作者:
Christopher Mims 出版社: Harper Business 副标题: Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy 出版年: 2021-9-14 页数: 336 定价: USD 26.99 装帧: Hardcover ISBN: 9780062987952
The Wall Street Journal technology columnist reveals the fascinating story behind the misleadingly simple phrase shoppers take for granted—“Arriving Today”—in this eye-opening investigation into the new rules of online commerce, transportation, and supply chain management.
We are at a tipping point in retail history. While consumers are profiting from the convenience of instant...
The Wall Street Journal technology columnist reveals the fascinating story behind the misleadingly simple phrase shoppers take for granted—“Arriving Today”—in this eye-opening investigation into the new rules of online commerce, transportation, and supply chain management.
We are at a tipping point in retail history. While consumers are profiting from the convenience of instant gratification, rapidly advancing technologies are transforming the way goods are transported and displacing workers in ways never before seen.
In Arriving Today, Christopher Mims goes deep, far, and wide to uncover how a single product, from creation to delivery, weaves its way from a factory on the other side of the world to our doorstep. He analyzes the evolving technologies and management strategies necessary to keep the product moving to fulfill consumers’ demand for “arriving today” gratification. Mims reveals a world where the only thing moving faster than goods in an Amazon warehouse is the rate at which an entire industry is being gutted and rebuilt by innovation and mass shifts in human labor practices. He goes behind the scenes to uncover the paradoxes in this shift—into the world’s busiest port, the cabin of an 18-wheeler, and Amazon’s automated warehouses—to explore how the promise of “arriving today” is fulfilled through a balletic dance between humans and machines.
The scope of such large-scale innovation and expended energy is equal parts inspiring, enlightening, and horrifying. As he offers a glimpse of our future, Mims asks us to consider the system’s vulnerability and its resilience, and who shoulders the burden, as we hurtle toward a fully automated system—and what it will mean when we are there.
During the pandemic, the list of who was considered “essential” made it apparent who is most integral to the global factory system. Those who made our goods and those who delivered them were both essential; those who worked in hospitality, travel, and many other parts of the service economy were not.
No matter how much an economy “dematerializes” itself, making and exporting software and intellectual property instead of steel and fabric and cars, dumping money and workers into health care, finance, marketing, and an ever-expanding and ever more abstract assortment of knowledge work, we still have to eat and house and clothe ourselves. Not to mention all the keeping up with the joneses–type consumption that we pile atop the essentials, what economists call “status competition. (查看原文)
It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult-level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility.
One formulation of Moravec's paradox goes like this: it's far harder to teach a computer to pick up and move a chess piece like its human opponent than it is to teach it to beat that human at chess.
......the gulf between the intelligence and dexterity of computers is so profound that while human-level dexterity is nowhere in sight, we'll soon have human-level intelligence in computers. (查看原文)
0 有用 MNE 2023-03-17 13:34:04 福建
虽然是一本写当代物流的书，但对我来说最大的take away——当然全自动物流线也让我瞠目结舌，但它指向的核心问题还是——技术进步到现在为止带来的都不是人类劳动力的解放，人类没有更轻松自由，我们只是被技术进步从一些岗位上驱赶到了另一些岗位上，并在他们的监视下发条上的越来越紧。看着chatGPT写文章做PPT如行云流水，也忍不住畅想未来的各种可能性，但更大概率，它解放的依然是生产力，而非劳动力。
0 有用 Summer 2022-08-19 03:37:47
Global supply chain是如何运作的？Automation和E-commerce如何改变我们的生活？相关的从业人员，尤其是低收入群体的工作和生活状况由此产生了什么改变？作者就这些问题进行了非常清楚，并且充满见地的阐释。作者做了大量的研究，并且在供应链的每一个环节都亲自去进行了调研和采访。书中的内容非常翔实，所有的论点都有清晰的证据，或者至少是故事来佐证。关于global supply... Global supply chain是如何运作的？Automation和E-commerce如何改变我们的生活？相关的从业人员，尤其是低收入群体的工作和生活状况由此产生了什么改变？作者就这些问题进行了非常清楚，并且充满见地的阐释。作者做了大量的研究，并且在供应链的每一个环节都亲自去进行了调研和采访。书中的内容非常翔实，所有的论点都有清晰的证据，或者至少是故事来佐证。关于global supply chain和E-commerce的问题在疫情的大背景下变得更为突出，而作者对于automation的回顾，感觉一定程度也能解释为什么美国社会现在如此割裂。在自动化和全球化的背景下，low-wage workers确实被逼到了一个角落。 (展开)