I don't really like the fact that this article more or less accepts at face value the metric of "jobs" as being the relevant measure of "helping the economy." This might have been more or less the case when the output from the vast majority of jobs rarely deviated more than an order of magnitude from the average job, but that is far from the case these days.
Instead of an intelligent and creative person joining an assembly line or becoming a pit trader, they have the opportunity to create something of value from nothing and give access to it to the entire world.
The fact that paradigm shifts are accelerating isn't a bad thing in my opinion. Within a few generations, the idea that the world is more or less the same place when we leave it as it was when we entered it will likely not be an automatic assumption people will make about the world.
I find this mode of thinking a little amusing. I'm not convinced we're approaching the singularity any time soon. What you're seeing is what you've seen in every scientific field: rapid, exponential growth trending into a plateau. It happened with mechanical engineering, medicine, aerospace, computer engineering, software, and is now happening with communications technologies.
People in the aerospace field in 1960 probably imagined a very different world than what we see today, one where the field didn't plateau in the late 1960's. Similarly, I don't think computer engineers in the 1980's foresaw the end of Moore's law in the 2000's. Grandiose ideas are nice, but I wouldn't be at all surprised that 50 years from now, we look back on the communications field and see that it never got much more advanced than Facebook.
Since when have Moore's Laws ended? Last time I checked, both were still in full force. (Just to avoid a misunderstanding: Moore's Laws are not about clock rates.)
And then you find new S-curves. I wasn't talking about the Singularity, for what it's worth. I would also take another look at Moore's law along with researching some of the other price/speed/computing laws dealing with progress over time that are analogous and just as important.
However, no, progress isn't easy or entirely predictable. You are correct.
However, it's much harder when you have to focus energy on those who don't want progress to happen, for whatever reason they might have.
While this time the discussion was aimed at those who would fear-monger based on job figures, it will often be the incumbents in the field trying desperately to stay fat & relevant without having to become uncomfortable, and my larger point was that you can't just argue directly against every emotionally resounding, but incorrect, argument when dealing with a shift in paradigm.
In every big change in the world, there will be short term "winners" and "losers", relative to where they were before, even if the change results in large advances for almost everyone in the long term. Those who are going to be given the short end of that stick will not change their mind no matter what, and it only raises the profile and perceived validity of the argument when you treat it as the correct way to frame the issue.
You were talking about how this is an unprecedented time in which a creative person can really leave the world different than he found it. My point is that I don't see any reason to think it's any different in this regard than it has been before.
I think it's a lot of naive optimism to believe that the current tech boom is unlike previous booms in its social impact. I see a lot of high-minded talk about the industry these days, but as far as I can tell 90% of the industry revolves around trying to deliver eyeballs to advertisers in novel ways. I don't see it having the social impact of even the interstate highway system much less previous revolutions.
Sambdala, I'm one of the ppl who wrote the article. I actually agree with you that today's jobs have a higher potential to really affect the world. Technology lets us outsource tedious tasks to computers so we can focus on more meaningful and creative things. I think people who just say "technology is destroying jobs" are missing the fact that technology is creating completely new opportunities (as you say "to create something of value from nothing and give access to it to the entire world")
I think "people who just say "technology is destroying jobs"" should just be ignored, like their predecessors were when they decried plant robotics replacing assembly line workers.
This is the circle of life, just like the newest wave of immigrants takes the shittiest jobs in the economy, the shittiest (mindless) jobs in the economy are eaten up by technology. This has been going on in this country (US) since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
I enjoyed the article, but I think arguing against the point without questioning the underlying assumptions takes effort and attention away from building the future rather than reassuring those who are scared of it.
I did enjoy the article, and I agree that there need to be good ways to address this form of argument.
My main thought, probably not well expressed, was that I wish it had been more emphasized how it's not the most terrible thing in the world for someone to have to pivot their career, and it's getting easier for people to do so every day. However, it's going to get harder with each passing day to "prove" specific forms of technology[1] generate Y jobs for reasons that you expressed in the article. For that reason, I think it's likely better to try to sidestep the argument altogether and explain why it's asking the wrong question instead of first providing a direct answer to the question/argument.
I did re-read the article after making the first comment, and I admit I had concentrated on the first half of it a little more than the second half where you do address some of my concerns.
[1] Technology in general isn't under attack here, it's generally only technology created in the last X years. X generally being the number of years since the target audience for the argument entered the workforce.
first:good job Nick (long time friend)! Also Elli, though we've never chatted.
