An interesting piece from Elizabeth Kolbert
“Meanwhile, the
global economy kept growing, in large part because of the new machines. As one
occupation vanished, another came into being. Employment migrated from farms
and mills to factories and offices to cubicles and call centers.
Economic history
suggests that this basic pattern will continue, and that the jobs eliminated by
Watson and his ilk will be balanced by those created in enterprises yet to be
imagined—but not without a good deal of suffering. If nearly half the
occupations in the U.S. are “potentially automatable,” and if this could play
out within “a decade or two,” then we are looking at economic disruption on an
unparalleled scale. Picture the entire Industrial Revolution compressed into
the life span of a beagle.”