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WRC 1013/1023: Freshman Composition: Exploring Critical Issues
Sources for WRC 1013: Christina Frasier, Darren Meritz & Pamela Mahan
Introduction
How has technology shaped the way we work, and how do those changes affect the economy? The employment landscape today is much different than that of your parents and grandparents. While technology has steadily changed the way we work over decades, the Great Recession of 2007-2009 accelerated the need for change as industries moved towards technology that would streamline processes and reduce the number of employees required. As the economy suffered, employers found ways to reduce costs, many by adopting new technologies that required fewer employees. Sources in this section explore the way technology influences the economy through topics such as increased demand for a technologically savvy workforce and streamlined work processes that reduce the need for human workers.
Note: The final articles in this section were sourced from a special issue in of Foreign Policy magazine.
Technology & the Workforce
- Pousher, Jacob, “American Public, Foreign Policy Experts Sharply Disagree over Involvement in Global Economy.” Pew Research Center
"Many Americans are skeptical that the advantages of economic globalization outweigh the disadvantages: 49% of the public said in an April survey that U.S. involvement in the global economy is bad because it lowers wages and costs jobs. That compares with 44% who said that global economic engagement is good because it opens new markets and creates opportunities for growth."
Image: By World Economic Forum from Cologny, Switzerland - Pawlak, Halberstadt - World Economic Forum Turkey 2008, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org /w/index.php?curid=10416970 - Colvin, Geoff, "Humans are Underrated," Fortune
"As technology keeps wiping out jobs, here are the skills you need to thrive in the workplace. They're probably not what you think." - Behind Toyota's Late Shift Into Self-Driving Cars; Akio Toyoda, once an autonomous-vehicle skeptic, steers his company out of the slow lane in the technology
"In September 2015, three executives walked into the Tokyo office of Toyota Motor Corp. President Akio Toyoda with a call for a radical change. Toyota, they believed, needed to embrace the goal of building cars that could drive themselves, possibly without drivers--something Mr. Toyoda, a race-car enthusiast who likes his hands and feet on the controls, had long resisted." - Bill Gates vs. the Robots; Sure, they'll kill jobs. Like Microsoft Excel, they'll also create new ones.
"Bill Gates, meet Ned Ludd. Ned, meet Bill. Ludd was the 18th-century folk hero of anti-industrialists. As the possibly apocryphal story goes, in the 1770s he busted up a few stocking frames--knitting machines used to make socks and other clothing--to protest the labor-saving devices. Taking up his cause a few decades later, a band of self-described 'Luddites' rebelled by smashing some of the machines that powered the Industrial Revolution." - Dubin, R. "There's no such thing as a stable career," Forign Policy
"Here are some of the occupations that have disappeared or transformed over the past century and others that may drive the U.S. economy over the next 10 years and beyond." - Avent, R., "Then they came for the lawyers," Foreign Policy
"Just as assembly lines transformed artisanal work into a series of rote tasks, the AI revolution will allow companies to analyze and deconstruct white-collar work into simpler, more efficient pieces." - Kinder, M., "Learning to work with robots," Foreign Policy
"No country will be immune from the upheaval. The Economist Intelligence Unit recently released what it called the Automation Readiness Index. The key finding: Not a single nation included in the study was fully prepared to address the challenge. A handful of countries with strong education, worker training, and research and development sectors—such as South Korea, Germany, and Sin-gapore—were found to have substantial leads. But even they, along with the rest of the world, will need to take bold action to prepare for the coming automation wave." - Gupta, S,. and A. Poo. "Who will care for the carers?" Foreign Policy
"Universal family care is based on a social insurance model under which people share in the risks and draw on the benefits when they need them. The pro-gram builds on previous analogs, such as workers’ insurance, in order to rate care-givers’—especially women’s—time and effort more fairly. It is also better adapted to the changing nature of work." - Lind, M. "Protect yourself before you wreck yourself," Foreign Policy
"In recent decades, global development policy has taken a back seat to efforts to promote the globalization of trade and finance. But helping to convert today’s poor countries into the export markets of tomorrow is as important as ensuring access for U.S. exporters to the developed markets of today. All indus-trial countries would benefit by collab-orating to grow the global middle class through international infrastructure investment and the upgrading of global health care and education resources."
