We are not machines
The people left out of the future
The face of the workplace is changing because of technology, and so are demographics. What will happen to the people left out of the future?
My brother used to work at a warehouse as a forklift operator, collecting boxes and preparing them for shipping. The pay was good, and the work was socially and intellectually challenging. Every few years, his job changed a little as the machines he used got upgraded, and things became more efficient.
Eventually, his job changed from him controlling what the machines did to his workflow being controlled by an algorithm on a tablet computer that told him exactly where to go and what to do.
One day, he came to work, and he and his coworkers gathered together. They told the warehouse staff their services would no longer be needed. Their jobs had been made task-based to the point that trained and skilled workers were no longer wanted.
This happened two and a half years ago, and he still has yet to find a full-time job. Jobs like this are hard to find; when one can find them, they are contract or temporary jobs that offer no room for job security or advancement.
This is because he has become one of the many people who have found themselves “innovated out of a job,” the hundreds of thousands of intelligent, able-bodied people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves casualties of technological change. By accident, in a rapidly changing economy driven by market and technological change, two people in the same family are embarking on very different paths in their future work.
In 2013, researchers at the University of Oxford estimated that 47 percent of US employment is at “high risk” for complete automation within two decades. Should their estimations be correct, we can expect that roughly 65 million Americans will not only be out of a job but will have been asked to leave their jobs because their skills have become obsolete, taken over by automation. This is a country where access to healthcare is primarily tied to one’s employer.
Given that these are conservative estimates, perhaps it is time for us all to get worried.
As a person who is designing, thinking up, reimagining systems, and creating the things that don’t exist yet but will exist in the future, as a person who cares deeply about people, I can’t help but ponder how the ideas we put in the world and the things we create have inadvertently and permanently affected the livelihood of others.
History of Work in a Nutshell
One needs only look at history to see the patterns that point to our potential futures. But first, a quick history lesson to set the context. The history of work as we know it today is fascinating, and it was driven by three distinct eras ushered in by the introduction of new technology.
1750- the mid-1800s was the first industrial revolution that was brought on with the advent of machine manufacturing. This changed the way most people lived from a primarily agrarian, agricultural, and rural way of life based on direct trade of goods and services to a wage-labor system in which time was exchanged for currency, which could then be exchanged for goods and services,
The second Industrial revolution roughly 1870–1914 was characterized by the production of steel and iron and culture-changing inventions such as the automobile, and telephones. This era saw the rise of Cities as people abandoned farms to seek fortune in the big cities. Migration from all points fueled massive cultural change. In 1900, 40% of the US population lived in cities, compared to just 6% in 1800.1943, when the first computer was invented at the University of Pennsylvania. And with its invention, the age of information was born. This was the start of the 3rd industrial revolution.
The invention of networked computing shortly followed the invention of the computer, and the world has never been the same.
In this tiny blip of 77 years, slightly less than the average human lifespan, our entire world has changed how humans in every corner of the world communicate and conduct every aspect of their lives.
In the mid-1980s, desktop computers made their debut in offices. The good news is that productivity increased, information became suddenly more available, and new jobs emerged. And suddenly, well-paying jobs such as typists, typesetters, factory workers, and many others became obsolete.
For those who worked in office jobs, the addition of desktop computers aided the inefficiency of their work but also signaled the emergence of electronic surveillance via keystrokes. Writer Barbara Ehrenreich coined “the electronic sweatshop” to describe these phenomena.
The 1990s brought the World Wide Web and 2G cell phone technology to the workplace. The capability to share information in real-time with other locations worldwide changed how, where, and with whom we could conduct business. This led to the rise of multinational corporations and waves of outsourcing labor.
Today, almost all jobs are tethered to a computer or connected device in some way. The lines between your personal life and your work life become blurry.
Thanks to technology, many jobs can now be performed anywhere by anyone. Flexibility has become the hallmark of modern workers. The separation between work and life introduced during the Industrial Revolution erodes as devices allow us to check in at the office anytime, anywhere. The term “ work-life balance” emerged as the availability of computers increased and the size of those computers got smaller.
