The Impact of Information Technology in the workforce
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Introduction
Digitalisation and machines are all around us. In addition to pleasures of better communication and access to intellectual richness of the world, digitalisation is also bringing problems. Addiction, separation from the real life, echo chambers of social media, anonymousness as fertilizer for anger and radicalisation to name a few. Above all looms a growing anticipation of a miracle or disaster the technology is bringing to the employment landscape. If you are an optimist, you are looking forward to the 3 day working weeks and increasing leisure time. If you are an pessimist, you are scared of grim future of unemployment and sustenance provided by our silicon overlord or their capitalist owners. How is it going to be?
Just little bits of history repeating
Digitalisation and machines are not the first and most probably will not remain the last radical revolution impacting human employment and civilization. All started with invention of fire, which facilitate radical change in human evolution and cultural change. Fire provided early humans with source of warmth, protection from wilderness and new methods of cooking food. Fire allowed early humans to conquer the world and gave basis for technological advancement. Fire changed us slowly - the technology of fire was adopted over hundreds of thousands of years and we only know for sure that the modern human had fire in widespread use 125,000 years ago [1]. Back then things were rough - masters of the new technology prospered, and hominid species and human tribes without the technology went extinct.
Fast forward 126,500 years to modern 18th century and the fire brought along a new technological revolution - the 18th century saw the invention and proliferation of the steam engine into wide industrial use [2]. The steam engine started the First Industrial Revolution - within just few generations hand production methods were replaced with machines. Although the First Industrial Revolution brought never-seen access to food and goods, as evidenced by rapid population growth, and raise of the middle-class it was not an easy period for peasants and craftsmen whose skills lost value and market power overnight as new factories were built. We can only imagine the changes fire brought to early humans, but difficulties, riots and wars caused by people made miserable by the First Industrial Revolution are well studied and carved into history books [3].
The Second Industrial Revolution with is mass manufacture of steel and chemicals brought the same challenges to the 20th century when established scholars, John Maynard Keynes among them defined and started popularising the concept of “technological unemployment” which means “...unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour…”[4] And although technological unemployment is widely seen as a sign of rapid economic development and only a temporary condition, it is surely not fun to feel the progress wiping your employment, self-esteem and sustenance. Thus from human perspective anxiety and anger of people fallen behind the curve and desperately waiting - sometimes years, sometimes decades - for the next wave to lift them up is more than understandable. From this moral, humanitarian and pragmatic point of view - growing equality tended to cause social unrest and trigger wars - the social scientist and politicians discovered the need for social transfers from the rich (taxes) to the poor (social welfare).
