In today’s
society we’re dependent on all kind of different technologies. It helps us in
our everyday lives as well as in our working lives. But what will come out if
this dependence when the technologies get more advanced and more intelligent. Will
the technologies overcome us and affect the labor force, “are the droids going
to take are jobs?”
In his presentataion, Andrew
McAffe discusses the trends in employment-to-population ratio. Today there is a
big gap between the actual jobs and the working age population. If we assume the
progression will continue as it has done in the past, the gap will not close. I
think the gap will grow faster that we can imagine. The technology development
hasn’t reached its maximum potential. In the future we’ll have artificial intelligence
that will help us develop the new technology. The important question in this statement is where do we stand when the
mental power of technologies overcome our own?
Today’s
articles can be written by algorithms and you can have an instantaneous,
automatic translation service in your smartphone. McAffe predicts that there
will be many areas in the future where technology will be more efficient and
cheaper than human recourses, but we all need to see the benefits of this development too. He talks
about how the everyday life of people all around the world improves by
technology. The poor fisherman gets a cellphone and his society climb a step in
the hierarchy ladder.
We need to
focus on the great things about new technology and shape our future along them.
If we just stand beside and let the technologies get ahead of us, we all will
be domed. But if we invite the new developments and include them in our way of
thinking, I think we all will benefit from them. As Freeman Dyson ones said; “Technologies
is a gift from God. After the gift of life it’s perhaps the greatest of God’s
gifts. It’s the mother of civilizations, of arts and of science.”
By this I
will call myself a huge digital optimist just like McAffe and I hope we can
work side by side of the droids in the future and not compete with them.
I think you have a nice vision about the future, and the new technologies. I agree with you that if we just stand beside, society will fall behind and technologies will overgrow us. So I think it is important that we learn the new systems and tech, to be able to see and understand what’s going on around us. I think we have many smart entrepreneurs around us that I’m sure are going to be able to find new jobs for us humans and I think it is important to be able to work with droids and not against. (Unless we want a “Terminator-future”).
SvaraRaderaTo sum up my thoughts, yes new technologies are inevitable and the development will intensify as we create and develop. But I don’t think it is all bad and if we are smart and using the new tech right, I think we have a good time ahead.
Digital optimist is such a nice phrase and I will try to keep it in mind next time one of my digits is running wild.
SvaraRaderaIn general we should be optimistic so I do hope that technology is making our life better and not worse. There are thousands of things technical machines can do better, faster or more accurate than humans and it is good to use those advantages. But there are parts in our life were human nature is just not replaceable.
A droid can provide a baby with a bottle of milk and maybe it is even able to feed it. Nevertheless it can never give the same comfort as his mother or father can.
Machines are producing medical drugs and are able to help a surgeon perform an endoscopic surgery. But only people are able to not only help the patient in a medical way even care for patients and help their mind to accomplish the healing.
Wikipedia can teach you a lot of valuable knowledge but only a real teacher can infect you with the passion of gaining knowledge.
So yes I will try to be a digital optimist. Nevertheless we should never forget that the living creatures on this earth are more precious and valuable than any machine can ever be.
I believe that the future behold a lot of new technology and that we should try and use it carefully and with much thought. I might have seen to many movies were the world ends because technology takes over, so I’m skeptical to involve technology in every aspect of our day to day life. Right now one thought of mine is “how will the writhing knowledge with a pen survive?” Today we start to have IPads in kindergartens and all the way through school. I myself can see how bad my writhing with a pen and paper has become just after a few years of using mostly computers, and I spent the bigger part of my schooling with a pen and paper.
SvaraRadera