Tech Rapidly Changing Employment

What if humans lost 90% of all jobs in the world to robots, automation and technology?

Forbes Magazine.

We’d be where we are today:

• One hundred years ago, the vast majority of people in the world worked on farms. The invention and proliferation of technology has made it possible so that a small minority of farmers (2% here in America) can provide food for all.
• A little over one hundred years ago, there were millions of jobs related to the main mode of local transportation of the day: the horse-drawn carriage. All of those jobs building carriages, manufacturing buggy whips, raising horses and scooping up their excrement off the city streets. Again, progress and technology have all but eliminated those jobs, and here we are.
• Seventy years ago, a little over 3% of the U.S. workforce was employed by the railroad industry moving freight and passengers around the country. Today, only 0.1% of the workforce is involved in the railroad industry, yet it moves nearly three times the amount of freight around the country [1].
• As described in the movie Hidden Figures, NASA used to employ human computers to calculate flight trajectories that helped get our spaceships into the sky. Today the aggregate computing power of human computing from that era is dwarfed by the device sitting in your pocket.

These are just a few examples of how jobs and the nature of work has changed over the years, pushed forward by unshackling humanity’s collective ingenuity to solve problems. In my view, robots (and artificial intelligence) are merely another chapter in humanity’s ongoing drive towards greater productivity and innovation.

Dealing with disruption (better this time around)

However, before we all lock arms together for a massive Global Group Hug and embrace this Utopian future of unlimited abundance, we need to be ultra-aware about how disruptive change caused by new technology can be the root cause of global conflict.

I remember a time not so long ago when Globalization was praised by the masses, immigrants were welcome, new technologies and inventions were taking the world by storm and the economy was making everyone wealthy.

I am talking about the mid-90s. The 1890s, that is. Over the next half-century, the world underwent what is arguably the most destructive period it had ever seen. Rapid changes in technology ultimately led to massive changes in society — everything from politics (end of the Colonial era to rising Nationalism), communications (the telephone), to culture (the rise of car culture), urban planning (the invention of modern suburbia), to shrinking household size.

How do you use this information best? You can't guarantee the industry you now work in won't drastically change to the point "your services are no longer required." The only way is to leverage technology and start your own business. Use it to your advantage and take the control.