Technological unemployment: Difference between revisions

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{{JC on technology}}
{{JC on technology}}


One of the great {{t|dogma}}s.
One of the great modern {{t|dogma}}s.


As articulated by Keynes: “unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.”<ref>Keynes: ''Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren''</ref>. You would think that this can only ever be a temporary effect: the entrepreneurial possibilities created by freeing labour up from one occupation to do anything else must mean in the long run ''there can be no technological unemployment''. History definitely tells us that. But — just try telling that to {{author|Daniel Susskind}}. [[This time is different]].<ref>We say to him what we [[The Singularity is Near - Book Review|said a decade]] ago to {{author|Ray Kurzweil}}: “... it’s easy to be smug as I type on my decidedly physical computer, showing no signs of being superseded with VR Goggles just yet and we’re only six months from the new decade, [''note: that was the '''last''' decade.''] but, being as path-dependent as it is the evolutionary process is notoriously bad at making predictions — until the results are in.”</ref>
As articulated by Keynes: “unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.”<ref>Keynes: ''Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren''</ref>. You would think that this can only ever be a temporary effect: the entrepreneurial possibilities created by freeing labour up from one occupation to do anything else must mean in the long run ''there can be no technological unemployment''. History definitely tells us that. But — just try telling that to {{author|Daniel Susskind}}. [[This time is different]].<ref>We say to him what we [[The Singularity is Near - Book Review|said a decade]] ago to {{author|Ray Kurzweil}}: “... it’s easy to be smug as I type on my decidedly physical computer, showing no signs of being superseded with VR Goggles just yet and we’re only six months from the new decade, [''note: that was the '''last''' decade.''] but, being as path-dependent as it is the evolutionary process is notoriously bad at making predictions — until the results are in.”</ref>
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The history of the world so far: we solve old problems, usually by accident. Old problem goes away and in its place we find a range up untapped, hitherto unimagined ''possibilities''.  
The history of the world so far: we solve old problems, usually by accident. Old problem goes away and in its place we find a range up untapped, hitherto unimagined ''possibilities''.  


Machines aren’t awfully good at imagining hitherto unforeseeable possibilities, let alone figuring out how to exploit them. And no, being good at Go or Chess doesn’t falsify that observation.<ref>Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this the “ludic fallacy”. {{google2|Ludic|Fallacy}}.</ref> Machines are good at doing what someone has figured out needs to be done, now, only faster. They require configuration, programming and implementation. Machines are [[A faster horse - technology article|faster horses]]. They won’t imagine an alternative future for you. Not even clever, [[Artificial intelligence|artificially intelligent]], seemingly [[magic|magical machines]].
Machines aren’t awfully good at imagining hitherto unforeseeable possibilities, let alone creatively exploiting them. And no, being good at Go or Chess doesn’t falsify that observation.<ref>Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this the “ludic fallacy”. {{google2|Ludic|Fallacy}}.</ref> Machines are good at doing what someone has already figured out needs to be done, now, only ''faster''. They require configuration, programming and implementation. Machines are [[A faster horse - technology article|faster horses]]. They won’t imagine an alternative future for you. Not even clever, [[Artificial intelligence|artificially intelligent]], seemingly [[magic|magical machines]].


We are in the middle of a Cambrian explosion of innovations. The one thing we can be assured won’t work right now are [[A faster horse - technology article|faster horses]].
We are in the middle of a Cambrian explosion of innovations. The one thing we can be assured won’t work right in the near, or far, future are [[A faster horse - technology article|faster horses]].


If there were only way you ever could do things, and we had already found it, you technologists, futurologists and millenarians can get your coats. But that’s plainly nonsense. Did DARPA, when it invested the internet, have ''Gangnam Style'' in mind? Did Apple, anticipate all the applications to which you could put an iPhone? Has the internet, or the smartphone iPhone destroyed, or ''created'', commercial activity?
And if there were only way you ever could do things, and we had already found it, you technologists, futurologists and millenarians can get your coats. But that’s plainly nonsense.  
 
Did DARPA, when it invested the internet, have ''Gangnam Style'' in mind? Did Steve Jobs anticipate all the applications to which you could put an iPhone? Has the internet, or the smartphone, destroyed, or ''created'', humanoid commercial activity?


