The Post-Employee Economy

[BT]

The end of the age of consumption and the decreasing need for labor are more related than you think.

Robots have come to destroy our way of life, just as we saw in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, though not as we expected. They're taking our jobs, and are forcing us to reexamine how we value ourselves.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/the-post-employee-economy-why-sky-high-profits-are-here-to-stay/259564/

[Plane]

  In the sense that the presence of a large number of washing machines has destroyed the employment of thousands of washerwomen.
  In the sense that the automobile and motorised truck have destroyed the employment of thousands of horses.

    Why is it that there are more women and horses in the United States now than there were one hundred and twelve years ago when washing machines and autos were scarce?


    This is just as mysterious as the fact that I have four grandparents , eight great grand parents and each generation earlyer has twice as many progenetors as the later one so that it seems impossible that there are more people now than then.

    When a persons job is lost he generally seeks other employment , as long as people are diffrent from robots there will be jobs that people do better, when robots are just like people , we should give them the vote and call them people also. But won't children be easyer to make than robots of equal capability for a while yet?

     Untill robots actually become socially responsible themselves they will require owners .

 

[BT]

I believe there are jobs out there for people educated to do the work. Unfortunately educators are not doing too well in providing a marketable product.

[Xavier_Onassis]

There are certainly jobs for SOME people. There are not enough for all those who need jobs.
It is unfair to blame educators, however, for not training people. There need to be people to train the trainers. No one was born knowing how to build a computer or fly a jet.

Jobs for more intelligent people will always exist. The more complex the civilization becomes, the fewer jobs for the less intelligent there will be, and the greater the employment rate.

[kimba1]

Not quite that straight forward. Technology has also given false impression how things work. Somehow people are expectiing instant result despite technology still don't work like that or demand thing that are much more complex than can be done in a short time.

Ex. A very large excel spread to be printed out on paper. Sounds simple but simply can't be done in most lawfirms without somebody with a heavy background in computers use.also the fact if to much info is on the spreadsheet its simply not going to be readable on paper.

Meaning jobs has changed and nobody has told anybody to teach people to do those jobs.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Meaning jobs has changed and nobody has told anybody to teach people to do those jobs.

First, someone has to figure out how to do new stuff before thay can teach anyone.  It is a sure thing that if business needs some technical solution, developing how to carry it out will surely be funded at some university, or somerone will do it by some other means.

Universities will do anything for a grant.

I do not think that gigantic spreadsheets are any severe problem for any law firm

[Plane]

When I needed a change in career, I went back to school.

Matter of fact I might try to change career again, I have a good job , but it is not going to get better in any reasonable timescale.

I would like to move up a bit and leave a hole at my level for someone younger.

Tech schools are very usefull, they are very responsive to the demands of local businesses and recruitable students, at least the ones around here are.

[kimba1]

Severe  problem ,no
But it's quite a problem to explain to an attorney that excel doc fifty colums wide and thirty tabs is simply not printable & no affordable technology exist today can print it in less than three hours in readable text size.
Remember each tab has to be reviewed individualy to ensure the page break makes sense before print. Which normally it cutsoff improperly if it has way too many columns.

Of course. Xcel has a print all function buts Thats not useable for docs with large amounts of columns and lines.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Attorneys that want huge spreadsheets printed should face reality.

Just split the damned thing into several sets.

I am all for everyone becoming as educated as they wish.

It is not, however, the fault of educators that teachers of new technologies do not emerge immediately.

[kimba1]

This is how large the spreadsheet it is. I had the tape two 11x17 paper and  reduce the print the the smallest readable text possible to fit it. That took alot of work at the paging level to get it like that and thats only one tab. If large excel spreadsheet gets this popular it might require someone just to do only that. I'm pretty sure thiers no program that fixes this problem since it's only meant to be digital only and technology tends to be very uncompliants in this area. Ex. Faxing . I.T . Dept tend prefer people give it up for e-mails despite many businesses in the u.s. still uses fax machines and don't own scanners or has limited web access.

As a famous ghostbuster once a said "print is dead" this might become true.

[Plane]

It is not, however, the fault of educators that teachers of new technologies do not emerge immediately.

It is !

Who better to bear this responsibility?

Perhaps the businesses that need the educated persons?
Or the persons who want the education?

This is two groups that the educator should develop a <provider-client> reloationship with.

[kimba1]

actually the more I think about it the teachers can`t get blamed too much, remember the teacher is an employee .does anyone recall anybody ever giving orders to tell the teacher to teach the latest stuff. it`s pretty much throw a teacher in a room full of kids and a big list of what not to do.

[Plane]

actually the more I think about it the teachers can`t get blamed too much, remember the teacher is an employee .does anyone recall anybody ever giving orders to tell the teacher to teach the latest stuff. it`s pretty much throw a teacher in a room full of kids and a big list of what not to do.

  Is this responsibility invewsted somewhere?

[Xavier_Onassis]

If a teacher is paid to teach typing, it is unreasonable to expect him to change the curriculum to word processing. His contract will be to "teach typing on a typewriter", NOT to "buy computers and programs needed to teach computerized word processing.

 Perhaps the person or institution who hires that teacher is responsible. Blaming the teacher is simply moronic.

When someone needs a specific task done, it must define the tasks required and then teach them, as NASA did. When space sciences was formed, no one had attempted to put a man in orbit. The Soviets had to decide how to get a Sputnik in orbit, then they had to figure out how to put a man in orbit and bring him back alive. NASA confronted and overcame the same problems.

I cannot recall any sane people who blamed their HS Physics teacher for not reaching the Moon.

[kimba1]

Word processing is pretty much to me typing plus. But typing class alone is still very important to life today. I often see people pounding away at the laptop and find they spend most of that time retyping.On a typewriter you tend to get the disapline cut down on the errors.