Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 725-726

A faltering economy explains much of the job shortage in America, but advancing technology has sharply magnified the effect, more so than is generally understood, according to two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The automation of more and more work once done by humans is the central theme of “Race Against the Machine,” an e-book to be published on Monday.

“Many workers, in short, are losing the race against the machine,” the authors write.

Erik Brynjolfsson…  and Andrew McAfee, authors of “Race Against the Machine,” argue in their e-book that technological advancements are outpacing the human worker.

The authors are not the only ones recently to point to the job fallout from technology. In the current issue of the McKinsey Quarterly, W. Brian Arthur, an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, warns that technology is quickly taking over service jobs, following the waves of automation of farm and factory work. “This last repository of jobs is shrinking — fewer of us in the future may have white-collar business process jobs — and we have a problem,” Mr. Arthur writes.
More Jobs Predicted for Machines, Not People
By STEVE LOHR
New York Times
Published: October 23, 2011

Whereas before the problem of identity had been one of meagreness and poverty, it has now become the problem of abundance and superfluity. We are individually overwhelmed by corporate  consciousness and by the inclusive experience of mankind both past and present.  It would be a cosmic irony if men [sic] proved unable to cope with abundance and riches in both the economic and psychic order.  It is not likely to happen.  The most persistent habits of penury are bound to yield before the onslaught of largesse and abundant life.
Marshall McLuhan,
Understanding Me