Opinion (Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management, author of Enterprise 2.0 and Race Against the Machine (with Erik Brynjolfsson): “As it turns out, when tens of millions of people are unemployed or underemployed, there’s a fair amount of interest in what technology might be doing to the labor force. And as I look at the conversation, it strikes me that it’s focused on exactly the right topic, and at the same time, it’s missing the point entirely. The topic that it’s focused on, the question is whether or not all these digital technologies are affecting people’s ability to earn a living, or, to say it a little bit different way, are the droids taking our jobs? And there’s some evidence that they are. …

“Corporate profits are quite high. In fact, if you include bank profits, they’re higher than they’ve ever been. And business investment in gear, in equipment and hardware and software is at an all-time high. So the businesses are getting out their checkbooks. …

“So, in short, yeah, the droids are coming for our jobs. In the short term, we can stimulate job growth by encouraging entrepreneurship and by investing in infrastructure, because the robots today still aren’t very good at fixing bridges. But in the not-too-long-term, I think within the lifetimes of most of the people in this room, we’re going to transition into an economy that is very productive but that just doesn’t need a lot of human workers, and managing that transition is going to be the greatest challenge that our society faces. Voltaire summarized why. He said, ‘Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.’”

My Comment: If we exclude people’s revolt against machines and technological progress in general, then the only thing that remains is for us to occupy the unemployed—the most reliable and necessary for this—is integral education in which people begin to understand the essence of the era and of the necessary changes that should occur in them and in society.
[103456]

Related Material:
Unemployment In The World Of Unfinished Business!
No To Unemployment, Yes To The Real Work
Where Is The Solution To The Unemployment Problem?

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Education, Integral Upbringing, News | Add Comment →