RB | Bach Seat - Part 185

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RB | August 23, 2011

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Foxconn Replacing 1 Million Humans with Robots

I recently noted from the Bach Seat that the manufacturer of all things digital, Foxconn was moving production to Brazil from China because of rampant wage inflation. Now it seems that the Taiwanese technology giant has decided that to drop people from production altogether. TechEye reports that Terry Gou, founder, and chairman of Foxconn (2038), told Xinhuanet that the firm will replace up to 1 million people with robots over the next three years.

Mr. Gou told Xinhuanet that Foxconn now has 10,000 robots and the number will be increased to 300,000 next year and 1 million in three years. The manufacturer now has over 1.2 million employees with one million of them based in China.

Mr. Gou told Xinhuanet the robots will replace humans who do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding, and assembling of products for firms such as Apple (AAPL), HP (HPQ), Cisco (CSCO), Dell (DELL), ASUS (2357), Intel (INTC), Microsoft (MSFT), Nintendo (7978) and Sony (SNE).

Foxconn needs to automate more of its manufacturing processes in order to make up for labor shortages and stay ahead of its competitors, said Amy Teng, an analyst with research firm Gartner (IT), told PCWorld.

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Mr. Gou told employees that he wanted to move the company’s workers “higher up the value chain, beyond basic manufacturing work,” according to a company statement cited by PCWorld.

While no one will deny that robots are efficient and they also don’t commit suicide due to harsh working conditions. But as we painfully know here in Detroit, robots create job losses, thus generating unintended consequences throughout the world economy. What could be the unintended consequences of 1 million unemployed Foxconn workers in the Peoples Republic of China?

If political leaders like former Gateway Computers CEO and Michigan Governor Dick Snyder and President Obama were truly interested in creating jobs in Michigan, they would be welcoming this announcement and pushing hard for Foxconn to build its robot factory in Detroit, where land is cheap and skilled robotics technicians cast off by the auto-makers can tend to the Foxconn robots.

iPad4, made in Detroit

Foxconn looks to use robots to replace a million human workers (slashgear.com)
Foxconn Employees Are Being Replaced By Robot Workers [Foxconn] (gizmodo.com)
Foxconn Planning To Hire 1 Million Robots (techcrunch.com)

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: 2011, Apple, China, Detroit, Dick Snyder, Foxconn, iPhone, Robot, Terry Gou

RB | August 18, 2011

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D-Light-ful LED Broadband

TEDGlobal has an intriguing presentation by Harald Haas who is developing a new type of light bulb that can access the Internet using light instead of radio waves. According to TEDGlobal, the professor of engineering at Edinburgh University, has been designing modulation techniques that pack more data onto existing networks, but his latest work leaps beyond wires and radio waves to transmit data via an LED bulb. The new technology will turn LED lights on and off, so fast the change is imperceptible to the human eye to enables broadband data transmission without any noticeable change in room lighting.

The system, which he calls D-Light, and hopes to commercialize under the new VLC (Visible Light Communications) brand uses OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing), The article reports the signal can be picked up by simple receivers. As of now, Haas is reporting data rates of up to 10 MBPS (faster than a typical broadband connection), and 100 MBPS by the end of this year and possibly up to 1 GB in the future.

Professor Haas says:

It should be so cheap that it’s everywhere. Using the visible light spectrum, which comes for free, you can piggy-back existing wireless services on the back of lighting equipment …As well as revolutionizing internet reception, it would put an end to the potentially harmful electromagnetic pollution emitted by wireless internet routers and has raised the prospect of ubiquitous wireless access, transmitted through streetlights.

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So in 2008, Boston University under a National Science Foundation grant started this research to piggyback data communications capabilities on low-power LEDs to make an LED light the equivalent of a Wi-Fi access point.

Some of the advantages of this technology include:

Security: Since white light does not penetrate opaque surfaces such as walls, eavesdropping is not possible and should not extend beyond building perimeters like current Wi-Fi technology. It also requires line-of-sight which will allow the user to see where the data is going.

Green: The development of this new technology coincides with the switch from incandescent and compact fluorescent lighting to LEDs. LED lights consume far less energy than RF technology, making it possible to build a communication network without added energy costs and reducing carbon emissions over the long term.

One downside is that the technology seems to be a one-way (down) transmission.

Possible applications could include automotive safety by enabling car brake lights to alert the car behind or traffic signals could alert cars when they change. It could also have applications in indoor mobile location and positioning services.

What do you think?

