Introduction
A wave of smart technology has increased in the world in the past few years expecting a fundamental change for future jobs. In about 10 years, technology has escalated causing businesses and economies to make major changes. They have the power to transform the world of work by destroying jobs, generating new ones, and transforming the nature of jobs.
Smart technology is explained as technologies (including physical and logical applications in all formats) that are capable of adapting automatically and modifying behavior to fit the environment and sense things with technology sensors, thus providing data to analyze and infer from, concluding rules. It also is capable of learning, using the experience to improve performance, anticipating, thinking, and reasoning about what to do next, with the ability to self-generate and self-sustain. Technological change offers risks, opportunities, and threats to businesses. Some businesses can leverage changing technology to improve products and processes or even create new products and processes that will expand markets and profits. Technology is used in various ways; businesses can use technology in manufacturing, improving customer care, transportation, human resource management, and business communication, and use technology to improve their services or products as a way of gaining a competitive advantage
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Discussion
Only about 20 years ago personal computers were becoming sufficiently affordable for families to own but now every person either has a smartphone or a personal computer. With the rising sales of smart technology people are using the internet more to buy everything from clothes to groceries as people would rather sit in their comforts and buy essentials with a click of a button. As technology advances people have started depending on technology to do most of their work which comes to the argument is it a job destroyer? Many businesses have been affected by technology like travel agencies and other blue-collar jobs. Plenty of blue-collar jobs, such as those carried out in car assembly plants, have been taken over by machines. For some, like bank tellers, telephone receptionists, and travel agents, the process of being replaced by computers began a while ago, and to many people will seem perfectly natural. There’s probably a huge number of people out there who have never gone to a travel agent to book their holiday; they do it all online. As IA keeps advancing throughout time more and more jobs are being destroyed, and jobs that existed before don’t anymore, for example, film projectionists, now have digital projectors to load movies, and as a result, the role of film projectionists has been diminished to near extinction.
With the rise of technology more skilled jobs are available but there is an increase in unskilled labour which is leading to high levels of unemployment in many sectors of markets around the world. Departments like Human Resources are increasing in employment as more and more employees need training to keep up with technological changes. Companies are spending more and more to keep up with the technological changes to increase efficiency and produce more.
Smart technology changes day by day resulting in an increase in certain jobs and a decrease in other job sectors. With the increase of smart technology economies around the world are being affected in different ways. In underdeveloped countries where technological advancements are slowly being incorporated some jobs remain intact as others don’t, which leads to many people losing their jobs because they don’t have the required skills, education, money, or time to learn. In developed countries, as technology advancements are increasing at a rapid rate, people are losing their jobs but also trying to adapt to the change. A study about the Analysis of the UK Labour Force Survey from the Office for National Statistics conducted by Ian Stewart, Debapratim De, and Alex Cole suggests the number of these workers soared from 29,743 to 300,201 between 1992 and 2014.
The study also, says that technology has helped in the decline of hard and dull jobs from 1871 to 2011. The study shows the following results-
- 580% increase in teaching and educational support assistants
- 183% increase in welfare, housing, youth, and community workers
- 168% increase in care workers and home carers
On the other hand, there was a,
- 79% drop in weavers and knitters from 24,009 to 4,961
- 57% drop in typists
- 50% drop in company secretaries
“Easy access to information and the accelerating pace of communication have revolutionized most knowledge-based industries,” say the authors. At the same time, rising incomes have raised the demand for professional services.” [Ian Stewart, Debapratim De, and Alex Cole].
Apart from physical jobs, there is also a rise in many IT companies failing due to every day changing technologies. Companies like Myspace, Netscape, Geocities, etc are all extinct now, they were once evaluated to be worth millions of dollars but because of technological advancements they no longer exist as better and more efficient IT companies have taken over.
The information given above shows us that technological advancements can be effective in some areas of the economy and cause a decrease in others as technological advancements are making jobs safer, easier, and more productive they are also reducing the demand for many types of human workers.
As Brynjolfsson points out a chart indicating that median income is failing to rise even as the gross domestic product soars. “It’s the great paradox of our era,” he says, “Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have a falling median income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast and our skills and organizations aren’t keeping up.” Experts now predict that a tipping point in robotic deployments is imminent and that much of the developed world simply isn’t prepared for such a radical transition.
Conclusion
To conclude while the future is uncertain, central issues in analyzing the impact of new and emerging technologies on jobs in the future are therefore to understand the link between new technologies, innovations, and jobs, identify the forces and mechanisms that destroy jobs and those creating jobs, and the linkages and interaction between them. Technology has helped in many advancements through time and the world has evolved because of it but based on the data we can conclude that smart technology is in the end more of a job destroyer than a creator. As more jobs are being taken over by technology for its fast and efficient process, unemployment is increasing leaving people with lower real incomes and affecting economic growth.