Something I posted a couple of weeks ago may warrant repeating:
Ah yes, the milkman or milklady. When I was a kid in Calgary or wherever I
used to hear the milkman's (or woman's) horse come clop-clopping down the
street early in the morning, then the clank of empty milk bottles being
replaced by full ones. Then, as a young adult, I remember not having enough
money to pay the parking attendant. He was a good guy so he let me go. Then
as a civil servant, I remember giving one of the stenos in the typing pool hell
because when I dictated Super Constellation (the name of an airliner in case
you don't remember), she typed Stupor Constipation! And one of the messengers,
the guys who ran the mail around, lost one of the memos that was supposed to go
to the Deputy Minister and bad things happened. All those people doing all
those jobs! Wonder where they are now? Maybe some of them have joined the
sit-in on Wall Street in the US or on Bay Street here in Canada. Maybe many of
them -- the younger ones -- are part of the huge crowds that have gathered in
our colleges and universities because they have nothing better to do.
The milk is no longer delivered, the guys in the parking lots have become
machines, the stenos and messengers have become computers, and our colleges and
universities have become places to store young people who have little to do
anymore.
I think I'll aim my horse westward and ride away.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Arthur Cordell
To: [email protected] ; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME
DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'
Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2011 9:07 AM
Subject: [Ottawadissenters] More Jobs Predicted for Machines, Not People
October 23, 2011 NY Times
More Jobs Predicted for Machines, Not People
By STEVE LOHR
A faltering economy explains much of the job shortage in America, but
advancing technology has sharply magnified the effect, more so than is
generally understood, according to two researchers at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
The automation of more and more work once done by humans is the central theme
of "Race Against the Machine," an e-book to be published on Monday.
"Many workers, in short, are losing the race against the machine," the
authors write.
Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the M.I.T. Center for Digital
Business, and Andrew P. McAfee, associate director and principal research
scientist at the center, are two of the nation's leading experts on technology
and productivity. The tone of alarm in their book is a departure for the pair,
whose previous research has focused mainly on the benefits of advancing
technology.
Indeed, they were originally going to write a book titled, "The Digital
Frontier," about the "cornucopia of innovation that is going on," Mr. McAfee
said. Yet as the employment picture failed to brighten in the last two years,
the two changed course to examine technology's role in the jobless recovery.
The authors are not the only ones recently to point to the job fallout from
technology. In the current issue of the McKinsey Quarterly, W. Brian Arthur, an
external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, warns that technology is quickly
taking over service jobs, following the waves of automation of farm and factory
work. "This last repository of jobs is shrinking - fewer of us in the future
may have white-collar business process jobs - and we have a problem," Mr.
Arthur writes.
The M.I.T. authors' claim that automation is accelerating is not shared by
some economists. Prominent among them are Robert J. Gordon of Northwestern and
Tyler Cowen of George Mason University, who contend that productivity
improvement owing to technological innovation rose from 1995 to 2004, but has
trailed off since. Mr. Cowen emphasized that point in an e-book, "The Great
Stagnation," published this year.
Technology has always displaced some work and jobs. Over the years, many
experts have warned - mistakenly - that machines were gaining the upper hand.
In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes warned of a "new disease" that he
termed "technological unemployment," the inability of the economy to create new
jobs faster than jobs were lost to automation.
But Mr. Brynjolfsson and Mr. McAfee argue that the pace of automation has
picked up in recent years because of a combination of technologies including
robotics, numerically controlled machines, computerized inventory control,
voice recognition and online commerce.
Faster, cheaper computers and increasingly clever software, the authors say,
are giving machines capabilities that were once thought to be distinctively
human, like understanding speech, translating from one language to another and
recognizing patterns. So automation is rapidly moving beyond factories to jobs
in call centers, marketing and sales - parts of the services sector, which
provides most jobs in the economy.
During the last recession, the authors write, one in 12 people in sales lost
their jobs, for example. And the downturn prompted many businesses to look
harder at substituting technology for people, if possible. Since the end of the
recession in June 2009, they note, corporate spending on equipment and software
has increased by 26 percent, while payrolls have been flat.
Corporations are doing fine. The companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock
index are expected to report record profits this year, a total $927 billion,
estimates FactSet Research. And the authors point out that corporate profit as
a share of the economy is at a 50-year high.
Productivity growth in the last decade, at more than 2.5 percent, they
observe, is higher than the 1970s, 1980s and even edges out the 1990s. Still
the economy, they write, did not add to its total job count, the first time
that has happened over a decade since the Depression.
The skills of machines, the authors write, will only improve. In 2004, two
leading economists, Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane, published "The New
Division of Labor," which analyzed the capabilities of computers and human
workers. Truck driving was cited as an example of the kind of work computers
could not handle, recognizing and reacting to moving objects in real time.
But last fall, Google announced that its robot-driven cars had logged
thousands of miles on American roads with only an occasional assist from human
back-seat drivers. The Google cars, Mr. Brynjolfsson said, are but one sign of
the times.
As others have, he pointed to I.B.M.'s "Jeopardy"-playing computer, Watson,
which in February beat a pair of human "Jeopardy" champions; and Apple's new
personal assistant software, Siri, which responds to voice commands.
"This technology can do things now that only a few years ago were thought to
be beyond the reach of computers," Mr. Brynjolfsson said.
Yet computers, the authors say, tend to be narrow and literal-minded, good at
assigned tasks but at a loss when a solution requires intuition and creativity
- human traits. A partnership, they assert, is the path to job creation in the
future.
"In medicine, law, finance, retailing, manufacturing and even scientific
discovery," they write, "the key to winning the race is not to compete against
machines but to compete with machines."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/technology/economists-see-more-jobs-for-machines-not-people.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26
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