Posted on 11/14/2011 5:04:36 PM PST by gitmo
Is information technology destroying more jobs than it creates? That’s long been the conventional wisdom, of course. Proponents of IT, on the other hand, point to the new types of opportunities created as a result of the march of technology — from programming to analytics to technicians.
However, two longtime proponents of IT as an opportunity creator — Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, both with MIT — have taken a darker view of IT’s impact on the economy.
In the latest edition of MIT Technology Review, David Talbot reviewed Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s new book: Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy, and pulls out the observation that the digital economy may be favoring that 1% at the top of the pyramid while sapping opportunities at lower levels of the economy.
The first decade of the 2000s was a time of accelerating technology, accompanied by stagnant employment growth, the authors point out. Employment fell by 1% during the past decade, compared to 20% growth in the 1980s and 1990s. This is no coincidence, Brynjolfsson and McAfee say. For example, increasing automation has dramatically reduced the need for customer service workers across many industries, such as airline reservations or directory assistance, the authors point out. MacAfee also points out that “certain kinds of document examination once done by armies of lawyers—can now be done competently by scanning technologies and software.”
It’s not the labor-intensive or professional jobs that will be replaced by automation — top executives may see their roles increasingly automated as well. Just last week, SmartPlanet Editor-in-Chief Larry Dignan reported on Gartner analyst Nigel Rayner’s prediction that within a couple of decades, “many of the things executives do today will be automated.” Rayner observes that the only thing standing in the way of more automated executive decision-making is “business culture.” But, “effectively, most of what the CFO, CEO and managers do today will be done better by machines,” he says.
In addition, as Brynjolfsson and McAfee observe, “intelligent assistants and question-answer software—of which IBM’s Watson is one example—may accelerate the trend. (Talbot’s review and the book were written prior to Apple’s Siri introduction, so the implications of intelligent assistants in the palm of one’s hand were not explored.)
The rise of robotic automation is another trend, and in the book, Brynjolfsson observes that global electronics manufacturer Foxconn “plans to replace many of its factory workers in China with a million new robots.”
The employment numbers for this decade that Brynjolfsson and McAfee site are disturbing, and technology may be to blame, at least to a partial degree. But these official numbers but don’t take into account the emergence and evolution of entrepreneurial ventures. And technologies such as cloud computing and social networking are providing immense, low-cost resources for new business creation. Many of these new ventures are off the radar.
Talbot also offers an opposing point of view as well: Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Solow, for one, says it has been the norm throughout the course of history for technology to throw people out of work. But in the long run, employment keeps growing, and wages keep rising.
At the IBM Watson University Symposium at Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management, McAfee moderated a panel on the role of computers in 2020 (live-blogged by Paul Gillin), in which MIT’s Rodney Brooks made the observation that the rapid development of IT in North America is providing a competitive edge in the global economy:
“We think manufacturing is disappearing from the US, but in reality there is still $2 trillion in manufacturing in the US. What we’ve done is go after the high end. We have to find things to manufacture that the Chinese can’t. What this has led to is manufacturing jobs getting higher tech. If we can build robotic tools that help people, we can get incredible productivity. The PC didn’t get rid of office workers; it made them do things differently. We have to do that with robots. We can take jobs back from China but they won’t be the same jobs. That doesn’t mean people have to be engineers to work. Instead of a factory worker doing a repetitive task, he can supervise a team of robots doing repetitive tasks.”
More discussion on technology’s impact on jobs and job creation is available from IBM’s live-blogging coverage of the IBM Watson Challenge symposium. McAfee points out that technology now offers organizations robust analytic toolkits that enable greater insights and predictions on market trends. (IBM is sponsor of the SmartPlanet site.) As Irving Wladawsky-Berger, former IBM executive and MIT lecturer observed at the symposium: “Cloud computing and other technologies can help entrepreneurs get started and build companies and hire people. So a lot of small companies will spring up—not the high tech companies but companies that take advantage of technology.”
(Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.)
That's what the enviro sucm want. After killing off a few billion first.
LOL! I’m pretty sure the abacus would be beyond me!
We need artificial stupidity!
Cheers!
Yeah and they stink too.
No thanks... I'll take Edison and individual initiative.
Now, to read the article! :-)
Are you serious? You don't have to be able to punch the price of a Big Mac into the register, simply press the key with the picture of a Big Mac.
You don't have to add the items, multiply by the local tax rate, then subtract from the amount the customer gives you. You punch the pictures, press the key with the dollar amount the customer gives, and it tells you how much change to give. In some cases it dispenses the change for you in case you can't recognize the coins' values.
The equipment tells you when the fries are cooked(again, with pictures to clue you in).
I think technology is making the workplace available to the ignorant.
Agreed. In the middle of this economic collapse, I cannot beat back the phone calls and emails bidding for my attention.
Ergo, those performing repetitive, brainless functions.
120IQ is the new 100IQ.
People need to use their brains, to, in the words of my grandfather, the inventor of many things, to "find a need and fill it."
The days of the Warcraft "What is it?" peasant are drawing to a close.
What, though, of the dumb, of those whose only capacity is to change sheets, stamp metal with a repetitive pattern, or what have you?
I'm torn between the need to evolve as a society to keep ahead of China and others, and showing mercy to the poor - the poor in intellect, in this case.
At the risk of being flamed here, I do not want to see the plantation owners, the so-called "1%" get even more. These do-nothints seldom lift a finger relying instead on the labors of de facto if not de jure slaves for their wealth.
Your thoughts?
It does both creates and destroys jobs, and the jobs it creates requiring new skills.
When a software chore becomes tedious, that's simply another opportunity to automate!
I give people a pseudo-name to use so their call gets through to me. Otherwise, I'd never get any work done.
And winning that Grammy for Best Heavy Metal Album. ;)
You're telling me, they stink on ice.
Just sayin'
And, by definition, we'd all be dirt poor.
Much better to live a rich lifestyle, supported by global capitalism, while tolerating unemployment for the lazy and the stupid as well as the inevitable income inequality that a capitalist, market-driven meritocracy necessarily creates.
Good idea.
 Thomas J. Watson, Sr. |
Got light?
Yup. And ancient Egypt, when they were building the pyramids by hand, was a "full employment economy."
I haven't read the whole article but that "if' in my first paragraph is one big IF! Hoewver if things continue the way they are, there will be fewer jobs, and it sure would be nice to get our kids back into horticulture, agriculture, creating desalination plants so big cities like LA can sustain themselves, learn from Israel. BIG oil pipelines and no more moratoriums and BIGGER corporations and maybe create and explosive factory with cute lil IED's in Dearborn( okay maybe not a good idea) Don't know about any of you but working on a computer these days seemingly takes more time( designing home with Cad ) seems to be slower than vellum and an eraser. Okay now I'll READ the article and see how far off I am in replying..hey it's 0355 here, a break please, ugh insomnia!
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