Artificial intelligence: Difference Engine: Luddite legacy | The Economist ⇢

futuramb:

In his analysis, Mr Ford noted how technology and innovation improve productivity exponentially, while human consumption increases in a more linear fashion. In his view, Luddism was, indeed, a fallacy when productivity improvements were still on the relatively flat, or slowly rising, part of the exponential curve. But after two centuries of technological improvements, productivity has “turned the corner” and is now moving rapidly up the more vertical part of the exponential curve. One implication is that productivity gains are now outstripping consumption by a large margin.
Another implication is that technology is no longer creating new jobs at a rate that replaces old ones made obsolete elsewhere in the economy. All told, Mr Ford has identified over 50m jobs in America—nearly 40% of all employment—which, to a greater or lesser extent, could be performed by a piece of software running on a computer. Within a decade, many of them are likely to vanish. “The bar which technology needs to hurdle in order to displace many of us in the workplace,” the author notes, “is much lower than we really imagine.”

OK, The Economist is now trying to discuss a fact that we futurists have been talking about for many years: technology will, as it once did to farmers and later industrial workers, replace even knowledge workers and dramatically change our world (again). Unemployment will therefore be relatively high until we redefine what we mean by employment or have gone through the structural and value changes that comes from reorganizing society around a different center of gravity than the traditional factory modelled institution.

As a futurist I am of course wondering: is it now time to leave these issues to the politicians and change our focus to things more far ahead into the future…?

A drastic reorganization of society when we agree that the purpose of life is not toil, but art?

10 November 2011 77 futuramb
future of workknowledge workthe work of human begins is artart

Notes

  1. braingasmic reblogged this from npr
  2. morelampsplz reblogged this from emergentfutures and added:
    Shantee James is now Artificial!
  3. americanrevolutionnaire reblogged this from npr
  4. nxtw reblogged this from npr
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  6. deviatedseptum reblogged this from npr
  7. bleucheeseitz reblogged this from npr
  8. johnacraft reblogged this from npr
  9. auz reblogged this from npr and added:
    Interesting article. I often wonder if its inevitable that machines will take over all the manual and most of the boring...
  10. jadkirk reblogged this from npr
  11. oldgengamer92 reblogged this from npr
  12. npr reblogged this from emergentfutures
  13. steveames reblogged this from stoweboyd and added:
    Yes. Art.
  14. stoweboyd reblogged this from futuramb and added:
    A drastic reorganization of society when we agree that the purpose of life is not toil, but art?
  15. justiceman reblogged this from emergentfutures
  16. positivefuture reblogged this from emergentfutures
  17. tiresiasbc reblogged this from emergentfutures
  18. rawheistnyc reblogged this from emergentfutures and added:
    Do peep..
  19. 7flutterbies reblogged this from emergentfutures

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Web anthropologist, futurist, author. My focus is the future, and the tectonic forces pushing business, media, and society into an unclear and accelerating future. (More.)

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