"Did it result into mass poverty ? No. Never." I live in the North West of England. Pretty much ground zero for the industrial revolution. There was horrific p

"Did it result into mass poverty ? No. Never." I live in the North West of England. Pretty much ground zero for the industrial revolution. There was horrific poverty as the "previous workforce" (agricultural workers) was made redundant and moved off the land into the cities. This extended well into the early twentieth century - you might want to check out the first part of Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier for ordinary life in the late stages of an economic transition. Those were different times: before organised state welfare and health provision, and with very different economic structures. But as others here have said, using the past as an historic or economic model for the future is going to lead to disappointment. (I have spent a lot of my career writing software that automates skilled human processes, and links business processes across organisations. Exactly the kind of things described in the article. I think I'll do okay. But I've had a lot of time to think about this, and my personally not being on the loosing side is not comforting to me.)