TOWNSHEND — You could, if you wanted, get up one morning and drive across the country. You could start out in Brattleboro, filling your tank in the shadow of the underpass and head out into the unknown.
You could tell people, if they asked, that you were a road scholar, that you attend Four Lane University. And in a way you would be right.
As you head South or West, you would pass the rotted hulks of the great industrial cities and huge swaths of suburbs.
And you would notice something. Everywhere you go, from Maine to Mississippi, you would find commercial strips, not unlike those in Claremont, N.H., or even Brattleboro.
They are filled with the chain stores and fast-food places that we all know, They are the coral reefs of the commercial sea, places where people come to feed, hunt, or look for mates.
In recent times, they have been one of the last places to find an entry-level job.
But if you have been to one of the big-box stores lately you may have noticed something.
Self-checkout.
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Instead of paying someone to ring up your stuff, these stores now want you to do it yourself. No big deal, right?
It's a big deal if that used to be your job.
More importantly, it might be part of a larger trend. Factories have been automating jobs for decades. Electric companies have been replacing the old analog meters with “smart meters” that can be read remotely. No more meter readers.
Given the level of technology today, it wouldn't take much to automate most of the jobs out there.
The typical fast-food place could be set up with touch screens, for example. You would make your selection, insert a bill, and collect the food, a change that would save the corporations millions.
It would also eliminate a lot of jobs.
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This prediction might not just be a weird idea cooked up by a deranged newspaper writer. It could really happen. Technology is advancing rapidly, and it is naive to think things will stay the same.
Robotics might seem like some kind of a joke or something from a bad science-fiction movie, but in a few years we could see an explosion in robotic technology that could affect all of us.
A few decades ago, most people did not comprehend how computers would change the world.
In the 1970s, computers were rare. In those dark, distant days, disco was singing its dying song, there were pay phones on every corner, and kids learned to type on manual typewriters.
There was a supercomputer over at UMass then. It was the size of a high-school gym, cost $100,000, and had less computing power than a smart phone.
Robotics might be at a similar stage of technological advancement to the stage where computers were in 1979. That means we are in for a tsunami of change.
We might not need a lot of people to run cash registers or make burgers. Someday, in the future that lurks just over the horizon, there might be a jobless economy waiting.
Meanwhile, out on the strip, cars race to beat the yellow light and a homeless man stands on a traffic island holding a cardboard sign.