Offering a way out of the mess

(Note: This post is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline. It includes focus on saving transportation energy by expanded forms of telecommuting.)

Offering a way out of the mess:

1. Manufacturing machines operable remotely via the internet.
2. Raise everybody’s competency.
3. Workstations made so that their function can be quickly changed, and daily on-the-job training for all employees.
4. Complete home education for everybody, primarily via internet.
5. Everybody works.
6. “Work from home” expanded hugely.
7. Every person to have access to their position in the “Big Picture”, and to have a vote in the way things go.

Expanding to some extent on these items:

1. Machines operable via internet. For example, a drill press that is operable from a home workstation, as if on the actual work site doing its use. Not a robot standing there using a conventional drill press, no; a drillpress designed and built to be operated via instructions on the internet while sending signals describing what it is doing, to the operator via internet connection. And yes, once a particular use of the drill press to make a hole in a part, that is to be done repeatedly, can copy down the sequence made by the human operator, then repeat them thereafter for however many parts are needed. Meanwhile, the distant human operator is doing new uses to make new kinds of parts, best use of machine and of people. One such category of this would be in the making of the machines that are operable via the internet.

2. Raise everybody’s competency. This enables the whole system to perform ever better. This means everybody, including the CEO, the PhD, the sales clerk, the machine operator, the single mom at home, the homeless man on the street, too. Everybody, no one gets left out.

3. Workstations made so that their function can be quickly changed, and daily on-the-job training for all employees so as to be ever better at utilizing the alternate setups for their workstation. This was shown decades ago, as part of the “just-in-time” method of manufacturing.

4. Complete home education for everybody, primarily via internet and package shipment services where necessary. This, like the OJT, is part of the “raise everybody’s competency” function.

5. Everybody works. Even if only minutes per day, or “digging holes and filling them up again” type exercise. This builds mental and physical muscles in familiarity with the world’s resources, thus available in time of need for real projects to fulfill needs.

6. “Work from home” expanded hugely, more than just “telecommuting” once a week to save gas. This not only cuts transportation commute energy, but enables interruptions, spurts of progress, and location of personnel very flexibly, for human efficiency.

7. Every person to have access to their position in the “Big Picture”, and to have a vote in the way things go. Although I have only vague ideas as to how to generate and communicate the over model of the “big picture” at present, that it can be done, seems probably, given purpose.

J E D Cline 20050828