career expectations jobhunting life in Japan public policy technology
by sendaiben
13 comments
A future with no jobs -the most important social issue of our times?
I think the most important scientific issues of our times are climate change, energy sufficiency, and environmental pollution, but I believe that these will be solved by technology within my lifetime.
Recently, I have been reading a lot about a problem that will be caused by technological advances.
I read two books: Race Against the Machine ($3.99 on Kindle) and The Lights in the Tunnel ($3.95 on Kindle). They are both incredibly thought-provoking, and tell the same story: we are approaching a future without jobs.
Technological advances are resulting in more and more jobs being automated. Looking around me here in Japan I have seen petrol stations (self-service), restaurants (order from a touch panel) and supermarkets (self-checkout) directly replace workers with machines.
Amazon has replaced countless shops, and is in the process of automating their warehouses.
The latest thing in education is Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), allowing one teacher to deliver content to tens of thousands of students.
Foxconn, the company that assembles iPhones in China, is currently replacing it’s workers with robots.
Google’s driverless cars will eliminate taxi drivers, delivery drivers, and eventually driving schools, traffic police, and even street signs.
Increasingly sophisticated computer hardware and software will replace legal researchers, translators, middle managers, medical technicians, surgeons, and other knowledge workers.
So, as technology continues to improve at exponential rates, and human workers for jobs at both the blue- and white-collar levels continue to become surplus to requirements, what are people going to do? Are we going to have societies where 60%+ of the population are on welfare?
It’s terrifying.
I think I’m probably going to be okay, as I work in a public university in Japan (possibly one of the last sectors to face automation). Even so, I would be surprised if my job still existed in 15 years time.
One possible positive to come out of this is that Japan’s extreme demographics may turn out to be a blessing. When there is no need for a workforce, and unemployed people are a drag on society, a falling population could become an advantage.
Am I overreacting? This seems like the issue of our times, as it is going to result in huge changes to our social and economic systems, but it doesn’t seem to be part of public discourse.
I look forward to your comments 🙂
I just heard a TED talk on this.
Easy answer: nationalize the robots. Send everyone a monthly check.
George Jetson slaved over a few buttons, pushing one every 30 seconds or so, for a whole TWO hours per day!
But actually, I think certain human services will continue. Training and education will be important. Courtesans? It is the less-skilled manual labor and recycled services (e.g? Recorded Lectures) at risk.
Ben, I don’t think the issue of technology replacing humans is a completely dire situation. Jobs have been displaced in the past by technology and other new jobs were created. There is a long history of this. Of course, the experience that society has had with this has mostly been technology taking the place of blue-collar labor (for example automated assembly lines etc.) and the new trend is for technology to take the place of white-collar jobs more and more. This will be a challenge but machines and computers cannot build and sustain relationships, be creative or do anything spontaneously. Thus, I am not worried about this issue. However, I do worry about the growing inequality in the USA, UK and Japan actually. The richest are getting richer and everyone else is not making much progress at all. This is the big problem to think about and make sure politicians are doing something about.
Changes are definitely happening and will accelerate, but we should be careful not to underestimate the power of human interaction. This is one reason I think it will take far more than 15 years for teachers–including university lecturers–to become obsolete, if that ever does happen. Education is about far more than simply learning “information.”
[…] talked a lot on this blog about the coming jobs apocalypse and the conversation above got me thinking about how this will apply to teaching English as a […]
Interesting Ben. I myself don’t think that the science (or misuse of science) that got us in this environmental mess is going to get us out of it, but that is another several books.
University jobs must go online where they can reach far more people and reduce costs dramatically otherwise we are going to have the unemployed youth owing their lives to the banks as is happening already in the States.
I would like to see an official reverse in urbanisation but it doesn’t suit agrobusiness. People are either going to grow vegetables or vegetate in future.