Over on CNN, I found a particularly interesting article ominously entitled “Are Jobs Obsolete?” from media theorist and author Douglas Rushkoff.
Original Article: [CNN - Are Jobs Obsolete?]
Rushkoff uses the recent U.S. Postal Service crisis as a backdrop to highlight a growing dilema facing America and the world.
The U.S. Postal Service appears to be the latest casualty in digital technology’s slow but steady replacement of working humans. Unless an external source of funding comes in, the post office will have to scale back its operations drastically, or simply shut down altogether. That’s 600,000 people who would be out of work, and another 480,000 pensioners facing an adjustment in terms.
In my opinion, there’s nothing really to be debated or discussed here. The Postal Service will need to die out, thats a simple fact. Yes, people will lose jobs. It a system that is outdated, declining, and serves no purpose in the coming future.
But enough of the Postal Service, there is something more important to realize here, as Rushkoff brings to light:
New technologies are wreaking havoc on employment figures — from EZpasses ousting toll collectors to Google-controlled self-driving automobiles rendering taxicab drivers obsolete. Every new computer program is basically doing some task that a person used to do. But the computer usually does it faster, more accurately, for less money, and without any health insurance costs.
We like to believe that the appropriate response is to train humans for higher level work. Instead of collecting tolls, the trained worker will fix and program toll-collecting robots. But it never really works out that way, since not as many people are needed to make the robots as the robots replace.
And so the president goes on television telling us that the big issue of our time is jobs, jobs, jobs — as if the reason to build high-speed rails and fix bridges is to put people back to work. But it seems to me there’s something backwards in that logic. I find myself wondering if we may be accepting a premise that deserves to be questioned.
People are becoming obsolete. Why would we pay someone to do a job that robotics and software could do cheaper & better? Rushkoff is completely right about not needing as many people “to make the robots as the robots replace” and that should make quite a few people worry. I recently witnessed this whole scenario in my own hometown, where the waste management company replaced all of its garbage collectors with a robotic arm that scoops up garbage bins and empties them into the truck automatically. The only guy who escaped with his job intact was the driver (who, mark my words, will be out of one himself soon when cars are driven by computers).
Rushkoff goes on to elaborate on the prospect of becoming a welfare state, as those who are unable to compete for the high level jobs have no options available since all the low level jobs are being replaced. The other option is slightly more disturbing, in that we “Cut social services along with their jobs, and hope they fade into the distance.”
This is where we can tie all this back into the notion of “Program or Be Programmed” (by Rushkoff of course), and which he briefly relates back to at the very end of his piece:
This sort of work isn’t so much employment as it is creative activity. Unlike Industrial Age employment, digital production can be done from the home, independently, and even in a peer-to-peer fashion without going through big corporations. We can make games for each other, write books, solve problems, educate and inspire one another — all through bits instead of stuff. And we can pay one another using the same money we use to buy real stuff.
No matter what your profession or skillset is, we are entering a time where you will need to ask yourself the question of do I want to “Program or Be Programmed.” Eventually, someone with your skillset is going to partner with a computer programmer (or learn to themselves) and automate whatever task it is you already do. Swiftly and without regret, they will encroach on your career. This isn’t a peaceful gesture, this is war, and one in which you will lose if you do not evolve. You will be living in a world run by the rules set up by the creators, a world in which you have less control of your surroundings.
Unless… you evolve.