You vastly underestimate the technology differences between 500 b.c. and 1600ad. The printing press for example. Windmills/waterwheels for another. Did the auto

You vastly underestimate the technology differences between 500 b.c. and 1600ad. The printing press for example. Windmills/waterwheels for another. Did the automation of grain mills result in mass unemployability? > office and service sector jobs -- because that was another underdeveloped sector. Or perhaps automation allowed more people to pursue that type of work? Was working in an air conditioned office an option for your average person in 500bc? Doubt it. Instead it sounds like we created a whole new type of work in response to a society wide change in technology. > software and the internet makes lots of office jobs and procedures obsolete Some, but fewer than you would think, and it makes many other jobs accessible. Often technology advances are unskilled people + tech/process improvements displacing skilled artisans. The factory worker jobs were an example of technology displacing skilled workers. Computers and the internet allow for unskilled/untrained people to enter fields that they would be unsuited for alternatively. How many retail bankers could do an amortization table without the computer's assistance? > I'm not sure how anyone in a technology forum can believe... Precisely the opposite. Technology eliminating work has happened several times in the past. Just never with disaster. We always seem to find new things to work on. The greater efficiency we have the more our horizon expands about what we can pursue as 'work'. If you were a good actor in 500BC, what would that buy you? Some local notoriety? Would it be 'work' that you get paid for in your local town? Probably not. Now it means you get a private jet. New areas will expand to fill the gaps. Even among the industries being automated, the results are often not that dire. There is a milder version of Jevon's paradox at work here. Once you can produce something with great efficiency and low cost, people will demand more of it. Sometimes demand will even increase faster than efficiency and you'll have net employment growth.