This reminds me of two scenarios, the government tries to regulate
revolutionary-just discovered technologies, and the dissapearance of
work as we get more efficient;
The Movie "Chain Reaction" needs a part two where the technology takes
over the energy business;
Eddie (Keanu Reeves) works on a scientific team that is searching for
low-cost energy sources that are good for the environment, too. One
day, it seems that such a discovery has been made. Soon after,
however, the chief scientist is murdered and the invention stolen.
Eddie and fellow team member Dr. Lily Sinclair (Rachel Weisz) are
suspects in the murder and are forced to go on the run. Naturally, the
police and the FBI are in hot pursuit. Another team member Paul
(Morgan Freeman) may have some secrets to hide as well. Will the truth
come out and will the fleeing duo be captured?
A team of scientists creates a machine and process to use regular
water to produce energy. This would quickly eliminate much of the need
for oil and other traditional energy sources, hence the government
tries to suppress & develop the technology themselves. After the
celebration of their sucess the industrial warehouse that was home to
their experiment is blown to flaming bits. With one member of the team
dead and another missing two other members are the object of FBI
scrutiny. They go on the run with the feds hot on their tails. The two
lead the FBI to a secret underground facility where they find a
replica of their machine and the missing scientist. A government
conspiracy is unmasked and an exciting escape must be tried as the
machine is started up and set to blow yet another crater in the Earth.
Just as the university research team is about to prove that their new
technique will permit water to be used as a fuel, their laboratory is
sabotaged and the lab manager is killed. Eddie Kasalivich (Keanu
Reeves) stumbles onto the scene and manages not only to witness the
sabotage, but to escape from it. When he tries to talk about it to
authorities, he discovers that they think he and the other project
survivors committed the crime. In reality, a group of energy companies
have conspired with interested parties in the government to completely
erase all notion of the existence of a way to use water as fuel. The
project sponsor (Morgan Freeman) wants Eddie to turn himself in, but
before he can do that, he must find enough evidence to clear himself
and his friends. But in order to succeed, Eddie must avoid
assassination attempts by the real perpetrators. ~ Clarke Fountain,
All Movie Guide
http://movies.aol.com/movie/chain-reaction/2488/synopsis
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115857/plotsummary
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115857/usercomments
http://www.chemsoc.org/ExemplarChem/entries/2004/bristol_eaimkhong/Chain%%20reaction...
...social activist Rifkin (Biosphere Politics) contends that worldwide
unemployment will increase as new computer-based and communications
technologies eliminate tens of millions of jobs in the manufacturing,
agricultural and service sectors. He traces the devastating impact of
automation on blue-collar, retail and wholesale employees, with a
chapter devoted to African Americans. While a small elite of corporate
managers and knowledge workers reap the benefits of the high-tech
global economy, the middle class continues to shrink and the workplace
becomes ever more stressful, according to Rifkin. As the market
economy and public sector decline, he forsees the growth of a "third
sector"-voluntary and community-based service organizations-that will
create new jobs with government support to rebuild decaying
neighborhoods and provide social services.
http://www.amazon.com/End-Work-Jeremy-Rifkin/dp/0874778247
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The End of Work
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A survey of recent technological developments and trends in the
agricultural, manufacturing, and service sectors suggests that a near-
workerless world is fast approaching and may arrive well before
society has sufficient time to either debate its broad implications or
prepare for its full impact. page 106
A new generation of sophisticated computer-driven robots may soon
replace many of the remaining manual tasks on the land, potentially
transforming the modern farm into an automated outdoor factory. page
115
The new gene-splicing and cell-fusion techniques allow scientists to
cross virtually all biological boundries, recombining genes from
totally unrelated species. Species are no longer veiwed in organismic
terms as indivisible entities, but more as mainframes containing
programmed genetic cassettes that can be reedited, resequenced and
recombined by proper manipulation in the laboratory. page 119
The ability to manipulate living entities, to treat life as an
assemblage of individual genetic traits. By eliminating the
constraints imposed by biological boundries, and by reducing
microorganisms, plants, and animals to their constituent building
blocks, scientists can begin to organize life as a manufactured
process. page 119
The tremendous economic potential of biotechnology has drawn chemical,
pharmacuetical, agribusiness, and medical companies together into a
new life-science complex whose commercial clout is likely to equal or
surpass that of the petrochemical complex of the past century. page
119
By granting broad patent protection over genetically engineered life
forms, the government is giving its imprimatur to the idea that living
creatures are reducible to the status of manufactured inventions,
subject to the same engineering standards and commercial exploitation
as inanimate objects. page 119
While the first technological revolution in agriculture replaced
animal power and human labor with machinery and chemicals, an emerging
biotechnology revolution is soon going to replace land cultivation
with laboratory cultures, changing forever the way the world veiws the
production of food. page 13
Now, chemical and pharacuetical companies hope to use genetic-
engineering technologies to eliminate the farmer altogether. The goal
is to convert food production into a wholly industrial process by
bypassing both the organism and the outdoors, and "farming" at the
molecular level in the factory. / Silicon Collar Workers and
"pharming." page 16
The payment of higher wages to workers who cannot be described by any
standards as anything more elevated than machine minders is rapidly
becoming unattractive, and where a man is employed solely for
unloading one machine and loading another . . . the substitution of a
robot is not only a glaringly obvious course course but also
increasingly easy to justify financially.