Technology certainly threatens those who seek to [[operationalise]] labour — who look to take the easy, algorithmic bits, that could and, really (if [[reg tech]] was any good), ''already should'' be done by robots — cheapen it and send it off to distant shores to processing by inexpensive young muppets<ref>I mean no disrespect to said young muppets, only to their muppetmasters: their very strategy is to find cheap, uncomplaining operatives possessed of basic literacy and a pulse. They do not want bright young things, because bright young things get ''ideas''.</ref> Because that is a transparently stupid strategy in the first place.  
Technology certainly threatens those who seek to [[operationalise]] labour — who look to take the easy, algorithmic bits, that could and, really (if [[reg tech]] was any good), ''already should'' be done by robots — cheapen it and send it off to distant shores to processing by inexpensive young muppets<ref>I mean no disrespect to said young muppets, only to their muppetmasters: their very strategy is to find cheap, uncomplaining operatives possessed of basic literacy and a pulse. They do not want bright young things, because bright young things get ''ideas''.</ref> Because that is a transparently stupid strategy in the first place.  
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[[Operationalisation]] is the process of trying to render the cosmic mundane — it is to ''ask'' to be superseded by robots, as you drive your business model, and your margins, into the ground.
[[Operationalisation]] is the process of trying to render the cosmic mundane — it is to ''ask'' to be superseded by robots, as you drive your business model, and your margins, into the ground.


But, yet, yet, yet: one thing we know [[technology]] will do is lower the barriers to interaction and communication. And one thing we know that the great huddled masses of mercantile foot-soldiers like to do is ''talk'' — as ''much'' as possible, and about ''as little of moment'' as possible, in as elliptical a way as possible. Visit [[LinkedIn]], or [[Twitter]] — hell, just listen to anything that comes out of the middle-management layer of any decent sized firm if you really need persuading of this.  
But, yet, yet, yet: one thing we know [[technology]] will do is lower the barriers to interaction and communication. And one thing we know that the great huddled masses of mercantile foot-soldiers like to do is ''talk'' — as ''much'' as possible, and about ''as little of moment'' as possible, in as elliptical a way as possible. Visit [[LinkedIn]], or [[Twitter]] — hell, just listen to anything that comes out of the [[middle-management]] layer of any decent sized firm if you really need persuading of this.  


There is an equilibrium of sorts between the need to get stuff done and the need to vent your own opinions, and until that [[Tim Berners-Lee|Berners-Lee]] fellow ruined everything, it was set quite delicately at a place where, for most of us, while achieving anything was hard, finding people to listen to your opinions was even harder, so we spent most of our time in morose silence slugging away at a hard rock-face with an old, soft-bristled, toothbrush. We had collected enough chips of slate to keep our employers happy and take a bit home to keep the hungry mouths around the Formica table passably filled with tinned foods. The only people around to hear our plaintive discursions about the ills of the modern world were those spouses and children, their mouths so crammed with baked beans as to be unable even to reply. The divorce rate was stratospheric.
There is an equilibrium of sorts between the need to get stuff done and the need to vent your own opinions and, until that [[Tim Berners-Lee|Berners-Lee]] fellow ''ruined'' everything, it was set quite delicately at a place where, for most of us, while achieving anything was hard, finding people to listen to your opinions was even harder, so we spent most of our time in morose silence slugging away at a hard rock-face with an old, soft-bristled, toothbrush. We had collected enough chips of slate to keep our employers happy and take a bit home to keep the hungry mouths around the Formica table passably filled with tinned foods. The only people around to hear our plaintive discursions about the ills of the modern world were those spouses and children, their mouths so crammed with baked beans as to be unable even to reply. The divorce rate was stratospheric.


[[File:Internet vs divorce.png|300px|frame|left|A happy compromise, yesterday.]]Enter the internet, distributed [[network]]s, are tools are sharper but suddenly ''talk is cheap''. As such, you get what you pay for: a lot of cheap talk fills up the workplace. If we haven’t enough of this quadrophonic noise by the time we come to clock out, we can vent the remains of our metaphysical angst into the howling, stone-deaf gale that is the [[world wide web]], rather the well-bent ears of our long-suffering spouses and their bean-stuffed toe-rags. We sit at our tele-screens and watch our rage boil off, evaporating harmlessly into the infinite, thundering dark.  
[[File:Internet vs divorce.png|300px|frame|left|A happy compromise, yesterday.]]Enter the internet, distributed [[network]]s, are tools are sharper but suddenly ''talk is cheap''. As such, you get what you pay for: a lot of cheap talk fills up the workplace. If we haven’t enough of this quadrophonic noise by the time we come to clock out, we can vent the remains of our metaphysical angst into the howling, stone-deaf gale that is the [[world wide web]], rather the well-bent ears of our long-suffering spouses and their bean-stuffed toe-rags. We sit at our tele-screens and watch our rage boil off, evaporating harmlessly into the infinite, thundering dark.  
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