It might be because I’m seeking justification for a career spent helping IT companies to sell their offerings more successfully, but I’m becoming deeply concerned about the way in which automation by both physical and Web-based robots is changing our world. In 2018 there will be more conflicts between the world governments of the world and the largest global suppliers; blockchains will allow those suppliers and the super-rich to squirrel their billions into stateless off-shore funds. Meanwhile the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ of society widens – especially as automation spreads through manual to general purpose office tasks making millions unemployed. To a certain extent the new nationalism we’ve seen in the UK, US and Spain is a reaction – ‘if only we can redefine our borders to something smaller and more manageable, maybe we can improve the lives of the poorer citizens’, or ‘why are we giving so much money away to people who aren’t part of our group’ are part of the motivation. Unfortunately automation means that, even is we create local businesses and bring back manufacturing from cheaper offshore countries it will have little positive effect as the new automated factories will have only tiny workforces. Automation is removing millions from the workforce. In the ITC industry – the driver of automation – for instance we would employ 2 million more in 2018 if productivity had remained at 2005 levels and of all the countries in the world China is suffering from the greatest replacement of its workforce with robots.
We are already suffering from social disruption as whistle blowers such as Wikileaks and the Paradise papers expose the tax avoidance schemes of the rich and suppliers such as Apple. Governments are slow and/or powerless to resist the movement of wealth into the pockets of the super rich. My dystopian tenth prediction is that things will come to a head in 2018 – that automation will be resisted by new Luddites, who try to resist the rapidly increasing changes to employment and relative wealth between the rich and poor. As an industry we should be aware of these changes, reinforce our CSR strategies to address the underprivileged and be aware of how our technology affects employment levels.
‘Siri, Alexa, Watson – how can I pay for things now you’ve put me out of work?’
Martin Hingley January 1st 2018
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