Bertrand Duperrin's Library tagged unemployment → View Popular, Search in Google

Mar

2012

A Detailed Critique of “Race Against the Machine”

"Race Against the Machine deserves praise for jump-starting an important discussion about the effect of technology on our economy. As the authors point out, the impact of computers and information technology has been largely left out of most analysis regarding causes of our current unemployment woes. This book, therefore, is an attempt to “put technology back in the discussion.”"

declineofscarcity.com/?p=1037

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IT work employment unemployment organization organizationalinnovation humancapital value valuecreation scarcity creativity education

A human-machine combo has the potential to be much more powerful than either a human or machine alone. So therefore it’s not simply a question of machines replacing humans. It’s a question of how can humans and machines best work together.
Moreover, as I’ve written about before on this site, the human-machine partnership can sometimes be less than the sum of its parts.
10 more annotation(s)...
- The authors go on to discuss the importance of “organizational innovation.” In particular, they discuss the creation of new business platforms that might empower humans to compete in new marketplaces.
- But this idea also has its problems. How many niches can there possibly be? Enough to provide employment for the legions of truck drivers and supermarket checkers who may soon be exiting the workforce?
- n general, I would agree that the unemployed represent a huge slack resource, and quite possibly somebody is going to come up with some previously unimagined way to harness this large pool of people. But at the moment, such organizational innovation is just a theory. I do not see the seeds of a workable solution in the current crop of platforms.
- More importantly we should examine the term “value-creating fields.” Value under our current system is closely tied to scarcity. Digital abundance directly undermines this source of value. So once again we are confronted with an intellectual property challenge. If we are going to have an economy where everyone is an expert in a different field and produces “bits,” we are going to need a mechanism by which these non-scarce bits translate into an income
- Yes of course. Human creativity is astounding, and everyone has something to offer. But peoples’ output—however unique, interesting, and valuable—will not necessarily be monetizable. Especially in an abundant digital environment.
- Any jobs that depend upon having exclusive access to knowledge that no one else has are potentially at risk in a world where increasingly everyone is connected and data is widely shared.
- Education seems like the most straightforward solution to our problem. If our skills are falling behind, then we’d better acquire new skills right?
- But all of these considerations aside, there is a much bigger problem. One cannot escape the simple truth that humans learn slowly and technology advances quickly.
- Most of these suggestions are great, and might lead to a better society, but it is unclear how any of them will create jobs.
- The authors repeatedly state that our institutions are losing a race with technology. But they do not consider the possibility that our economy itself might be one of these trailing institutions.

Dec

2011

More Management Equals Less Output

"Societies have never been good at moving from one big tech-induced change to another. The industrial revolution wrought havoc on populations. Production lines were thought to dehumanise people, and modern agriculture is still vilified, instead of being celebrated. And people now worry that technology will drive us towards some singularity where people are no longer required."

www.innovationexcellence.com/...-management-equals-less-output

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society employment jobs technology unemployment management

We are talking mass unemployment, people replaced by machines, old ways and conventions abandoned, history and tradition rendered worthless
Many cite oppressive and excessively demanding management regimes. And certainly the evidence is that the ratio of managers to active contributors and material expenditure has grown excessively, as depicted in this graph for one first-world nation.
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- : how big can the management population become before a company collapses, and how big can government become before a country collapses under the non-contributory bureaucratic weight?
- We might have expected technology to reduce the number of managers everywhere, but the number just seems to keep growing
- As a general principle, to be more creative, efficient and competitive, we need far less management in companies, government, and indeed in our electronic systems, and not more.

Oct

2011

Economists See More Jobs for Machines, Not People

"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. "

www.nytimes.com/...s-for-machines-not-people.html

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machines jobs skills employment unemployment computers Automation creativity

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.
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.
4 more annotation(s)...
- 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
- 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,
- 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.
- “the key to winning the race is not to compete against machines but to compete with machines.”

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Bertrand Duperrin's Library tagged unemployment → View Popular, Search in Google

A Detailed Critique of “Race Against the Machine”

More Management Equals Less Output

Economists See More Jobs for Machines, Not People

Selected Tags

Related Tags

Top Contributors

Groups interested in unemploy...

Economic Challenges Fall 2011

Politics ~ Progressive

INVESTING IN THE STOCK MARKET

Employment and unemployment issues

Essay 4 - Unemployment

Essay 3