Robotic Automation: Part 1

This is another one of this "ahah! moments." why didn't I see this earlier?

Soon, automation and robots will take over 95% of jobs. What's left will be creative jobs that require a lot of education (Not the present form of education that we think of, but the kind where you have to know a lot about a lot of things). Jobs like: Inventors, Engineers (of all kind), Artists and Designers, as well as resource managers, accountants, and sadly lawyers, salesmen, and politicians will be just about the only jobs necessary for our society.

In fact, it's starting right now. Your jobs are slowly being taken away and you probably don't realize it.

Customer service? --Nah, you're an actor, everything's scripted and a robot could do your job, you just sit here and pretend that you can help people.

Manufacturing? --Definitely nope. Your jobs were taken away a long time ago and only the poorest, weakest companies are relying on humans.

Bankers? --Nope. Finance isn't about making decisions, it's about upselling you on different loans or lying about your qualifications so that you get a different kind of loan. The hard work of finance is taken care of by mathematically algorithms. And Tellers? Ever heard of an Automatic Teller Machine? If people could figure out how to use one they wouldn't go to a teller.

Wake up everyone! We as a human race have hit the ceiling of our present understanding of how life is supposed to work. It's time to evolve our way of thinking or be left behind!

People talked about this day back in the 70s when robotics were taking hold of the human mind. Slowly machines started manufacturing things for us. Then, last year, the 3D printer became a valid reality. Anyone can obtain one if they want one... Except for maybe people outside of Amazon's shipping radius of 75+ countries.

The future is now.

We live in a world where anyone can make any product that they can think of and have it in under 1 month. How you ask?

1. Hire a freelancer from one of the freelance sites like Odesk to do a CAD drawing of a sketch that you drew. Can't draw? Hire a 13 year old next door to do it for you. 

2. Next, hire another freelancer online or a local who you know has a 3D printer to produce 1 prototype of the device.

3. Record a video of the device in action using your Cell phone.

4. Hire a video editor freelancer to mash up the video and make it interesting--actually, maybe even come to them before you record it and ask for tips and that you'll hire them to edit it when you're done.

5. Share your video online on social media.

6. Set up an online campaign through one of the big online advertisers (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc etc) under a pay per click model.

7. Use the same process to design and create the boxes that you'll be shipping in.

8. For the first few orders you can rely on someone else to use their 3D printer to print your product. After a while though you can get your own 3D printer and print a product every time you sell it.

--Guess what? If you use this model you effectively diminish the business risk down to just the price of hiring freelancers, the cost of a 3d printer, and any piecemeal fees for things like paying UPS to ship it, paying for 3D plastic reels, paying an online store a commission, etc.--Let me break down that cost for you: Freelance designers will design packaging for you for $20 in some other country. Editors charge $15-$50 to edit a simple video of your product and make it presentable. A CAD designer will probably charge you $15-100 to make your thingamajig. The 3D printer only costs $1500.

That means your first prototype will cost somewhere less than $2,000

That's $166/Mo for a year, or $5.50/day for 365 days. --Go without that video game you're eyeing, skip lunch every day, cut corners here and there until you come up with $2,000. Borrow the money from a pool of friends, pawn your old toys, or even take out a microloan.

After that, all of your expenses are -per product-. That's fancy because that means when a customer buys your product you already know: it costs this much to make it, plus I need to earn back my $2000, plus I want to make X dollars per unit as my share for being an inventor and risk taker. If the customer complains about the price, tell them to go make it themselves, because this is the minimum price you could make it for.

And that's only talking about tangible products--there is also software/digital products which you can use the same formula to get the same result.

We live in the future!