Summary: A new Industrial Revolution has begun while we fuss and frolick about much smaller issues. With our experience from the earlier ones, we can manage it to build a prosperous future. Unlike the previous ones, this time we can do it without massive suffering during the transition. This one of a series of posts about what might be the major economic event of the 21st century. It might make many of our current problems disappear – and introduce new ones.
Let’s seek a safe path to the future.
Prepare for the future by closing our eyes
On September 23 {William the Conqueror’s} fleet hove in sight, and all came safely to anchor in Pevensey Bay. There was no opposition to the landing. The local fyrd had been called out this year 4 times already to watch the coast, and having, in true English style, come to the conclusion that the danger was past because it had not yet arrived had gone back to their homes.
— From A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
by Winston Churchill.
The development of semi-intelligent machines (e.g., an IQ equivalent of 60) with simple sensory systems will destroy a large fraction of today’s jobs. Perhaps we will find new forms of employment for the unemployed. Perhaps we will develop new economic systems which require fewer people to work, sharing the new bounty with the unemployed. If delayed into the second half of the 21st century, the almost inevitable population crash (esp. following the invention of a contraceptive pill for men) will make automation a cure for the economy – not a curse. Any solution will require innovation, wisdom, luck – and time. We must start soon.
But the need to adapt is not obvious to everybody. After all, the last one ran from roughly 1860 to 1945 – dimly remembered history to most Americans. In her 1989 book In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power
This “robot revolution” is long-predicted and now arriving, but some interpret that it took long to arrive as evidence that it will not come. For example, in 2016 Elizabeth Garbee at Slate wrote “This Is Not the Fourth Industrial Revolution” – “The meaningless phrase got tossed around a lot at this year’s World Economic Forum.”
See my posts about the effects of the new industrial revolution on different kinds of jobs. It has already begun. Below are forecasts of the coming robot revolution. Let’s learn from their insights, and begin to prepare.
It was science fiction; now it’s our future
The effects of automation were visible to some people long ago. One of the first was James Blish, as in his A Life for the Stars
“The cab came floating down out of the sky at the intersection and maneuvered itself to rest at the curb next to them with a finicky precision. There was, of course, nobody in it; like everything else in the world requiring an I.Q. of less than 150, it was computer-controlled.
“The world-wide dominance of such machines, Chris’s father had often said, had been one of the chief contributors to the present and apparently permanent depression: the coming of semi-intelligent machines into business and technology had created a second Industrial Revolution, in which only the most highly creative human beings, and those most fitted at administration, found themselves with any skills to sell which were worth the world’s money to buy.”
Jeremy Rifkin warns us to prepare
Jeremy Rifkin is a Jeremiah of our time, always warning of dooms. But just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, he scores occasionally – as in The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era
“Jeremy Rifkin argues that we are entering a new phase in history – one characterized by the steady and inevitable decline of jobs. The world is fast polarizing into two potentially irreconcilable forces: on one side, an information elite that controls and manages the high-tech global economy; and on the other, the growing numbers of displaced workers, who have few prospects and little hope for meaningful employment in an increasingly automated world. The end of work could mean the demise of civilization as we have come to know it, or signal the beginning of a great social transformation and a rebirth of the human spirit.”
Rifkin was far ahead of the pack, as seen in this excerpt from the book.
“The Information Age has arrived. In the years ahead, new, more sophisticated software technologies are going to bring civilization ever closer to a near-workerless world. In the agricultural, manufacturing, and service sectors, machines are quickly replacing human labor and promise an economy of near automated production by the middecades of the twenty-first century.
“The wholesale substitution of machines for workers is going to force every nation to rethink the role of human beings in the social process. Redefining opportunities and responsibilities for millions of people in a society absent of mass formal employment is likely to be the single most pressing social issue of the coming century. …
“We are entering a new phase in world history-one in which fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global population. The End of Work examines the technological innovations and market-directed forces that are moving us to the edge of a near workerless world. We will explore the promises and perils of the Third Industrial Revolution and begin to address the complex problems that will accompany the transition into a post-market era. …
“In the past, when new technologies have replaced workers in a given sector, new sectors have always emerged to absorb the displaced laborers. Today, all three of the traditional sectors of the economy agriculture, manufacturing, and service – are experiencing technological displacement, forcing millions onto the unemployment rolls.
“The only new sector emerging is the knowledge sector, made up of a small elite of entrepreneurs, scientists, technicians, computer programmers, professionals, educators, and consultants. While this sector is growing, it is not expected to absorb more than a fraction of the hundreds of millions who will be eliminated in the next several decades in the wake of revolutionary advances in the information and communication sciences. …
“The restructuring of production practices and the permanent replacement of machines for human laborers has begun to take a tragic toll on the lives of millions of workers.”
Politics of an industrial revolution
For a grim look at our future, see Progress Without People: New Technology, Unemployment, and the Message of Resistance
“There is a war on, but only one side is armed: this is the essence of the technology question today. On the one side is private capital, scientized and subsidized, mobile and global, and now heavily armed with military spawned command, control, and communication technologies. Empowered by the second industrial revolution, capital is moving decisively now to enlarge and consolidate the social domination it secured in the first. …
“Thus, with the new technology as a weapon, they steadily advance upon all remaining vestiges of worker autonomy, skill, organization, and power in the quest for more potent vehicles of investment and exploitation. And, with the new technology as their symbol, they launch a multi-media cultural offensive designed to rekindle confidence in ‘progress.’
