Profits First, People Last : Technology Replacing People

A major negative effect of technology that's becoming more of a concern as years go on, is the fact that people are losing their jobs due to new innovations and advancements in technology. According to an article by Bernard Condon and Paul Weisman (http://news.msn.com/us/loss-of-middle-class-jobs-compounded-by-tech-advances) , most of the jobs that are being taken over by technological robots and machines are in the service sector that contains majority of all workers.

Businesses are always looking for ways to make more money by spending less and being more efficient as well as increasing productivity. Of course, with technological machines doing the work, you don't need air-conditioning, employees taking breaks, and most importantly businesses don't need to pay them. Basically, it is a fact that technological machines and softwares are more efficient than humans.  On a bigger scale, technological progress is not only making businesses richer, but the country as well because of a rise in economic growth. However with this rise in economic growth came a decline in job creation.

Now imagine your parent had a job in putting tires on cars. One day the car company they worked for told them that they had lost their job due to a new machine acquired to put tires on a car faster than your parent could and without any mistakes. That would be terrible considering now that less money would be coming into your family and now your parent's new job was to find another job. Unfortunately many workers are in this situation. People's skills and techniques are just not as good as technology. In the article mentioned in the first paragraph from secretary jobs to travel agents, they're all disappearing. You can see how jobs are being taken over by technology by simply walking into a store, particularly big box stores such as Superstore, Walmart, No Frills, etc. There are now self-checkouts in which buys can simply scan the items themselves and pay without the help of a cashier. In the future, more of these automated checkouts will be put in place and less cashiers if any will be needed. This supports a statement in the article that says "It's becoming a self-serve world. Instead of relying on someone else in the workplace or our personal lives, we use technology to do tasks ourselves. This trend will grow as software permeates our lives." By being able to check out of a store yourself, you don't need to rely on a cashier to do it for you.


According to this article, (http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/10/07/9-skilled-occupations-being-killed-by-technology/ ), Sauter lists 9 occupations in which employment is decreasing due to technology. These include: horologists, paperhangers, camera and photographic equipment repairers, computer operators, desktop publishers and many more. With the increase in technology, people no longer need watches, because their phone tells the time. With a decrease in employment for watch repairers, people will simply buy a new watch instead of paying a high price to get it repaired.


My opinion on this is that if it's not a huge problem now, it will be in the future as there are more developments and progress in technology. People need jobs to acquire money to survive. If technology is taking these jobs, where will the people go? Something needs to be done so that people can still maintain a job without a machine or a piece of technology taking it over. As years go on, more and more people will lose their jobs to these smart technologies, and if a solution isn't found, a lot of us could end up jobless.