Moreover a robot is not subject to the random variations in
performance . . . and for all intents and purposes working as hard,
as conscientiously, and as consistently at the end of the shift as it
is at the beginning. page 131
In virtually every major manufacturing activity, human labor is being
steadily replaced by machines. Today, millions of working people
around the world find themselves trapped between economic eras and
increasingly marginalized by the introduction of new laborsaving
technology. By the mid-decades of the coming century, the blue collar
worker will have passed from history, a casualty of the Third
Industrial Revolution and the relentless march toward ever grrater
technological efficiency.
Computers that can understand speech, read script, and perform tasks
previously carried out by human beings foreshadow a new era in which
service industries come increasingly under the domain of automation.
The computerization and automation ofthe service sector has barely
begun, but it is already having a deep effect on the state of the
economy, impacting both productivity and employment. page 143
The dazzling array of high-tech electronic office equipment is
bringing the fully electronic office closer to reality. "In the long
run," says Paul Saffo, a director of the Institute for the Future, we
are going to become paperless in the same way we became
horesless . . . horses are still around, but they're just ridden by
little girls and hobbyists." page 148
Corporate management expects to save untold billions of dollars in
productivity gains and labor savings with the new silicon-collar
office workforce. For millions of clerical workers, the electronic
office spells the end of the career line. page 148
The intelligent machine is steadily moving up the office hierarchy,
"subsuming" not only routine clerical tasks but even work
traditionally performed by management. page 149
The new information technologies and telecommunications technologies
are also making offices less relevant as centers of operations.
Portable fax machines, modems, and wireless laptop computers allow
business to be conducted either on location or from home. AT&T's
virtual office; Employees are provided with a mobile office, complete
with laptop, fax, and cellular phone, and literally sent home.
Companies, anxious to increase the productivity of their workers, see
telecommunications as the wave of future.
Some retailers are eliminating the cashier altogether. More
sophisticated robots equiped with speech recognition and
conversational abilities will likely be commonplace in depatement
stores, convenience stores, fast-food resturaunts, and other retail
and service businesses by the early part of the next century. page 153
Jack Mcdonald forsees a nationwide network of digital servers on which
movies, software games, music, and virtually any other kind of
entertainment you can think of, will be stored digitally, and
transmitted over telecommunication links to retail stores and
eventually right into your living room. Electronic transmission of
products will likely mean the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the
warehousing and transportation industries in the coming years. page
156 .
Electronic shopping is also quickly penetrating the retail market,
threatening the jobs of tens of thousands of sales clerks, managers,
stock personnel, maintenance crews, security gaurds, and others who
make up the retail employment complex. page 156
Electronic shopping: The laying down of a nationwide information
superhighway and the opening up of hundreds of new cable channels with
interactive capabilities promises a flood of home-shopping services. /
Electronic home shopping will take over more and more of the nation's
one-trillion-dollar-a-year retail market and the convenience it offers
of not having to travel to the mall. / Its a low cost distribution
system, you don't need thousands of stores or inventory at each
location. / EOW page 156
Home TV shopping, with its just in time retailing, is going to pose a
signifigant challenge to the nation's highway oriented retail
culture. . . a serious threat to the country's traditional retail
industry and to the 19 million people it employs. . . as the TV tube
becomes the salesperson. page 157
During the heyday of highway culture, retailers and real-estate
developers built more than 39,000 shopping centers across the united
states. When shopping at home really takes off many of these malls
will be obsolete. Their steady decline will mean a significant drop in
employment in the retail sector. page 157
The End of Work (1996)
by Jeremy Rifkin
http://www.amazon.com/End-Work-Jeremy-Rifkin/dp/0874778247
http://www.bigissueground.com/scienceandfuture/blair-endofwork.shtml
http://www.basicincome.com/basic_rifkin.htm
Strap in, it should be a good ride.