“On the other side, those under assault hastily abandon the field for lack of an agenda, an arsenal or an army. Their own comprehension and critical abilities confounded by the cultural barrage, they take refuge in alternating strategies of appeasement and accommodation, denial and delusion, and reel in desperate disarray before this seemingly inexorable onslaught – which is known in polite circles as “technological change.
“What is it that accounts for this apparent helplessness on the part of those whose very survival, it would seem, depends upon resisting this systematic degradation of humanity into mere disposable factors of production and accumulation?”
For a laser-like focus on the core political issue see “Who Will Own the Robots?” in MIT Technology Review, June 2015.
“We’re in the midst of a jobs crisis, and rapid advances in AI and other technologies may be one culprit. How can we get better at sharing the wealth that technology creates?”
Mike Konczal demolishes fantasies about a post-work world in his rebuttal to Derek Thompson’s article in The Atlantic: “The Hard Work of Taking Apart Post-Work Fantasy” at the Roosevelt Institute.
Visions of dark futures
Science fiction can break out our imaginations from the rut of the present, and so help us imagine what lies ahead if current trends continue. Cyberpunk novels as some of the most dramatic, as in these summaries by Diana Biller from “The Essential Cyberpunk Reading List” at io9 (genetic engineering novels are a newer wave). They describe a world in which the 1% continues winning. Conservatives cut taxes for the rich and cut benefits for the 99%. Combine that with steady pressure on wages as jobs disappear (a growing “reserve army of the unemployed“) and you get dark futures – a “nightmarish world of corporate control and extreme wealth disparities.”
Neuromancer
Despite having no IT background, Gibson invented cyberpunk, vividly describing a future that captured the imagination of a generation.
“Henry Dorsett Case used to be a hacker, before his employer caught him stealing and he was dosed with a drug that made him incapable of accessing the global computer network. Now a mysterious person needs his hacking skills, and promises him a cure in return.
“The book that defined the sub-genre, this 1984 novel is likely the most essential of the books on this list (it was also the first winner of the science fiction triple crown, taking the Nebula, the Hugo, and the Philip K. Dick Award).
“Gibson has written many influential cyberpunk novels, including the rest of the Sprawl Trilogy
Frontera
A book exploring themes since then used in scores of books and films.
“Also written in 1984, this debut novel from Lewis Shiner is set in a world controlled by corporations, one of which decides to send an expedition to a lost Martian colony to discover and gain ownership of a crucial secret. Corporate control, body augmentation, and other cyberpunk themes blend with golden age elements.”
A summary from the publisher.
“Ten years ago the world’s governments collapsed, and now the corporations are in control. Houston’s Pulsystems has sent an expedition to the lost Martian colony of Frontera to search for survivors. Reese, aging hero of the US space program, knows better. The colonists are not only alive, they have discovered a secret so devastating that the new rulers of Earth will stop at nothing to own it. Reese is equally desperate to use it for his own very personal agenda.
“But none of them have reckoned with Kane, tortured veteran of the corporate wars, whose hallucinatory voices are urging him to complete an ancient cycle of heroism and alter the destiny of the human race.”
Metrophage by Richard Kadrey (1988).
“This dystopian novel by the author of the Sandman Slim series takes place in late 21st-century Los Angeles, where the rich live in unimaginable luxury and everybody else lives in a wasteland of misery. And a small-time drug dealer discovers a strange new plague, and gets drawn into the secret warfare between huge economic blocs.”
From the publisher.
“Welcome to our future: L.A. in the late twenty-first century – a segregated city of haves and have-nots, where morality is dead and technology rules. Here, a small wealthy group secludes themselves in gilded cages. Beyond their high-security compounds, far from their pretty comforts, lies a lawless wasteland where the angry masses battle hunger, rampant disease, and their own despair in order to survive. Jonny was born into this Hobbesian paradise.”
“This dystopian novel by the author of the Sandman Slim
Conclusions
“We’re all sorry for the other guy when he loses his job to a machine. When it comes to your job, that’s different. And it always will be different.”
— Dr. McCoy, star date 4729.4, in the Star Trek episode “The Ultimate Computer.“
We have no excuse for being caught unaware and letting this new technology destabilize our society and cause widespread suffering. With modest planning we can enjoy its fantastic benefits without pain. Failure to plan for these obvious developments might mean some tough times ahead for America.
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: “Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.”
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts describing how the 3rd industrial revolution has begun. Also see the posts about the evidence that we’ve entered a period of secular stagnation. And especially see these…
- The promise and peril of automation.
- At last economists see the robot revolution. Here’s why they worry.
- The robots are coming, bringing hope of a better future.
- A warning about the robot revolution from a great economist.
- How Robots & Algorithms Are Taking Over.
- Tech creates a social revolution with unthinkable impacts that we prefer not to see — About sexbots.
- Our future will be Jupiter Ascending, unless we make it Star Trek.
- AI will reshape the world. Films show how.
For deeper analysis see these books…
- The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
- Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
