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Letters: Robots and the Boomerang Generation

Kai Ryssdal Mar 30, 2012

Kai Ryssdal: The news was filled with big, big issues this week. Health care and the Supreme Court. Foxconn and Apple. Also, robots and our jobs.

Patrick Hegde from New York City was surprised the other day when he heard us offer grocery store self-checkouts as examples of robots eating human jobs.

Patrick Hegde: It’s always seemed to me more like stores were foisting the work their cashiers used to do onto their decidedly human customers. Alas, I guess the next time I find myself tapping away at the touch screen of a self-checkout, and scanning and bagging all my items, I’ll remember that it’s really robots who are doing all the work.

Todd Buchholz’s commentary lambasting the Boomerang Generation drew fire from scores of young listeners. An aversion to risk has crept into the psyches of our young people, he said.

Like many listeners his age, 28-year-old AJ Million from Columbia, Mo., took offense at being called “Generation-Y-Bother.”

AJ Million: Correlation does not imply causation. There’s no reason to believe that today’s young adults are any different than previous ones. Sure, more young people are choosing to live with their parents, but the economy has been the major factor driving this…not listlessness.

Scott Aramaki from Davis, Calif., thinks I may or may not have issues, shall we say, with a certain Dr. Suess character. And he suggests a possible vent for my frustration.

Scott Aramaki: I couldn’t help but notice that Mr. Ryssdal seems to harbor some inexplicably hostile sentiments toward the Lorax. Maybe Mr. Ryssdal can use Dean Terry’s EnemyGraph app to “enemy” the little orange treehugger and get the animosity out of his system.

The Lorax is fine, it’s the movie I don’t — ah, never mind.

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