About Me

I am a manufacturing engineering technician living in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio.

This line of work has afforded me an opportunity to witness first-hand the technological transformation of manufacturing processes. For me this subject is more than academic; my livelihood has depended on adapting to these changes. Over the course of my career this has basically involved the introduction of computer numerically-controlled machinery (CNC), the advent of stereolithography (3D printing) and additive machining, and the general computerization of the shop floor. These changes led to increased efficiency and the ability to produce more with less workers. It is natural for someone in my position to muse over where all this technological change is ultimately taking us.

This website sprang from a conversation in the lunch-room at work one day. We were discussing an article in MIT Technology Review about robots replacing human workers and someone asked a typical blue-collar question, “If they replace us all with robots, who is going to buy their stuff?” I began to wonder what would happen not only to the workers, but to the entire capitalist system if things got to this point. This website reflects what I have found, or better, what I am still finding.

I see that technology will soon bring profound changes to our social structure. At the same time I see much misunderstanding and confusion about these issues, even among so-called experts. I feel a responsibility to contribute something to this debate. My aim is to popularize the subject and to make the discussion more inclusive. These changes will affect all of us; we should all have a voice in how we proceed.

My unique focus is on the question of whether the proposition of historical materialism is of value in studying and understanding the social changes effected by these new disruptive technologies. This is a complex subject and there are many prerequisite sub-topics to understand it fully. A website like this seemed the best vehicle for its presentation.

Thank you for visiting.

The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping -

Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the netherworld whom he has called up by his spells.

-Marx and Engels

Man today is confronted with the most fundamental choice; not that between Capitalism and Communism, but that between robotism (of both the capitalist and communist variety), or Humanistic Communitarian Socialism. Most facts seem to indicate that he is choosing robotism, and that means, in the long run, insanity and destruction. But all these facts are not strong enough to destroy faith in man's reason, good will, and sanity. As long as we can think of other alternatives, we are not lost; as long as we can consult together and plan together, we can hope. But, indeed, the shadows are lengthening; the voices of insanity are becoming louder. We are in reach of achieving a state of humanity which corresponds to the vision of our great teachers; yet we are in danger of the destruction of all civilization, or of robotization.

- Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955)

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness... It is not the consciousness of men that determines their social being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

- Karl Marx

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist....Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

- John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money