Why Technology won’t Take Our Jobs Away

Day by day we increase our contact with technology that makes our life easier. Things like shopping or getting documents from Social Security have become so much easier than a few years ago. Back then, if you needed a document, you needed to go to the nearest Social Security office, wait a few minutes/hours, and then be attended by someone who, hopefully, would get you what you needed. This often meant that you would lose a morning of work. Nowadays, you just go to the online Social Security page and get what you need.

Some people say that this is taking people’s jobs away. Of course, if you can get what you want directly from a website, there is no need to have someone permanently attending people to print documents. But is this really a bad thing?

Fifty or sixty years ago, all production lines were fully composed of humans. Each with a very specific function like pressing a button. Now, most work is done by robots. Despite humans having the ability to become experts at what they do after doing the same thing several times, the error rate is still very high when compared to a robot. Was this taking people’s jobs away or is it removing the machine’s work from humans?