Words&Dirt

“Some people come here because they are on a quest of some sort––trying to find a lost lover, or to understand why something terrible happened in their lives, or why there is cruelty in the world, or why they aren’t satisfied with their career. Society has never been good at answering these questions––the sorts of questions you can’t just look up in a reference database.”

––The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, by Neal Stephenson, loc. 7144

“When offshoring is viewed in combination with automation, the potential aggregate impact on employment is staggering. In 2013, researchers at the University of Oxford’s Martin School conducted a detailed study of over seven hundred US job types and came to the conclusion that nearly 50 percent of jobs will ultimately be susceptible to full machine automation. Alan Blinder and Alan Krueger of Princeton University conducted a similar analysis with respect to offshoring and found that about 25 percent of US jobs are at risk of eventually being moved to low-wage countries. Let’s hope there’s significant overlap between those two estimates! Indeed, in all likelihood there is plenty of overlap when the estimates are viewed in terms of job titles or descriptions. The story is different along the time dimension, however. Offshoring will often arrive first; to a significant degree, it will accelerate the impact of automation even as it drags higher-skill jobs into the threat zone.”

––Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, by Martin Ford, pg. 119