I have been seeing some very disturbing articles and videos recently. They say that instead of making our lives easier, technology is actually putting more people out of work. The sad thing, is these videos and articles make a lot of sense. It is evident technology kills jobs. We have seen the Internet devour the journalism and music businesses and Hollywood seems to be next on the menu. New technology (also known as disruptive technology) destroys jobs and industries. Just look at Smith Corona, the typewriter manufacturer, and Kodak. As people adopted new technology — digital cameras and computers — there was less demand for their products. There seems to be no stopping technology. Once the digital genie is out of the bottle, there’s no putting it back. Only hard-core Luddites hung onto their analog cameras and typewriters, but even they were forced to adapt. Economists have argued while technology destroys jobs, it also creates news jobs. So while typewriter repair went away, there was increased demand for computer repair and IT specialists. It was also believed while technology eliminated low-paying labor jobs, workers could get retrained for high-skilled work. But the problem is now technology is also devouring white-collar jobs, like journalists, tax preparers, doctors and lawyers. Robots can write articles and carry out surgeries. There are also apps that scour legal documents to see if they have errors in them. There are still some labor jobs out there, but the people doing them ought to be worried — especially people in manufacturing. When manufacturers adopt 3D printing technology, they won’t need workers to craft products. Other companies are leaning toward introducing technology to get rid of workers. Ride-sharing company Uber is investing in driverless cars. And when they have that technology down, they will lay off all their drivers and just have driverless cars pick up passengers. Self-driving technology will also put bus and truck drivers out of business too. I am a little leery of trusting a car to drive me around, but I have seen a video where a researcher and an Al Jazerra reporter sat back and let a driverless car back into a parking lot, a skill a lot of humans haven’t mastered. In 10 years the technology will only get better. Additionally, the Air Force is investing heavily in drones, which are much cheaper than traditional piloted aircraft. The Reaper, the premier armed drone, costs about $5 million. However, the recently battle-tested F-22 Raptor, flown by humans, costs $150M a piece. So the Top Guns of the future will be flying missions from trailers in America, not an foreign air base or aircraft carrier. Drone technology could advance to the point where they don’t need human pilots. Society is going to have a major problem when there are all these jobs that don’t need people. Tech-savvy people can be retrained to be IT specialists or engineers, but not everyone is cut out for that. In addition, when robots do manual labor, the battle over undocumented workers will get even worse. We can expect to see even more strident rhetoric, mass deportations and less tolerance of migrant workers. Politicians tolerate undocumented workers because so many industries depend on their cheap labor. It would cut into profits if these industries would actually have to pay decent wages that would attract American workers. However, with automation politicians won’t need to make the same excuses to keep them around. I’m not sure how society is going to deal with the problems caused by high unemployment and a reduced tax base. I guess we could refuse to use a ride-sharing service, unless it uses human drivers, but when the price is much cheaper how many people are going to pay the extra cost? Wal-Mart has shown us the consumers usually go for the cheaper prices and don’t think of the long-term consequences. Technology is going to force us to deal with these problems, whether we like it or not. And this is coming sooner than you think.
Great post, Manny. Your POV on this has merit and heart. I often wonder about the future as well… Will the population decline in time? Will IT training and STEM education ramp-up in time? What trade-offs are societies willing to make for such advancements?
But, I do hope that the entertainment machine (Hollywood) is Next. The big studios and their cohorts (cable companies) have long had a sinister choke-hold on the business model of entertainment -and I've quite had enough. Ultimately, I like to say that: Nothing can be completely disrupted unless it was already fundamentally flawed.
-Justine Flaherty