The Menace of the Micro
| 1. | Hardly a week goes by without some advance in technology that would have seemed incredible 50 years ago. Over the past 20 years computers have completely revolutionized our lives. Yet we can expect the rate of change to accelerate rather than slow down within our lifetimes. The next 25 years will see as many changes as have been witnessed in the past 150. |
| 2. | These developments in technology are bound to have a dramatic effect on the future of work. By 2010, new technology will have revolutionized communications. People will be transmitting messages down telephone lines that previously would have been sent by post. Once these changes are introduced, not only postmen but also clerks and secretaries will vanish in a paper-free society. All the routine tasks they perform will be carried on a tiny silicon chip. As soon as this technology is available, these people will be as obsolete as the horse and cart after the invention of the motor car. One change will make thousands, if not millions, redundant. |
| 3. | Even people in traditional professions are unlikely to escape the effects of new technology. Instead of going to a solicitor, you might go to a computer which is programmed with all the most up-to-date legal information. You might even come up before a computer judge who would judge your case more fairly than a human counterpart. Doctors, too, will find that an electronic competitor will be able to carry out a much quicker and more accurate diagnosis and recommend more efficient courses of treatment. |
| 4. | In education, teachers will be largely replaced by teaching machines far |
| more knowledgeable than any human being. Most learning will take place in the home via video conferencing. Children will still go to school though, until another place is created where they can make friends and develop social skills through play. | |
| 5. | What can we do to avoid the threat of the dole queue? First of all we shouldn’t hide our heads in the sand. Unions will try to stop change but they will be fighting a losing battle. People should get computer literate as this just might save them from professional extinction. After all, there will be a few jobs left in law, education and medicine for those few individuals who are capable of writing and programming software of the future. Strangely enough, there will still be jobs like rubbish collection and cleaning as it is tough to program tasks which are largely unpredictable. |
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