14th April 2010, 9:23 AM
I mean I suppose there's something to be said for those who's jobs are lost due to the progress of technology, but as a society we've come to accept that. Seriously, when the alternative is to enfoce technological stagnation, what were we to do? I remember as a kid people talking about "computers putting people out of work", all well and good except that if you banned computers, you'd all the time know that your job is a joke, a lie. It's true, they did put people out of work, but considering just how efficient we've become, and in the case of hospitals how much faster record access has saved lives, it's a worthwhile tradeoff. The standard excuse I suppose is that every job taken away is replaced by new ones, for, say, repairing those computers. That's somewhat true, but I know it's foolish to claim there's always a perfect 1 to 1 mapping between old jobs and new. However, a good system would be more widely available education, so that if you lose a grunt job, you can train for something else at least. It's not perfect, but stagnating society is a much worse alternative, and much more selfish.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)