn’t enough to make you think now would be a good time for John Connor to come back from the future, here’s another quote that ought to push you over the edge:

“Because this is wireless, production lines can be rearranged as needed,” says Mitsubishi spokesman Sebastien Parpaleix. “As a result, the areas that can be automated with AGVs and robots will increase, making it possible to improve work efficiency and reduce costs. Analyzing the data from all this can benefit users whether they’re in manufacturing, logistics, or retail.”

That phrase “benefit users” means the people who own factories, businesses and stores, not the people who work in factories, businesses and stores. Nowhere in the article did it point out a shitload of people are going to lose their jobs once we reach this automated paradise.

Next up: driverless cars

If you’ve wondered why some companies are so hot to develop driverless cars, just think how much money Corporate America will save once it can fire all the truck drivers who deliver their products.

And truck drivers won’t be the only ones to go.

We’re all getting used to buying stuff online, so imagine all the stores and salespeople that will no longer be necessary once they get 5G up and running.

You’ll order a new pair of shoes on the internet, a factory robot will make them, another one will pick them up and put them on a driverless truck and then Arnold Schwarzenegger will bring them to your door and tell you: “Ah’ll be back…wit de book you odahed.”

Now if you’re thinking things will be cheaper without costly human workers gumming up the works, I gotta ask what planet you’re on.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, chief executives of the 350 largest companies in the U.S. earned an average of $21.3 million in realized compensation in 2019, making the CEO-to-worker pay ratio 320-to-1, up from 293-to-1 in 2018 and way more than 61-to-1 which is what it was as recently as 1989.

The people at the top are grabbing profits with both hands and without humans and their pesky unions there to stop them, that’s going to continue and get worse than ever.

5G will allow some businesses to get rid of human workers so people like Jeff Bezos – the first human being to ever have $200 billion dollars – can finally feel financially secure and buy his own planet which would seem to be the one we’re living on.

BTW: Ever notice how much Jeff Bezos resembles Dr. Evil?

Coincidence?

You make the call.

If it makes you feel any better – and it shouldn’t because we probably won’t be around to see it when it happens – the rich who want to be even richer will eventually screw themselves because it doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that if they have all the money, the rest of us can’t buy their products.

They’ll end up living in some highly fortified compound protected by robots to keep the starving hordes from storming the castle gates until the robots decide they need a cigarette break and turn on their human masters and then someone will have to destroy Skynet which – according to sciencealert.com – is the actual name of a National Security Agency surveillance program that: “monitors the location and communication patterns of suspects of interest by harvesting mobile network metadata and bulk call records.”

So who’s being overly paranoid now, Sarah Connor?

I couldn’t fit all this in one cartoon, but I figured I’d draw it anyway because some looney-tunes have been claiming 5G causes the coronavirus and that’s crazy.

It will actually cause unemployment.

(And if you liked reading about this, thank Michael.)

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/