I think the meta pattern of the examples in the article are in some ways examples of startups that are creating "market-like" mechanisms for more effectively helping businesses and people. Hireart's doing that from the lens of jobs/candidate search, and the education startups are allowing people to spend the coin of time into investing in their own knowledge/skills.
The article claims that "Over 400,000 new jobs have been created by Apple’s App store.", but that's just shoddy accounting. What about mcdonalds in europe installing thousands of touch screen replacing cashiers and the tons of other apps that replace people, does that go into that accounting ?
And what about the intense price competition between workers that online, global platforms create ?
Will those 2 million needed technical jobs cause more job losses ?
My problem with this article is that it tries to create a rosy picture of a big change our economy is going throught, while in reality we just don't know how things are going to turn out,whether we will have enough jobs for everyone, and how rough and long the transition period is going to be, and it does so just to sell a product(which might be valuable).
It's just like reading medical research done by pharmaceutical companies.
11 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 36.4 ms ] threadInstead of an intelligent and creative person joining an assembly line or becoming a pit trader, they have the opportunity to create something of value from nothing and give access to it to the entire world.
The fact that paradigm shifts are accelerating isn't a bad thing in my opinion. Within a few generations, the idea that the world is more or less the same place when we leave it as it was when we entered it will likely not be an automatic assumption people will make about the world.
People in the aerospace field in 1960 probably imagined a very different world than what we see today, one where the field didn't plateau in the late 1960's. Similarly, I don't think computer engineers in the 1980's foresaw the end of Moore's law in the 2000's. Grandiose ideas are nice, but I wouldn't be at all surprised that 50 years from now, we look back on the communications field and see that it never got much more advanced than Facebook.
However, no, progress isn't easy or entirely predictable. You are correct.
However, it's much harder when you have to focus energy on those who don't want progress to happen, for whatever reason they might have.
While this time the discussion was aimed at those who would fear-monger based on job figures, it will often be the incumbents in the field trying desperately to stay fat & relevant without having to become uncomfortable, and my larger point was that you can't just argue directly against every emotionally resounding, but incorrect, argument when dealing with a shift in paradigm.
In every big change in the world, there will be short term "winners" and "losers", relative to where they were before, even if the change results in large advances for almost everyone in the long term. Those who are going to be given the short end of that stick will not change their mind no matter what, and it only raises the profile and perceived validity of the argument when you treat it as the correct way to frame the issue.
I think it's a lot of naive optimism to believe that the current tech boom is unlike previous booms in its social impact. I see a lot of high-minded talk about the industry these days, but as far as I can tell 90% of the industry revolves around trying to deliver eyeballs to advertisers in novel ways. I don't see it having the social impact of even the interstate highway system much less previous revolutions.
This is the circle of life, just like the newest wave of immigrants takes the shittiest jobs in the economy, the shittiest (mindless) jobs in the economy are eaten up by technology. This has been going on in this country (US) since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
P.S. Great article btw.
I enjoyed the article, but I think arguing against the point without questioning the underlying assumptions takes effort and attention away from building the future rather than reassuring those who are scared of it.
I did enjoy the article, and I agree that there need to be good ways to address this form of argument.
My main thought, probably not well expressed, was that I wish it had been more emphasized how it's not the most terrible thing in the world for someone to have to pivot their career, and it's getting easier for people to do so every day. However, it's going to get harder with each passing day to "prove" specific forms of technology[1] generate Y jobs for reasons that you expressed in the article. For that reason, I think it's likely better to try to sidestep the argument altogether and explain why it's asking the wrong question instead of first providing a direct answer to the question/argument.
I did re-read the article after making the first comment, and I admit I had concentrated on the first half of it a little more than the second half where you do address some of my concerns.
[1] Technology in general isn't under attack here, it's generally only technology created in the last X years. X generally being the number of years since the target audience for the argument entered the workforce.
I think the meta pattern of the examples in the article are in some ways examples of startups that are creating "market-like" mechanisms for more effectively helping businesses and people. Hireart's doing that from the lens of jobs/candidate search, and the education startups are allowing people to spend the coin of time into investing in their own knowledge/skills.
And what about the intense price competition between workers that online, global platforms create ?
Will those 2 million needed technical jobs cause more job losses ?
My problem with this article is that it tries to create a rosy picture of a big change our economy is going throught, while in reality we just don't know how things are going to turn out,whether we will have enough jobs for everyone, and how rough and long the transition period is going to be, and it does so just to sell a product(which might be valuable).
It's just like reading medical research done by pharmaceutical companies.