See Sam Harris's recent blog on this. Harris admits to zero marginal cost with this:
"Once we built the perfect labor-saving device, the cost of manufacturing new devices would approach the cost of raw materials."
Like Rifkin he also realizes that tech may one day supplant the need
for workers, so then what? Just increasing wealth inequality as he
surmises? Possible if we stay in a capitalist mode. Maybe not if we
evolve into Commons mode.
His main issue though, one not contemplated by Rifkin in this book,
is that the IoT just might gain autonomy given its virtually near
infinite connections with, well, everything.
Then what? That's why I
brought the movie Transcendence into the conversation in a
similar scenario. In the movie the AI was benevolent yet humans were
afraid it was inhuman and demanded its demise.* But there's no guarantee
it will not develop its own values and possibly eradicate the
infestation known as humanity.
* Note that while the humans shut down its 'computer' it was already
too late, since the AI had created bio/nanotech that survived to spawn a
new race anyway. That may very well be the actual case now with our
genetically modified foods that we all eat and are mutating us as we
speak.
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