Automation is a logical progression, where technology makes life easier why not use it more efficiently to take the workload off people and make their time usage more efficient?
Man has always striven to develop new technologies and adapt it to our advantage.
We started with fire by adapted that from nature so we could cook, keep warm and have light to see by at night. From that point on, man started to make things that made life easier for them, like tools.
One of the major inventions that had a huge impact on the development of society was the wheel. This revolutionised the transport of goods and allowed more people to travel in groups and move bigger loads with far less effort.
The printing press made mass produced printing available for the first time and allowed society to make it's first steps away from the church as a source of all knowledge. The church pretty much had a monopoly on literature and guarded it jealously so they could control what was disseminated to the masses. Once anyone could print their own literature that became a threat to the church.
This bought up a continuing battle that still rages when new technologies threaten the established order. The church, through their government control attempted to shut it down by introducing a printers guild, where anyone who wanted to print had to obtain a copy right from the guild.
This is where the modern copyright comes from and I will touch on that again later.
With the advent of steam engines the world really took off and the industrial revolution changed manufacturing, agriculture and transport forver. This was a major turning point in automating labour intensive industries into machine driven industry.
People became feeders of the machines and factory output increased dramatically with a smaller labour force and as people had to work to survive, they had to work in appalling conditions for low pay as they could be easily replaced.
The telegraph, then the telephone followed closely by radio changed the way the world communicated and fast global communication was born.
Electricity and electronics increased the spread of technology and allowed it to move into wider business use and into the home. Everyone in the developed world could have a washing machine, electric cooker and radio.
For the first time you could have the news at home, soon after it happened as it was telegraphed around the world in a matter of hours.
With the advent of the first computers by the British to crack German codes in World War 2, the world stood on the brink of a huge business transformation.
When the personal computer came out in the eighties the world well and truly fell over the brink and the whole world changed again.
Accountants could do forward projections via spreadsheets in hours rather than days and they literally threw money at the computer companies. Again staff numbers dropped and productivity increased.
We all know how the office environment transformed with these new devices but then the Internet hit and stood the world on its head again.
That transformed the business model more than the advent of the computer had.
In the interim the Asian region moved massively into the 20th century and as their people became more affluent the consumer base grew and they moved into larger scale manufacturing.
With a cheap labour force they expanded their markets to the world and the west, faced with increasing labour costs moved many jobs to Asia.
Many western companies also saw this as a bad thing and decided to automate to cut costs and increase manufacturing capability as well as keeping the industry in their own countries.
You now have the situation, particularly in the US where manufacturing is the largest export sector and to keep competitive is increasing their automation and shedding even more jobs. '
Asia saw this happening and is now automating as well to increase productivity and cut jobs to compete with the rise of western technology.
As computers grow and computing power increases dramatically with every new generation the scope of automation increases exponentially. You now have computers in nearly everything from your fridge to the toaster to the phone in your pocket.
The greater the computing power, the more ways we have to use it.
Autonomous vehicles are now a reality and it's only a matter of when, not if, they become widely available.
This level of automation sees a new generation of jobs to be shed as there will be very few truck drivers, delivery people, taxi drivers and anyone else involved in supporting these in the not too distant future.
Quite a few factual type reporting articles (sports in particular) are being written by computer so there are journalism entry level jobs there disappearing as well.
Medical technology is now high tech with many machines that go ping!
Autonomous vehicles will stand the world on its head yet again and the social implications are huge as I have discussed before.
Shipping in major ports is now virtually automated across the globe.
Even the flying car is back on the radar (pardon the pun).
Technology is happening at an ever increasing rate and as with any technology there are always people for whatever reason always want to oppose it.
This can be for many reasons including not wanting to redefine the business model which invariable introduces cost and loss of profit due to market erosion. The music publishing industry is a classic example of that.
Movie and television companies still cling to regional copyright in the face of world wide simple to use pirate techniques that bypass these controls.
Most people actually want to pay for their content but if they can't get it at a reasonable price they will find other ways of getting it.
Ask many Netflix subscribers who previous had access to Netflix content from around the globe. Now that they can't get it anymore, many have gone back to downloading the same content.
Companies are automating their factories to compete with cheap Asian goods, robots are moving into home and retail, and online shopping is becoming the norm.
Taxi drivers are protesting world wide over Uber and related services.
In the next year or so Uber and truck drivers will be protesting automated vehicles.
The expression used to be that the only certainty in life is death and taxes.
In the modern age that has become death, taxes and change.
Once it's out there the technology is not going away.
Unfortunately there is only one option, adapt or die!
I have always been a supporter of technology but we are now at such an advanced stage of development that the people aspect needs to become a major part of the discussion.
As people are displaced by technology their income, and by extension, their purchasing power reduces.
I have reduced this to a couple of very simplistic equations:
Higher automation = higher output and lower employment levels
Lower employment = smaller consumer base
Smaller consumer base = lower sales,
Reduce prices = increase sales
Reduce cost = higher automation
rinse and repeat
It's not really rocket science but with many governments having the emphasis on developing new jobs then it's not being considered as an issue.
Once you look at industry today and the levels of automation then you will see that these jobs are not coming back... Not ever.
So despite the public rhetoric surround trade deals employment and globalisation, we really need to start a new conversation.
Unfortunately I see some of the current world leaders following an alternative reality.
