As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve been on a technology kick the past few weeks, writing about the amazing things that technology has brought to our industry, our work, and our lives.
After reading this book review in last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review section, there’s one other thing that technology is bringing and that’s obsolescence.
The book, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford, reviewed by Barbara Ehrenreich author of Nickel and Dimed paints an unsettling view of the future.
I haven’t read the book yet, but was intrigued enough by the review to download it to my Kindle.
As Ehrenreich writes in her review, “Many companies decided that ‘ever advancing information technology’ allows them to operate successfully without rehiring the people they laid off. And there should be no doubt that technology is advancing in the direction of full unemployment.”
She adds that “Ford offers little hope that emerging technologies will eventually generate new forms of employment in the way that blacksmiths yield to autoworkers in the early 20th century. He predicts that new industries will ‘rarely, if ever, be highly labor-intensive,’ pointing to companies like YouTube and Instagram, which are characterized by ‘tiny workforces’ and huge valuations and revenues.”
On another front, and even closer to what’s going on in our world, Ehrenreich observes that “3-D printing is poised to make a mockery of manufacturing as we know it.”
Bringing things closer to my world, journalism, when Ehrenreich writes, “Particularly terrifying to me, computer programs can now write clear, publishable articles, and, as Ford reports, Wired magazine quotes an expert’s prediction that within about a decade 90 percent of news articles will be computer generated.”
If I wrote mostly news articles, I’d be terrified too, but I don’t. Still, I am more than a little concerned about technology’s impact on our future.
For those of you currently selling technology how soon before you too are deemed obsolete as robots or computer programs take over your job and sell to another robot or computer program? Sounds like science fiction, but is it? Consider that where we are now was once considered science fiction.
I’ll be revisiting this topic in the coming weeks as I read Ford’s book.
I can tell you right now, I’m not sure I’m going to like what I’m reading.
Thanks for reading.
