Amazon.com Expands Robotics

With Amazon.com's acquisition of Kiva Systems, the post-human warehouses I speculated about in my blog earlier this month come one step closer to reality, continuing a decades long trend toward automation of ever more complex tasks formerly performed by people.

Nick Bilton at the NY Times is hot on the story.

While I didn't predict any specific mergers, here's what I wrote on March 3:

In the warehouses of Amazon.com and Walmart both, robots already stock the shelves. With continued advances in robotics, the need for low-skilled human labor likely can and will continue to dwindle.

The key trend I highlight in that article is the continued role of "hollowing out" the economy by replacing human labor with robotics and computers to achieve greater economies of scale and scope. While some, like Tyler Cowen, believe the biggest gains have already happened, others believe the rapid increase in computing power will continue to alter the employment landscape for decades to come.

Based on the recent evidence, Amazon.com is clearly marching ahead along exactly those lines.

Related posts:
Walmart and Amazon.com: Unstoppable?
At Amazon.com the Robot World Comes a Little Closer
Amazon.com Buys Kiva Systems for $775M