Towards An Automated Future

Throughout the past century there has been a clear trend towards the automation of tasks previously requiring manual labour. This automation has been accelerated with the advent of computers and the Internet. Such automation is generally seen as being more efficient, and therefore beneficial to the economy. But by its nature, automation displaces jobs, and where do those jobs go?

Fears of job loss are generally assuaged by the assertion that those jobs will give way to better jobs, which is better for everyone. If coffee shops are automated, then people who would be baristas can become nurses and technologists, positions perceived to be of more value to society. However, these “better” positions require more training, typically in the form of extensive schooling, than the jobs they represent an upgrade from. And while it may be admitted that many of these jobs are more “challenging”, what isn’t acknowledged is that such a position is therefore more demanding on the worker. Someone with the talent to be an excellent barista does not necessarily have the talents to be a nurse or lab technician. For the jobs that are just a step above the jobs currently being automated it may very much be the case that the only barrier to the vast majority of the population is a lack of education. But to think it will remain that way is nothing short of naive.

Book Title Generator

Looking around bookstores and libraries I get probably more amusement than most out of the terribly clichéd and outright cheesy titles so often bestowed to books sitting comfortably in the best-seller racks or among the ranks of genre fiction. In the cases of plodding fantasy epics and conspiracy-laced spy-thrillers, the pattern is so blatant that it could be created by the most rudimentary algorithm. So rudimentary in fact that I decided I would just write it for my own amusement. A fair warning, some of these titles get awfully close to titles of already published books, which only goes to illustrate how close this algorithm is to the true one used by publishers and creatively bankrupt authors the world over. Enjoy :)

Thriller Title Here

Clicking the above generates the title of an exciting new thriller that could have been written by Robert Ludlum, Dan Brown, or Dean Koontz.

Fantasy Title Here

Clicking the above generates the title of an epic fantasy novel in a series of never-ending novels that could have flowed from the pen of George R. R. Martin or Robert Jordan.