The Snackbot is coming! Barring some human-induced cataclysm or just cosmic bad luck (e.g., an asteroid hitting us or something), I think we're going to see so much more with robots in this century. Of course, the flip side of that shiny coin is that a huge proportion of humanity will be even more irrelevant than they already are, if robots get good enough at whatever they're programmed to do. Note: I don't think anybody's irrelevant -- that's one of my beefs with the capitalist economy, the winners v. losers aspects of it (e.g., rich v. poor). The litany of "get an education, get a good job" that was part of the 20th century's economic model of progress has really begun to take a tumble -- the jobs, increasingly, just aren't there to be had, and you have PhD's working far beneath their capacity. Demand for good jobs seems to have always exceeded supply.
So, you throw actually effective robots into the mix, and suddenly they're doing the jobs nobody wants to do -- the jobs historically taken up by immigrants and other needy souls. And as they get better and more diverse, then they're taking up increasingly challenging and desirable jobs, putting more and more people out of work.
What do all of those people do? Our country already fails to really help its neediest. What'll happen when all of these people are out of work? Trouble. There's a chance for self-improvement, yeah, but will people take it? And will governments make it easier or harder for people to do so? Europe and Japan, I can see doing it -- but our country? Not so much. I imagine fundamentalists staging anti-robot riots, etc.
