Think about the amount of data the 70 people at Dropbox move. A couple hundred years ago that would have taken every single literate person.

How do you justify that very strong assertion? What's your definition of "far out"?

The past 100 years are a great example of how a lot of change can happen in a short amount of time.

There already are unmanned oil platforms. As communications and remote systems get better, I expect to see even more automation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normally_unmanned_installation http://www.shell.com/home/content/innovation/meeting_demand/...

I'm aware that there are unmanned stations -- not only oil platforms but regular leases. I live in oil & natural gas country (Northern Alberta). What you don't see are the thousands and thousands of guys running around keeping it all ticking.

There are some things that you can automate -- but a lot of things in the oil & gas industry cannot be automated. Specifically, the leg work required to get things started & keep them maintained. Automating those sorts of things requires a pretty advanced AI and I don't see that coming around the corner anytime soon.

You can make things simpler for dumber AIs (or dumber workers) by designing field-replaceable-units with that in mind. It is going to cost more/be less efficient, so as long as a human costs $300k/yr or less, no need, but when that isn't the case, you see "forklift upgrades", etc.