It’s been 300 years and three industrial revolutions since people switched from working a plow from dawn to dusk to staring down a connected device 24 hours a day.
This brings us to now, at the start of the most impactful industrial revolution of all: the fourth Industrial Revolution. This is the next phase of technology in which computing is ubiquitous, with broadband capability in more places in the world than ever before, embedded technology in almost every device you can imagine, and artificial intelligence and machine learning reshaping information collection and delivery.
This revolution is more complicated than the others that preceded it. We are now operating at the speed of computer time, and we also have some unprecedented factors to contend with.
3 Challenges of the 2020s that will drive the future of work
The global economic disparity will continue. Billions of people should be included in the dominant economic systems.
However, the good news is that education and literacy rates are rising daily, and the economic prospects are looking good, particularly for people in India, China, and Brazil. Poverty around the world is declining. How might the jobs created in these economies not be reduced to repetitive, dangerous, or exploitative tasks? The challenge and opportunity is to maintain the integrity and culture of countries functioning just fine without the interference of hyper-capitalized and consumerized products and services and instead co-create and enhance infrastructure capabilities using technology to deliver a higher quality of life.
The Complex Systems we create today will affect us for decades to come.
We are now living the realities imagined and discussed by the MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener in the late 1940s in his books on “Cybernetics.” These books provided a foundation for analog and digital computing, automation, and neuroscience research. All essential and impactful technology drivers that have and will continue to transform the future of work
We are in an epoch of systems and capabilities that exist only because of connected networks and computational systems. For almost two decades, we have been living with widely used artificial intelligence systems and are shifting from programmable to self-generating systems.
The Paradox of automation says that the more efficient the automated system, the more crucial the human contribution of the operators. Humans are less involved, but their involvement becomes more critical.
While robots might not be taking over everything, we need to be careful NOT to reduce humans to robot-like tasks by automation and AI. We must seek to give the human operator of the system creativity and cognitive choice. Additionally, we must consider cognitive and temporal ergonomics—optimizing systems-based interfaces to adjust to people based on a comfortable workflow, considering people's mental load and capabilities.
The Climate Crisis is the new normal.
Sea rise, drought, and fires will change the global landscape and have unavoidable ecological, economic, and social implications. The adoption of more renewable energy and commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions are working — we have peaked, and greenhouse emissions are declining. So, how might we continue this trend?
Workplaces will be multi-generational.
For the first time in history, we are a five-generation workplace. People are working longer, and retirement is not a possibility for many.
2.52 Billion people were born in the mid to late 1990s, and they will make up the largest workforce ever.
Age diversity in the workplace will be the new condition. While this creates great opportunities, it also opens the door for cultural clashes.
The generations in the workplace will also create new frictions in the perception of the purpose and value of work.
Governments must lead the way.
The private industry will not solve the scale of the changes we face. They can’t, and private corporations today are driven by profit, and their metrics of success are tied to growth and markets. The French economist Thomas Pickety writes about this in exquisite detail in his book Capital. So this leaves us with governments as the only entities with the mandate and scale to grapple with how to shepherd these massive shifts in how we work and deal with those who will be out of work. The focus will need to be more on government, policy, and regulation. Governments may have to treat re-skilling like K-12 education. We need a digital privacy bill of rights to regulate who has your biometric data and what they will do with it. We must use policy and regulation to ensure being “Innovated out of work” is not the norm.
So what can people in tech do about it?
Designing with instead of designing for
Mind where the ideas come from
Be mindful of what stories you are telling
Put the creativity and cognitive choice to the human operator of the system.
We are in the first stages of changes that will affect all of humanity. Everyone in this room, in some way, large or small, will have a hand in shaping the future. The question we must all grapple with is what we want that future to be—for you, for me, and for people like my brother, who happen to be the majority.
To do anything else is to risk our humanity. We have the opportunity to shape a future that is fair, equitable, democratic, inclusive, and just.
This is not just for those like us but for everyone. Will we be brave enough to accept the challenge?
