Saturday, May 24, 2014

The Future - The Digital Age

If technology can eventually do a job, it will do that job. Amazon has announced that it will be using 10,000 robots in their warehouses. They are buying robots to do work that used to be done by humans. The new robots will work 24/7, 365 days a year. They will never call in sick. They will never be late. They will never complain. They will never go on strike. The will never need health care. They will never sue for sexual harassment or discrimination or workers comp. No wonder Amazon bought 10,000 of them. There is one expert who is claiming that up to 47% of all jobs in the U.S. will be replaced by technology (robots, self serve kiosks, software, etc…) over the next 20 years. The implications are staggering. What will those who are replaced by technology do? How will we deal with the millions who will be unemployed? What will happen to the crime rate? Why are we looking to reform immigration when technology will replace many of the jobs immigrants are doing? We are in a major transformation. We are moving from the industrial age to the digital age. The "digital" (technology, robots, software, the cloud) will increase. The "industrial" (manual work, low skill work, repetitive work, low creative work) will decrease and be replaced. The last time we made a major transformation (from the agricultural age to the industrial age 1925-1950) we had a world war and massive upheaval. Will we experience the same again? I would not be surprised if we did. Humans do not take well to change and the change we are going through will make the last one seem like a party. What do you think? For more: