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.)
Do these tractors come equipped with ATMs?
Maybe we should get you a supply of clay, some styluses and patio for sun-baking?
Between the Democrats and the Bush wing of the GOP there is little chance that illegals are going to be deported.
You have greater odds of winning the lottery on the same day that lightning strikes you.
Of course I know that, but to blame unemployment on technology with the illegal elephant in the country is pretty out there.
The only way illegals will be dealt with is if we the people get angry enough to force our politicians to do something about it. If people knew the whole truth about illegal immigration and the other border issues and how it impacts every single person in this country it would happen soon. Most don’t care though and will watch dancing with the stars while whining about things they could change if they would get their arses off the couch.
“The only way illegals will be dealt with is if we the people get angry enough to force our politicians to do something about it. If people knew the whole truth about illegal immigration and the other border issues and how it impacts every single person in this country it would happen soon. “
I’ve lived in SoCal the last 40+ years. I know what you speak of and I share your anger.
Got it in one. My company simply couldn't exist without the "IT revolution". It gives us a global reach and increases productivity and innovation by a huge amount. CAD alone is a huge productivity booster (I started out "before AutoCAD" back when drawings were done by "T-square and triangle"...in "lead" or ink...by hand). I can whip out a drawing in a few minutes that would take hours the "old-fangled way").
If it is more efficient, it means the business makes more money, which means more money to the employees and shareholders and vendors, which then flows into the economy. It is crazy to argue that inefficiency ever is good for the economy.
for( size_t z = 0; z < vec.size(); z+z+z+z+z+z+z+z+z+z ) {...}
“The Big Bang Theory: The Jerusalem Duality (#1.12)” (2008)
Rajnesh Koothrappali: Do you know what he did? He watched me work for 10 minutes, and then started to design a simple piece of software that could replace me.
Leonard Hofstadter: Is that even possible?
Rajnesh Koothrappali: As it turns out, yes.
I had an uncle who was an aeronautical engineer, who started with a slide rule, log tables, and as you said, a T-Square and triangles... Then the technology hit and productivity went WAY up... The Teledyne "Drafting Machine." Eventually digital calculators and computers helped a bit too.
Mark
Bump for later
Problem, it's eliminated the dumb from the workforce...and the dumb gotta eat too.
I don't know the answer. I know the principal reason most companies use computing machines is to reduce human effort (hours) in order to reduce cost and increase precision.
If you have the brains and inclination, technology is THE field to be in.
It's busier now than at any time in the last 30 years as far as I can tell.
Let’s try a little bit of my vision:
The future belongs to humans, along with their “slave” machines, where, each human will be “partnered” with a robot, endowed with the best and most current “AI” of the times.
The slave will make each person independent and capable of functioning without government involvement or any kind of group thought or group interaction. The robot will take care of the human owner’s needs, and that could include food (through independent gardening), clothing, housing (building shelter shouldn’t be that difficult in the future wink ), entertainment (playing videos, music, movies), education (internally contained information, with lectures and everything that a teacher/professor might do), medical needs (blood tests, blood pressure tests, recommending medicines, etc), and much more.
Now, the robot could be free-standing and accompanying the owner everywhere for everything that the owner does. The robot would be equipped to recognize dangers in the environment and to take appropriate action to “defend” or warn the owner.
The robot could also be in the form of “attachments” on the body of the owner, worn (like clothing, glasses), embedded/inserted (like heart pumps), and much more. That robot would provide for locomotion (something like a Segway) so that the human can go longer distances than humans can currently on foot.
In essence, all of the needs that a human has, would be provided by the “slave”, with no questions asked, no complaints, and no getting tired, and working as independently as possible with very little outside intervention or interaction.
luddites are revolting.
Or sit around all day playing XBOX, watching cable and eating the proverbial government cheese.
What we are watching is the failure of the government education model. Otherwise IT wouldn’t have a negative effect at all.
Instead you’ve got generations trained not to think and to expect a hand out.
Right now educational methods can teach in 1-2 months what takes a year under the government schooling model and I mean teach to mastery. Imagine 1st graders doing iterations. It works and is very effective, except you don’t need a teaching certificate nor the current educational paradigm.
ping.
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