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D-Light Project (see.ed.ac.uk)
Wireless Data From Every Light Bulb [Video] (geeksaresexy.net)
Besides saving energy a switch to LED lights can be used to enable gigabit per second Li-Fi that can be ten times cheaper than Wi-Fi (nextbigfuture.com)

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: 2011, Broadband, Connected cars, Edinburgh University, LED lamp, Light-emitting diode, OFDM, Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, Visible Light Communications, Visible spectrum, Wi-Fi, Wireless

RB | August 16, 2011

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Motown Not so iPad-Friendly

While having a bagel and coffee at a Panera the other morning, I read an article on my iPad (See I’m as ~~pretentious~~ cool as someone in California) from the fount of tech reporting, Men’s Health that Detroit is full of Luddites because there are not enough Best Buys in Michigan. The article made me put down my iPad and picked up my laptop so I could write this blog.

The Men’s Health article looked at ad impressions from mobile ad network Chitika, the number of Apple (AAPL) and Best Buy (BBY) stores per capita, and the percentage of households that own tablets, notebooks, or laptops according to Mediamark Research.

David Zinczenko, Rodale EVP and editor in chief of Men’s Health observed in the article that iPad adoption correlates to proximity to a high-tech center, but also education levels, Mr. Zinczenko gets it right when he suggests that consumer iPad adoption is mostly about income levels.

“Let’s look at who was in line when the iPad 2 went on sale: affluent, well-educated people who had $800 bucks to throw around in the middle of a deep recession,” Mr. Zinczenko told Mashable. “It’s not that [college-educated people are] smarter than the people in Toledo, it’s just that they were fortunate enough to have the dough to attend college. As their educations progressed, their choice of leisure interests migrated toward words, narratives and research-driven pastimes,” all of which the iPad accommodates, he argues.

Most iPad-Friendly

1. Plano, TX
2. San Jose, CA
3. San Francisco, CA
4. Boise, ID
5. Austin, TX

Least iPad-Friendly

96. Cincinnati, OH
97. Baltimore, MD
98. Detroit, MI
99. Fort Wayne, IN
100. Toledo, OH

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In case you did not notice the article started out as a study on consumer iPad adoption which incorrectly morphed into an overall ranking of tech friendliness. This is just more Detroit bashing by Men’s Health. In the past, they have called Detroit one of “Worst Cities for Men” and “The Angriest City.”

Insights’ “Top iPad Friendly Cities” Study Picked Up by Men’s Health (insights.chitika.com)
Seattle an iPad hot spot? No way! (bizjournals.com)

What do you think?

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Category: Uncategorized | Tags: 2011, AAPL, Apple, Detroit, iPad, iPhone, Luddite, Men's Health, Michigan

RB | August 12, 2011

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LinkedIn Pulls A Facebook

Business social networking firm LinkedIn made me get out of my Bach Seat and jump up and down this morning, LinkedIn (LNKD) pulled a Facebook and made a sneaky change to the terms of service that made user’s names and photographs available to advertisers if they want to use them.

Thankfully BrandImpact tells how to keep up your privacy.

Click on your name on your LinkedIn homepage in the upper right corner. From the drop-down menu, select “Settings.”
In the “Settings” page, select “Account.”
In the column next to “Account,” click “Manage Social Advertising.”
Uncheck the box next to “LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising.”
Now check the new default settings under “E-mail Preferences” and “Groups, Companies & Applications.” Make sure to opt-out of “Data Sharing with 3rd-party applications” as well.

In the face of negative user reactions and a growing media firestorm, LinkedIn has decided to make a change in the policy. That’s a step in the right direction. I have written about social networking’s assault on privacy here, here, and here.

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Even though LinkedIn has backtracked on this it still irks me. I believe that most people on LinkedIn are working on their professional brand and do not want to be associated with ads. Facebook is for kids who don’t care, LinkedIn was for professionals. This seems like LinkedIn is wasting the goodwill they’ve built up over the years as it tries to justify its $9 billion IPO valuation. This is not a good sign for LinkedIn, I doubt they can beat Facebook in the teenie-bopper social network segment.

What do you think?

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LinkedIn: Users forced into social advertising as a test (thetechherald.com)
LinkedIn Goes Down the Facebook Route Of Using Your Image For Ads [Linkedin] (gizmodo.com)

Category: Social Networking | Tags: 2011, Advertising, Facebook, FB, IPO, LinkedIn, LNKD, Privacy, Social media

RB | August 11, 2011

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Detroit is Growth Leader in Tech Jobs

Most of the things I read in the Bach Seat about Detroit are negative at best, so good news about jobs in Detroit is always welcome. Detroit has seen a 66% growth in tech jobs which BussinessWeek says second-best in the U.S., behind Cleveland.

The article says that Detroit employers are looking for technology workers as automakers create cars with increasingly sophisticated Internet services (a trend I wrote about here) and lithium-ion batteries. Skills needed in Motor City are project management and experience with Oracle software. The tech top employers in Motown are Computer Sciences and General Electric.