How to join the network
A recent Pew report found that a majority of Americans believe that most human jobs could be automated by 2065 . With tech giants like Google and Chrysler collaborating to produce autonomous passenger vehicles, as well as new tech firms like Otto positioning themselves to revolutionize the commercial transportation industry, many are already discussing how we’ll handle history’s first slew of “driverless” experiences.
It’s no wonder, then, that talk about technological unemployment is becoming increasingly popular, with many commercial drivers beginning to question whether or not they’ll still have jobs in the coming years.
While the concept of a world filled with autonomous workers is relatively new to us, digital disruption obviously isn’t, and we’ve consistently overcome technological unemployment in the past.
Sure, there have been winners and losers, à la Netflix and Blockbuster, Uber and taxi cab companies, etc., but empirically, we’ve seen that when an industry is affected, key players will usually make a big shift, users are happier and life goes on. This is what we’d call the optimistic view of things, the side of folks who like to think that even if robots begin to take our jobs, we’ll always find a way to create new ones.
On the other end of the spectrum we have the pessimistic view of things, and you can see this explored by TechCrunch columnist Jon Evans in multiple articles. He wrote a piece in mid-2013 titled “ Jobs, Robots, Capitalism, Inequality, And You ” that really dove into what could happen on the macro scale after the robot revolution occurs, invoking images of “post-capitalism,” the haves and the have-nots and the dangers of Orwellian dystopia.
This dichotomy often causes the focus of the discussion to revolve around whether or not technological unemployment will become widespread — but more interesting […]
