NAGANO – Seiko Epson Corp., a major Japanese maker of printers and industrial robots, said Thursday it will make use of its paper recycling technology to start producing face masks from late May. Production will take place at two of its domestic plants and will eliminate the need to outsource masks for its employees. The company based in Nagano Prefecture will also donate 100,000 medical-grade masks, originally intended for internal use, to hospitals. It has also decided to donate 5,600 face shields, planned to be used by its employees in Japan and abroad, to the prefectural government to help ease medical supply shortages. The company has not yet decided whether it will sell any of the masks it produces to general consumers.

Automation is the past, current and next big thing. For a long time, getting robots and software to work for us has been the Holy Grail of business. In theory it makes everything cheaper, more reliable, more powerful and it frees humans up to work on creative projects. Ever since the first industrial revolution, capitalists have looked for ways to extract human labour from the means of production and replace it with smart systems. This, of course, was initially driven by greed.