Athens, Georgia, based restaurant Weaver D’s Delicious Fine Foods was once honored by an American Classics awards to recognize “good, down-home food” and “unmatched hospitality” – for its “spot-on fried chicken, sweet potato casserole, buttermilk cornbread, and … signature squash casserole.” G.P. Dexter Weaver, the legendary owner, wants its service to be known as “automatic for the people”, a term fellow Athens rock band R.E.M. used as an album title.   Wherever one looks researchers are predicting that “automatic for the people” is morphing into something we might coin “automation for the people”.   Researchers at the University of Oxford indicated 47 percent of employees in the U.S. are at risk of losing their jobs due to automation. In Australia, a recent report by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) suggests 40 percent […]

In 1982, Time magazine declared the personal computer its “Machine of the Year.” Up until then, humans usually had won a “Person of the Year” distinction.   Time publisher John A. Meyers wrote, “Several human candidates might have represented 1982, but none symbolized the past year more richly, or will be viewed by history as more significant, than a machine: the computer.”  Pity those worthy humans who might have been in contention. The year 1982 was the point in history when humans became mere mortals, suffering the ignominy of garnering second place to a machine.   It hasn’t got much better. Some 33 years later, we might suggest 1982’s “Machine of the Year” has now morphed into an omnipresence of […]