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Not quite sure the article is making any point about technology that was not widely accepted before. Industrialization with its the social progresses, and the g

by gutnor 11y ago

Not quite sure the article is making any point about technology that was not widely accepted before. Industrialization with its the social progresses, and the golden age post-WW2 are always taken as counterpoint in any discussion about impact of technology today, as is the article conclusion "where one avenue closes in the jobs market, others open.". The actual problem that worries people nowadays is if there is a limit to the number of avenues and if we are close to hitting it ? And even if new avenues open, how easy it is to switch to them physically ( they open in another country ) or practically ( they require high qualification level ) The article does not make a case for that at all. Increase in caring professions, for example, is government policy driven. Is the article claiming that technology what the key factor that drove those policies and that further automation will drive the state to push for even more caring professionals ? Anyway, I guess the only goal of the article is to give hope to Joe Reader. That is not a bad thing, after all, at the very worst, we are still only at the peak of employment and wealth and (without the singularity) the world will not brutally crash, it will slowly degrade leaving plenty of opportunities for everyone to get a clue. For others though, they would have guessed that with a population doubling during the same period and low current unemployment rate, it is obvious that some jobs must have been created somewhere.

blumkvist 11y ago
There's a very popular youtube video that argues this point and people often cite it. The problem with this line of thinking is that you assume there are some new job types that come into play and they replace old ones. While it is true that we have some entirely new job types (i.e. programmer) majority of the shift is to jobs which were already defined. Did we have architects and physicians before the industrialization? Of course we did. We just have more of them now, because we don't need so many people to harvest crops. Do we have kindergarten teachers, ecologists, social scientists now? Of course we do. We will just have more of them after the digitalization, because we won't need so many people to take your money at Wallmart or drive trucks or do legal discovery.
tim333 11y ago
>the world will not brutally crash, it will slowly degrade I think if you look at the stats it's been slowly upgrading rather than visa versa. I don't see much sign of the trend reversing globally. Pessimists tend to look at worker living standards in the US where they have been kind of static, ignoring the poorest 80% of the planet where they have been shooting up. China for example has been transformed over the last 30 years.

by gutnor 11y ago

blumkvist 11y ago

There's a very popular youtube video that argues this point and people often cite it. The problem with this line of thinking is that you assume there are some new job types that come into play and they replace old ones. While it is true that we have some entirely new job types (i.e. programmer) majority of the shift is to jobs which were already defined. Did we have architects and physicians before the industrialization? Of course we did. We just have more of them now, because we don't need so many people to harvest crops. Do we have kindergarten teachers, ecologists, social scientists now? Of course we do. We will just have more of them after the digitalization, because we won't need so many people to take your money at Wallmart or drive trucks or do legal discovery.

tim333 11y ago

>the world will not brutally crash, it will slowly degrade I think if you look at the stats it's been slowly upgrading rather than visa versa. I don't see much sign of the trend reversing globally. Pessimists tend to look at worker living standards in the US where they have been kind of static, ignoring the poorest 80% of the planet where they have been shooting up. China for example has been transformed over the last 30 years.