The middle class of most of the industrialized nations is being displaced radically. It started with outsourcing in general, and has now graduated to automation of tasks and entire jobs which used to be the domain of middle management, to IT functions. From a demographic perspective, as middle management disappears, several things occur:
1) The social middle class begins to disappear;
2) unemployment overall begins to rise;
3) crime begins to rise;
4) former middle class families join the ranks of the working poor;
5) consumerism in these nations suffers;
6) project managers, program managers and IT consultants become increasingly in demand, but are usually hired on a contractual or non-permanent basis;
7) the pool of talent for senior-level management and leadership begins to evaporate -- remember the "Brain Drain Effect"?;
8) The wealthiest members of each country's populace become wealthier while the ranks of the poor increase -- the disparity between the free and the economically enslaved increases;
9) Thinking as a follower of The Global Futurist Blog might, the de-humanization of the workplace and the dangerous dependency on automated processes and limited artificial intelligence opens up a Pandora's Box of nightmare scenarios, including some that may bring to mind Arthur C. Clarke's "2001", The Forbin Project, The Matrix, War Games, The Terminator, and [being less dramatic] the economic catastrophes caused by unregulated, uncontrolled program trading.
Sadly, if businesses are only thinking about maximizing short-term profits and the elimination of overpriced middle management workers, they will ultimately, in the longer-term, be hit with the costs associated with the unemployment that they create (loss of domestic and international consumerism due to decreased disposable income); the costs of unforeseen programming errors and a lack of genuine human oversight; a growing resentment amongst their employees and the general public against the technology which have displaced and harmed so many...picture a scenario involving some combination of the resurgence of the Luddites, the rise of the technophobes and the war against the machines.
During a period of increasing IT utilization and automation, there will invariably be a loss in terms of properly trained and broadly experienced employees in many areas. Problem solving abilities in our species could well decline -- a lack of braintenance leads to atrophy and inertia of many of the crucial entrepreneurial and decision making skills required in order to conduct business.
An interesting article from BigThink Ideafeed follows for your viewing. When you have finished scanning the article, please come back to this site so that we may come to some conclusions, and pass out a bit of food for thought.
RETHINKING THE WORKPLACE [An article excerpt from BigThink Ideafeed] How Far Will Businesses Go to Automate the Middle Class into Unemployment? |
While there are certain cases where a machine (or IT, or an application) can certainly replace a human being, my fear, and the fear which I anticipate in many reactive individuals, is that a simple efficiency- and cost-saving strategy may just go too far.
The other tremendous disadvantage associated with technological dependence in general, and the increasing scope of the virtual workplace in particular is that interpersonal and communications skills are sharply declining amongst the Millenials and even persons in more advanced age brackets. This is highly damaging to any global economic recovery as well as to the future of our Internationalist civilization as a species.
The questions which we must all ask ourselves are these:
1) What is the optimal blend of Human and machine?
2) What will the future of original thought, innovation, employment, consumerism and other important economic and sociological variables be if the current trends continue?
3) Who is serving whom? Will Humankind ultimately surrender its freedoms of dissent, expression, creativity, disruption and those other special gifts which we too often take for granted, to thinking machines?
I would like for every scientist, economist, engineer, sociologist, psychologist, trend-spotter and every domestic and international policymaker to consider these issues.
Douglas E. Castle for The Internationalist Page Blog
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