Automation and the Future

Thinking out loud

Photo by Mohammad Esmaili on Unsplash

I’ve always loved automated things, even before knowing what “automation” is. Call me weird, but I’m fascinated by dishwashers… It’s the most satisfying thing, really. You take ugly, dirty-looking dishes and line them up in an arbitrary metallic box. You close it up, insert a soap tablet, and press a button. Return a few hours later, and like a magic trick, they’re clean. My mom always gets frustrated when I start the dishwasher early, but I just can’t help myself.

Time-travel to 1300, grab a random passerby, and return to 2022. Show him the dishwashing process and he’ll assume one of three things occurred.

1. Society has advanced beyond imagination, allowing us to invent a box that cleans dishes for us.
2. The witch trials failed. He has just been abducted by a family of wizards demonstrating their talents on menial tasks.
3. There is a small man hidden underneath the sink whose job it is to clean our dishes out of sight. If he’s spotted, he’s sacked.

Lately, I’ve been working on some automation projects of my own. Jeeves is a personal assistant who texts vital information I’d otherwise check manually each morning (market patterns, weather, COVID updates, news, trading account updates, etc). Such a simple project became an ever-evolving undertaking…