1st December 1913 was a historical day. It was the day that Henry Ford installed the first moving assembly line to mass-produce automobiles. His innovation has reduced the time required to build a car from 12 hours to merely 1 hour and 33 minutes. “When I’m through, about everybody will have one (Ford’s Model T),” Ford said.

With this newfound productivity, you would think that this will only bring good… right?

No. In fact, it has caused major unemployment soon after.

Are you thinking of wagon drivers? They are fine… they just switched to driving taxis.

Horses, however, were the ones that suffer the most. They were exterminated from the job market almost entirely.

Technological Advancement

Technology has truly made our lives better in many ways. For it whom I owe the luxury to be able to sit in my room, fully air-conditioned, listening to music coming out from a box, while typing through a keyboard, and words magically appear on my screen.

It has allowed us to communicate with each other quickly, cutting down the lead time from weeks, to days, to instantaneously. Imagine back in the old days where we humans use homing pigeons to deliver messages… now all they’re good for are defecating on cars (Just joking, we love all animals equally). Think of how much time we have created for ourselves with instantaneous communication.

Technology has also given us the ability to travel far, further than any man living in the 19th century could ever dream of. As I’m writing this post on 15th July 2021, billionaire Sir Richard Branson has just recently gone for a “short” trip to space. Via his rocket plane a.k.a “Unity“, Sir Richard along with 22 of his crew was able to reach the height of 85km (282,000ft) away from Earth, and was back on the ground in around an hour or so. This trip was the first of its kind – commercial space tourism. What a great time to be alive.

I have dreamt of this moment since I was a kid, but honestly nothing can prepare you for the view of Earth from space

Sir Richard Branson

Moore’s Law

If you have never heard of Moore’s law, let me give you a short explanation: Basically, it’s an observation that the number of transistors in a dense microchip doubles about every two years. This law is named after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel.

With Moore’s predictions, we can expect the speed and capabilities of our computers to increase every couple of years, and at a cheaper cost!

Imagine the small device in your pocket right now has more computing powers (way more than you think) than the best computers used to send astronauts to the moon in 1969. It’s mind-blowing to just think about it…

All that said, all good things must come to an end. Experts agree that at some point in 2020, computers will reach the physical limits of Moore’s law. High temperatures of transistors would eventually make it impossible to create smaller circuits. Moore himself admitted in a 2007 interview that: “…the fact that materials are made of atoms is the fundamental limitation and it’s not that far away…We’re pushing up against some fairly fundamental limits so one of these days we’re going to have to stop making things smaller.”

We’ll have to see for ourselves whether Moore’s law will come to an end…

The “Obselete” Class

Technology is, however, a double-edged sword. With the goodness it brings, it also comes with its unfavorable consequences. It has more than ever, disrupted the pre-existing job markets and caused a phenomenon called technological unemployment.

We have definitely heard of the stories where: “Robots are taking over our jobs!“. There is definitely some truth in those stories, especially for routine low-skilled jobs.

Wondered how we get our cash from the bank before the ATM was invented? Yes… Bank tellers used to be the ones who dispense cash at the counters. When ATMs came into the picture, human bank tellers knew that sooner or later they will be completely replaced by these machines. How could you possibly compete with something that can work round the clock, without breaks or sleep? This example is only one of the many jobs that are being replaced by machines. With the current rate of advancement in AI, more and more workers will be displaced.

You could always argue that when the time comes, we humans will adapt to the changes – Yes, to a certain extent. We can definitely upskill the bank tellers earlier, teach them how to provide services to customers and you have yourself a customer service representative. For this case, it is fairly easy as the skill level for these two jobs is not that far apart. The question is – are we able to rinse and repeat the same steps for workers in other industries?

As world-renowned author and historian Yuval Noah Harari explains in his book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century“, it was much easier for people to adapt to previous waves of automation. “In 1920 a farmworker laid off due to the mechanization of agriculture could find a new job in a factory producing tractors. In 1980 an unemployed factory worker could start working as a cashier in a supermarket. Such occupational changes were feasible, because the move from the farm to the factory and from the factory to the supermarket required only limited retraining.” Harari writes.

“But in 2050, a cashier or textile worker losing their job to a robot will hardly be able to start working as a cancer researcher, as a drone operator or as part of a human-AI banking team. They will not have the necessary skills. In the First World War it made sense to send millions of raw conscripts to charge machine guns and die in their thousands. Their individual skills mattered little. Today, despite the shortage of drone operators and data analysts, the US Air Force is unwilling to fill the gaps with Walmart dropouts. You wouldn’t like an inexperienced recruit to mistake an Afghan wedding party for a high-level Taliban conference.” Harari continues.

He predicts that we might be witnessing the rise of a new class… The “Useless” class. As bluntly as he puts it, we have to face the fact that it happening right in front of our faces (I tried to be more optimistic by replacing the word “useless” with “obsolete”, but I guess it doesn’t really make a difference).

Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely.

Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Coping with Change (Or trying too)

It’s not a matter of will it happen, but a matter of when it will happen. How we do things today will not be the same in the near tomorrow. What was taught in our traditional school systems might not ready us for what’s to come, without a doubt it is an uphill battle.

Doom and gloom aside, lucky for us, we are indeed living in an age of information abundance. Will a few clicks here and there, information will be readily available for your consumption. Here’s my take on some of the ways we can try to keep up with the changes:

1. Learn to filter the useful from the noise.
The main reason why there is plenty of information out on the internet is because of… Low barrier of entry. Almost everyone with a laptop and internet connection can actually publish content on the web and social media (The same goes for my website! Of course, I’ll try my best to be on the useful side… You should though, take everything a Layman has to say with a pinch of salt). With the vast amount of information available online, I believe it’s crucial for one to master how to weed out the good from the bad. Our time is finite, and it’ll be such a shame to accidentally fall into a rabbit hole of misinformation.

2. Upskill yourself from information available online.
Once you figure out no. 1 above, it’s time to upskill yourself. There are many great platforms out there where you can get information/knowledge for free such a YouTube, websites, blogs, etc etc. You can also seek out paid courses from learning platforms like Coursera and Udemy, they even provide you with certificates once you complete the course.

3. Honing your language skills.
As you read this post, I can comfortably say that reading articles in English is not a problem for you. To me, language is quite important in the journey of gaining new skills. Of course, you don’t have to master it to start learning, just a fair amount should suffice. Imagine going through articles or courses where you can’t comprehend what the person is trying to convey. With translation tools freely available such as Google Translate, learning a new language or honing existing ones are easier as ever.

These are just a few ideas, there is plenty more.

Maybe someday in the future (or not so distant future), when robots are intelligent enough to replace all humans, we might all be paid a salary just to live? This will be a topic for another day.

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This is post #8.

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