by Tdarcos » Fri May 11, 2018 6:34 am
This seems to follow along with all other lines of technology. If a means to reduce the cost of labor becomes scalable, that means will be used.
First, you have factories, or shops, or offices with many people to do the work. Then, starting in the 50s and 60s came the tools to automate financial processes (billing, accounts payable, accounts receivable) which eliminated rows and rows of hundreds of accountants or accounting clerks to do these things, instead substituting a few dozen data entry clerks to enter the information, while large computers calculated the results, and automated processing and mailing equipment printed bills and checks, stuffed them in envelopes, and sorted them by zip code for cheaper bulk mailing. Then came automated time clocks where the work hours could be collected without data entry clerks.
Then when manufacturing companies had to find ways to reduce labor costs, enter robots and automation.
Then with countries with cheaper labor, outsourcing of jobs that could be shifted to Mexico or overseas were. This was the best of the low-hanging fruit. High paying low-skilled to semi-skilled industrial work that didn't necessarily require understanding English.
Then the World Wide Web came along and a lot of work requiring intermediation was eliminated; the customer orders on-line, the equipment picks the stuff out of cases that earlier the person who loaded it scanned, and the only requirement is to stack the items in the box or arrange for indicating number of cases in the order. Just huge warehouses with robots putting fresh items into the shelving, and removing the items as ordered, all unattended. This still requires people to deliver items. Or does it?
But the problem for a lot of jobs was automation did not scale. The means to operate trucks without drivers meant most of the transportation industry was safe from automation; robot vision and other tools to automate transportation of goods is not good enough to allow for self-driving vehicles. Or rather, it wasn't.
The work that we can expect to see last long-term is that which is either too complicated for a machine to produce (large intellectual pursuits) or which either automating the work is too expensive or does not scale.
This seems to follow along with all other lines of technology. [i]If a means to reduce the cost of labor becomes scalable, that means will be used.[/i]
First, you have factories, or shops, or offices with many people to do the work. Then, starting in the 50s and 60s came the tools to automate financial processes (billing, accounts payable, accounts receivable) which eliminated rows and rows of hundreds of accountants or accounting clerks to do these things, instead substituting a few dozen data entry clerks to enter the information, while large computers calculated the results, and automated processing and mailing equipment printed bills and checks, stuffed them in envelopes, and sorted them by zip code for cheaper bulk mailing. Then came automated time clocks where the work hours could be collected without data entry clerks.
Then when manufacturing companies had to find ways to reduce labor costs, enter robots and automation.
Then with countries with cheaper labor, outsourcing of jobs that could be shifted to Mexico or overseas were. This was the best of the low-hanging fruit. High paying low-skilled to semi-skilled industrial work that didn't necessarily require understanding English.
Then the World Wide Web came along and a lot of work requiring intermediation was eliminated; the customer orders on-line, the equipment picks the stuff out of cases that earlier the person who loaded it scanned, and the only requirement is to stack the items in the box or arrange for indicating number of cases in the order. Just huge warehouses with robots putting fresh items into the shelving, and removing the items as ordered, all unattended. This still requires people to deliver items. Or does it?
But the problem for a lot of jobs was automation did not scale. The means to operate trucks without drivers meant most of the transportation industry was safe from automation; robot vision and other tools to automate transportation of goods is not good enough to allow for self-driving vehicles. Or rather, it [i]wasn't[/i].
The work that we can expect to see last long-term is that which is either too complicated for a machine to produce (large intellectual pursuits) or which either automating the work is too expensive or does not scale.