Don’t get frozen out by innovation!

With rapid progression sometimes it can be difficult to look at the world and understand how much it is actually changing in real time. In the last 50 years, this information revolution has become so integrated into our daily lives it is easy to forget how groundbreaking it actually all is.  

It is not hard to imagine that supermarket cashiers will soon be redundant, as everyone’s favourite the self-service checkout firmly establish their place in all supermarkets.

The self-service checkout is just indicative of a broader trend, which is that computers are putting humans out of work, particularly those working within service industries.

This trend initially began in the industrial revolution, when agricultural and manufacturing equipment started to replace human labourers. Later on in the 1960s & 70s, precise engineering machines made the majority of skilled labourers (i.e. watchmakers and laboratory assistants) obsolete. 

With the introduction of the internet, millions of support and service roles were made redundant, a vast swathe of employees like bank clerks and travel agents found themselves largely replaced by online services. 

Therefore it is a reasonable expectation that machines will begin to nullify even the most prestigious professions like doctors and lawyers in the future. 

That said, there is no need to get sentimental over the fact machines can now take on board the human graft, as historically technological progress has typically been a good thing. 

It is a sign of privilege that we are able to live in air-conditioned spaces, play around on our mobiles or laptops which give us access to all of humankind’s knowledge, and still complain that manual labour is being eradicated.

As we have seen with previous revolutions humans will need to adapt. Those who have been replaced by artificial intelligence will not return to manufacturing jobs for example. Instead, there will have to embrace new types of technological and service jobs as they emerge.

It is important for individuals to be aware of this transition otherwise they could find themselves ‘frozen out’ by innovation with little in the way of transferable skills.