We are entering an era of increasing independence from the tech person
Meanwhile essence of the case, ...
The crisis comes to an end, according to experts with cautious optimism. The situation of the largest economies in the world is looking better, and although China slowed down somewhat, by gaining the United States. However, many analysts doubt will lead to a new rise to the creation of new jobs.
The story of Edward Snowden - the man who published the most guarded secrets of America's espionage and escaped through Hong Kong to Russia, at first glance, has little to do with the economy. This relationship became apparent when the head of the National Security Agency, General Keith Alexander (Keith B. Alexander) told how he was going to avoid such leaks in the future. 90% of the work of thousands of system administrators will take the NSA robots.
This means that 900 people will lose their jobs.
The agency realized that recently opened business: machinery and robots work better and more precisely the people: they do not get tired, do not like strikes, do not give out secrets. That's why the world has become noticeable a curious pattern: one of the signs of economic recovery is the growth of industrial production, but now it is not accompanied by an increase in the number of jobs. On the contrary, if at the end of XX century in the factories of developed countries are 63 million people, now - about 45 million.
Machines instead of hands
Despite the increase in production demand for human labor has fallen: in comparison with 1998, the number of employees in the U.S. fell by 26%, Japan - 21%, South Korea - 11%. To support the work of German factories are now enough of seven million people, or 8% less than the quire years ago, said in a report on the future of the industry McKinsey Global Institute. A similar process began in China in 2008, wages began to rise there is two times faster than GDP, so the only chance to keep rising in price competitiveness was the replacement of labor by machines.
Therefore, the Taiwanese Foxconn, a contract manufacturer of electronics for the world's largest companies, two years ago, announced the introduction of its factories million robots.
Because of this global trend promoted in many countries, the idea of re-industrialization has little meaning. In the wake of economic patriotism (or, as they say spiteful critics - for the sake of advertising) electronics giant Apple announced that the new generation of computers with the image bitten apple will label «Made in USA». They will be manufactured at the new factory in Texas of components from other U.S. plants.
In the same way went head General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt (Jeffrey Immelt), who boasts that his company again began producing home appliances in the United States.
Unfortunately, thousands of jobs at these plants do not make up for the 10 million that disappeared not only in industry but in the whole U.S. economy. In July, the United States emerged 165,000 new jobs, but this is still not enough. This corresponded to an increase in population dynamics (USA one of the few developed countries where there is a positive demographic trend) growth is needed, at least in the area of 200,000 per month.
Meanwhile, most economists do not disturb the current problem: when the economy picks up the pace, it will begin to actively recruit people. And the fact of change in the structure of employment, is as old as capitalism itself. Every crisis is an occasion to look for savings, and the easiest way to save if you lay off redundant workers.
When the demand for the product starts to grow, it is satisfied productivity growth: fewer people are starting to produce more by technological innovations and improved organization. That is why plants in the U.S. produce a 30% increase, with a 30% working less than ten years ago.
In this case, the place of old there are new professions and new jobs. For the production of the car people want less, but more starts to work in the service industry and trade. Thing has become easier to manufacture, but sell - more difficult.
Another three decades ago, the largest employers in the United States were automakers, and now most people work in the retail chain Wal-Mart, and the most numerous professional groups were tellers and vendors.
Automatic doctors and teachers
However, not all economists look to the changes taking place in the world with the same optimism. Jeremy Bernstein (Jeremy Bernstein) worked for many years in the U.S. Department of Labor.
In 2011, he put forward the concept of the great schism» (great decoupling). Having analyzed labor statistics since the end of World War II, he said that in the XXI century, there was something new. Indeed, until the late 90's working the old mechanisms: the growing productivity of the economy and employment. And then, long before the crisis of 2008, something broke.
Bernstein reviewed the statistics in more detail and found a bleaker picture. It turned out that in fact in the United States, regardless of crises and periods of positive market conditions are constantly creating new jobs, only two sectors: health and education. The share of first in the American GDP has exceeded 15%, and the demand for medical services is not reduced, as well as these services is difficult to automate and increase the number of jobs.
But soon this will come to an end, warn futurists. In the New York Cancer Center Memorial Sloan-Kettering are working on the introduction of a system of automatic medical diagnosis. The partners of the project with its IBM supercomputer Watson. It was this car was the 2011 winner of intellectual TV show Jeopardy!
The essence of the game was a quick response to questions from different areas of knowledge, Watson knew the master and a man's voice answered, ahead of its competitors-people.
Now IBM engineers in conjunction with the medical center wants to use the ability to Watson in a practical field. Over the past ten years, the world of medicine has changed drastically due to the huge amount of data generated in the diagnosis and research. This information is not lost, and are stored in huge databases, creating a mysterious and challenging world of Big Data.
This world is not available to people, but it feels great microprocessors computers managed by special programs. And these computers will soon replace the doctors, as well as replace the machine now working on an assembly line.
Humanity+ @San Francisco
Humanity+ @San Francisco 2012 - http://2012.humanityplus.org
Before you can fully negotiate the future you must understand the here and now. But, how do we develop the expertise to full understand who we are? Maybe it's through a deep dive into the objective. The Quantified Self movement has unearthed a variety of intriguing methods that may help us understand ourselves and the world we live in. Let's talk about why living with numbers will help us understand the present and write our future.
==Writing the Future==
Of special significance is the theme 'Writing the Future'. The aim is to encourage refined communication about the future in creative ways, and thereby promote serious attention to the opportunities and risks we are facing.
