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Instagram is an amazing example. > My example here is Instagram, a company of a dozen staff or so when acquired, is the digital replacement of photo labs in ev
by wtvanhest 10y ago
Instagram is an amazing example.
> My example here is Instagram, a company of a dozen staff or so when acquired, is the digital replacement of photo labs in every city. New technologies are not the job creator that they once were and I haven't read anything to contradict that statement or posit that new tech is going to drive jobs growth.
Photo labs (places where physical photos were developed and edited) were replaced by digital post processing. Some of which is done by the photographers themselves, some is done in specialty shops, some is even done overseas. We can imagine that demand for the output (finished commercial photographs for products, offices etc) has likely continued to increase as the number of products, offices etc. have increased globally.
While many physical labs have shut down, many digital post processing shops have started. And where they haven't started, the photogs themselves are either doing the work or hiring people to do the work for them.
The net effect of digital photography is likely more jobs overall (post processing, web design, etc.) and product delivered for a lower price, but people who used to work for physical labs are completely screwed unless they completely learned a new skill.
Then comes along Instagram! Well, all of the sudden, there is a new place to display high & low quality images and some new editing tools. I am sure that some professional editing is now just a simple filter, but most finished commercial photography projects are still highly post processed by paid professionals. So what about all those images? Well, Instagram has actually resulted in multiple new business models, including "Instagram models" etc.
My guess (no data) is that the number of people producing commercial digital images has increased, not decreased and that instagram probably helps create demand for finished images. At the same time, instragram has likely helped launched new businesses without us even realizing it (access to random food blogs etc.)
While this is all great, and increases global net jobs, it doesn't help the poor guy who owns a photo lab in Missouri. That guy/girl is completely screwed and when people talk about technology jobs, he will have his photo on CNN.com, taken by an unpaid photographer who post processes his images himself. He was/is not newsworthy, but CNN now creates clickbait. In other words, there was never going to be a professional paid to shoot that guy in the past, but now there is a new market for previously worthless content. He will be photographed and CNN will make like $3 on the post in ad revenue.
This can go on and on and on and on.
- josho 10y agoWe can argue this all day long since neither of us has data to back up our assertions. So, I'll reframe this somewhat. Technology in the past created new more efficient processes, freeing people to create new processes. That describes your example above and technology advancements largely to date. What's different now is not that we are making more efficient processes, rather technology is displacing human skills. Concretely, when the horse was replaced with a car both still required a driver. But, the driver was so much more productive thanks to the advancement in the process. However, today, it is not the process that is advanced it is the human skill that is replaced--ie. there will be no driver. So, it is the human skills that technology is encroaching on. So, anything that I can physically do, we could soon engineer a robot to do as well. Price/performance may not make sense today, but we know tech gets cheaper/better every year, labour doesn't. So, it is not processes that are being replaced but human skill. So, with this in mind, I don't think you can argue that we'll have full employment in 100 years time.
- pbalau 10y agoThings that are based on rules will be and should be automated. You are saying that the person that fixes the technical aspects of a picture is screwed. So fucking what? With tech you will have 1 billion people taking technically perfect pictures, but it's still the photographer, which can also manually do the what the tech does, that will take a picture of the right subject.
- wott 10y ago> Photo labs (places where physical photos were developed and edited) were replaced by digital post processing. Not at all. The mass of work was not done for professionals, but for the mass market. And that one totally disappeared, almost nobody gets photos developed any more compared to hundreds of millions (billions ?) of people before. Of course it was already automated, but now there is isn't anyone left to feed the machine, to check the result, to send the photos or deliver them at the desk, since even the machines are gone...