Everyone talks about technology taking on our job: is that really so?

What might be an unpopular opinion is that's not going to be the case. Yes, technology will not take our job. What we will rather experience is a shift in job distribution.

What do I mean?

There is a sense in which at the advent of every technological breakthrough we tend to have this period of fear about what and what the future will look like, and many times it always tends towards the human at disadvantage. At the same time flipping through the pages of history we realize that that has never been the case, we only go through a shift in distribution.

Shift in distribution

A typical supply/demand curve only experience a shift when factors that were beforehand held constant refuses to remain constant in the interplay of things. So also is it about our jobs, as demand or supply (measured on a macro level with GDP) they will always be there and what we do is only what is changing, hence a shift.

We will always have something to do but how we do it and what we do will always change with the advent of new technology.

A common trajectory worth noting as well is the vacuum that all new technology will always create and which by its ubiquity requires quick fill.
The vacuum is such that is better explained by an example.

1. When after thousands of years we discovered how to make tools, we were afraid that the hunting that requires 5 individuals will now require 2. What we failed to realize is that some people have to now start making those tools, learning curve issue is there but the tools making guys make the greatest ROI in the long-run.

2. When advertisement revenue moved away from traditional means to social media Ads, jobs were lost but so were new ones created; Content Creators.

3. When self-driving cars become ubiquitous, truck drivers will be in less demand but so will new jobs on "system monitoring", and more become available.

In essence, what we will experience is a shift, not a loss.

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