With the advent of today’s
technology generation, blue-collar jobs are no longer valued as highly, nor are human workers able to perform as efficiently as technology that is evolving at exponential rates. It makes sense then, that these jobs are most in danger of getting replaced by robots or automated systems. A recent report claims that 50% of current American occupations will be
eliminated by 2025, but is this really a bad thing? As humans, we enjoy
being "productive" and accomplishing things. As a whole, most Americans don't enjoy being unemployed, and the negative psychological effects
of being unemployed have been studied extensively, as early as 1985. But this may be a result of our need to be productive and participate positively in a consumption-based society, which society teaches us is best achieved by getting a job and spending the money earned from that. As society changes though, we have the opportunity to revise our definitions of work and productivity, instead
of worrying about the conversion of productivity from humans to machines.
It is posited by many analysts (1) that people will be able to engage in higher level thinking as lower level jobs
are eliminated. The blue-collar work culture of punching a timecard or moving
widgets from production to boxes stifles creativity and encourages diligent,
consistent, and uniform work. All of this can be replaced by machines that
will eliminate any human error, and indeed they are being replaced at a rapid
pace, because it is easy to see that a machine can work faster, more
accurately, more efficiently, which we thus consider to be “better” job
performance.
The definition of productivity in
today’s society is the quantified rate of performance, having completed x
projects or having driven y number of miles in z amount of time. But I would suggest qualitative, creative, higher-level work
should become the true measure of a job well done. For that to happen though, we need to
start viewing qualitative, subjectively-evaluated work as a positive thing, instead of
something to be feared. We fear it now because subjectivity generally means that
there is a high chance of inequality and unfair treatment. Why is this bad?
Because we want to be treated “fairly,” which we have been trained to equate
with “equal.” This is particularly poignant in today’s post-civil rights era,
where many groups are still fighting to establish “equality.” We have thus been
conditioned all of our lives to value diligent, uniform, and consistent work in
exchange for stability and a regular paycheck, and to think that inequality is
bad, not good.
Changing what we
consider to be “productive” will begin as we embrace inequality
as a higher level of humanity, encouraging higher-level thinking. Take the concept
of a "starving artist." We all recognize that the phrase comes about because the
artist is not engaging in the socially-accepted steady, consistent work for
which a paycheck would be awarded. We tell him, “get a job,” or “get your head
out of the clouds.” And sure, he might be lazy. There are lazy people in every culture. But then again, maybe he simply defines productivity differently. Maybe he has found that the most fulfilling life is be embracing qualitative productivity, instead of quantitative "widget" productivity. Make no mistake, a new
society will not simply be full of dreamers and artists. But it is today’s
creative thinkers that will dream up entirely new industries for employment that we cannot
today imagine.
1. Numerous books discuss this, including Average is Over by Tyler Cowen; The Second Machine Age by Andrew McAfee; and A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, though I don't subscribe to his idea that "right-brainers will rule the future," rather I believe that everyone will begin using their "right side" as it is needed.
