Technology Guilt

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item Technology Guilt

  • "It seemed to be a capitalist market idea that change will occur, new industries will arise as old ones die"

    Interestingly, this idea is called "Creative Destruction" and actually comes from Marxist literature.

    The relevant capitalist economic theory is that technology innovations are by far the largest driver of growth (see the Solow model).

    We are at the forefront of technology and so we are driving growth and all of the side effects of economic growth especially higher standards of living.

    This guilt goes right back to the beginning of the industrial revolution and the Luddites. The basic summary is that technological unemployment is only temporary and is often referred to as the "Luddite Fallacy" after the original weavers in England destroyed the looms in protest of being replaced by unskilled machine operators.

    Alex Tabarrok, a co-author of one of my old textbooks said it well "If the Luddite fallacy were true we would all be out of work because productivity has been increasing for two centuries".

    Nothing to be guilty about, plenty to be proud about.

  • the original weavers in England destroyed the looms in protest of being replaced by unskilled machine operators.

    Another story has the workers in the Netherlands throwing their sabots (shoes) into the gears of the looms, giving us...sabotage.

    I agree, I feel no guilt for improving efficiency. The more repetitive, simple jobs that get automated out of existence, the more new opportunities appear.

  • luke.warneminde (6/14/2012)


    the original weavers in England destroyed the looms in protest of being replaced by unskilled machine operators.

    Another story has the workers in the Netherlands throwing their sabots (shoes) into the gears of the looms, giving us...sabotage.

    I love that sort of trivia 🙂

    Maybe the expression "spanner in the works" might have been "sabot in the works"

  • and that the first computer bug was a real bug....

  • I don't agree that technology has made life "better". More comfortable for some, easier, yes. The same can be achieved with slavery. What makes life better is a deeper connection with other people and with God. Only that can fill the hole inside people's hearts. Technology at best is a neutral means to an end.

  • So should the question be what do we do with all the people industry refuses to employ?

  • I think change is inevitable, And for the greater good of mankind.

    To ignore change is to get mired in the past, not something I would like if I work in a post about to become redundant.

    Michael Gilchrist
    Database Specialist
    There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those that don't. 😀

  • First of all, I think a lot of jobs are being moved to countries where it cost less in several ways with employees because of salary, less health insurances and security of several sorts, employee security, building security etc.

    I also believe that at some point in time there will be less needs from humans to work, who knows when, perhaps in 500 years or so because so much will be automated or handled by robots. Then the question comes up on wealth, what will happen to the working class that does not own a company or is a shareholder?

    As of your question.

    No I do not feel guilty.

    I am however a human being and I can feel sorry for people affected but not guilty. Everyone is responsible for keeping themselves attractive on the market and in Sweden the companies themselves also has a responsibility here and the state also has a responsibility.

    Nothing will ever stay as it is, everything changes. Everyone will have to deal with it or suffer the consequences.

  • To my mind, it is a good thing if technology allows us to become more efficient so we can get more done through less work. Ultimately it would be nice if this resulted in extended holidays or reduced working hours for everyone, without loss of pay. In the meantime, the government should help those who lose their jobs to re-train and to find work. It's not realistic to say everyone should do everything without any state assistance. It's not in the public interest for increasing numbers of people to be poor or unemployed, either costing money through welfare or in the worst cases drawn into drugs or crime.

  • As you say in your editorial, the new openings often require different skills than those used by the person being made redundant. As a result, you need to learn new skills to take up a new position. But then we often have to learn new skills to stay in our current position too, so I see the retraining issue as a bit of a red herring.

    Yes, I feel sad for, sorry for and, to an extent, responsible for anyone whose job has suffered at all as a result of what I do. However, I also realise that if my work has any value at all, it's helping the company as a whole to stay in business, so that's my part in safeguarding a much larger number of jobs. Of course it's easy to rationalise all this as small sacrifices for the wider benefit. However, I'm careful to recognise we're talking about real people here, each depending on their own job for an income to support themselves and their families. So long as I don't trivialise this by just focussing on faceless statistics, I can live with the impact (good and bad) of what I do, and can sleep at night.

    Semper in excretia, suus solum profundum variat

  • I don't feel guilty for being part of the technological forces which cause shifts, but I feel a tremendous anger towards those who exploit it with their greed and lies.

    Our one and only local daily newspaper just laid off a third of their staff (almost 50% from the news desk) and is going to printing just three days a week. Of course they blame this on technology - advertising revenue is trending down as advertisers take their money online - and claim that they won't be able to be profitable in the future without these changes.

    However, we have been told that the paper is currently profitable. Also we are told that we will see more "robust" news coverage online.

    It's a lot of lies, because their affiliated web site has always been pretty poor.

    It seems like the whole community is now paying the cost of their bad business decisions in organizing their separate online affiliate in the first place which kept the content producers as part of the paper, and now they are killing many of them them off and hoping a merger into the online-only presence will actually work.

    So I don't feel guilt. I feel anger at being told by "business" people things which don't end up being true, or end up showing their incompetence or greed or criminal behavior under the guise of a "business decision" or "best for the business". To many of these people, technology is just another tool in an agenda which is despicable.

  • I agree with the majority: Feeling sorry for the replaced workers. My opinion is that if I lost my current position, I'd still be valuable to another company that needed my skills - at least for a while. Most technology improvements are slow-moving in the real world giving me the time to "ramp up" on the skills I'd need to be marketable again.

    If the Luddites were smart, they wouldn't have whined about being replaced by a machine. They should have become the leading experts in in building and using them or [repairing] the looms so they could charge their ex-employers a fortune to fix them. <grin>

    I do have to say something about the comments on [what amounts to be] company loyalty. In the distant past, you worked for one company for your entire career. You were loyal to them and they were loyal to you. That has gone the way of the dinosaur. While I feel sorry for the worker, it's not my responsibility to give them the training they need to stay employed, that's the [company's] responsibility. (Feel free to laugh, roll eyes or at least show an involuntary sarcastic smirk). So what happens? "We don't need you any more. You're fired." The reality is loyalty on both sides of the paycheck are gone. I can leave (and have) for greener pastures while they can replace me with a typewriter and a chimp if it makes the bottom line better. (Some have claimed there's already no difference, which might explain my typewriter... <LOL>)

    IMHO, there's two types of "replacement" technology: the kind that allows a worker to produce more efficiently, and the kind that replaces the worker. With an advance in production technology, that same worker is still doing the job but cranking out exponentially more "widgets". The other kind I'll compare a before and after: consider sorting envelopes at the post office. A crowd of workers visually sorting a mountain of envelopes vs. a scanner and conveyor system. Did it replace the workers? Yes, but it was to keep the PO operating. Imagine it taking three or four weeks to deliver an envelope.

    <whew> Sorry for the long rant, typed in like 30 seconds. Too much coffee this morning, and my typewriter's jammed.

  • I don't feel guilty for being part of the technological forces which cause shifts, but I feel a tremendous anger towards those who exploit it with their greed and lies.

    You can examine the data and see that the average wage for workers vs inflation hasn't increased in the past thirty years, but the folks at the "top" have reaped most of the monetary rewards. Income inequality will eventually lead to bigger problems than most people want to deal with in their life time.

  • In the US colonial days, over 90% of the labor was involved in food production. Which means that less than 10% of the labor potential of people was available for other uses (including housing, clothing, transportation, etc). Now that number is reversed, so little of our national labor output is needed for food production that it can provide so many other goods and services. We are all very much richer.

    When it comes down to it, you buy with the fruits of your week's labor the combined output a week of other people's labor. Productivity is the only process that actually raises the wealth of society as a whole.

    ...

    -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 97 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply