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Abstract

This paper explores published articles that examine the effects of technology on society also
presenting problems and solutions of the growing use of technology to replace the workforce.
The articles vary in their definitions and uses of technology concerning how it affects our future
working habits. Technology no doubt helps us in daily activities, but we need to question this use
and continue to advance our knowledge while relying on the tools built for society. The
industrial age created a massive boom in the economy while reducing the number of workers
with machinery. As a race, we have evolved our technology before in the past and we will
continue to do so in the future. How we will let it affect us is the question.
Keywords: economy, workforce, revolution, evolution, automation

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Problem
How many people work for a living? Most would assume that most of us do. How many
people want to live for a living? As living for a living is different in comparison to working for a
living and many of the tasks we do are menial. Being that our daily work consists of menial
tasks, these tasks could be put automated in order to free ourselves to do other tasks. Then what
should we do for a living? The question should be what would you like to do? People have been
stuck in the industrialization of tasks and reliable nine to five jobs doing monotonous work for a
couple hundred years now. Do you remember when our grandparents told stories of having to
catch their own food and building their home? They did it because they were living for a living.
What we do now has nothing to do with living. Its a pattern set to make us put values to the
things around us and give the people above us a living. I refuse to think that human kind needs to
be given a task to do in order to have meaning to live. The technology we have today can remove
our tasks from us and free us to find new frontiers in human expectations. I will go into depth to
explain what happened to society in industrialization both in positive and negative lights and
apply it to automated technologies. This should help to prime discussions on why we cannot
move forward, eliminate our jobs on purpose, and question what we really want to do in this
world.
In this day in age, we see computers taking over every aspect of our life from grocery
stores to settings in your car and the way we connect with people in business around the world.
For some this is encroaching on precious jobs and taking over the need for unskilled workers.
The individuals that are afraid of this change are the machine operators and manual laborers.

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This issue also threatens the typical office workers as more of their jobs start becoming
computer-automated with capabilities to mimic human decision-making skills.
At the break of the 1800s, the improvement of printing a book for cheap threatened the
cost and need of instructors in universities. (Brndn, 2013) Before, teachers they would teach
by speaking the books out load in a form of bardic education. This forced the students to make
their manuscripts from the lectures. When books became cheaper, all parties had the ability to
know the same knowledge and therefore increase human capabilities by creating an even playing
ground. This expansion in human potential was created by the industrial revolution. In our
current environment the mentality is that, the machines we have created give the worker a sense
of participation by
allowing the worker to adjust a machine, replace a light bulb, move from one fractional
job to another, and to have the illusion of making decisions by choosing among fixed and
limited alternatives designed by a management which deliberately leaves insignificant
matters open to choice (Braverman, 1998).
Modern industrialization occurred out of both necessities to fulfill the needs of the
community and efficiency to make money. It gave us hope to build a future and exploded
humanity into the American frontier. Machines took the place where workers where to process
jobs and accomplished tasks much faster and thus allowing workers to simplify their tasks.
People did lose jobs but jobs were also created for the need to manage such systems and create
them. For this Age, we had a boom in the wellbeing of life and prospered until numbers shifted
the system to an individual oriented design. It is when we broke the system from a way to help
the community to a way to help yourself is when things went wrong. This design in work has
created a lethargic lifestyle in our daily working lives creating an active and consuming outside

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lifestyle. This creates the human in the process as down cycled elements were I understand the
fear of having no purpose anymore. We need to instead think of ways to up cycle (Michael
Braungart, 2002) the human purpose and expand our purpose rather than pass it to our creations.
What if by trying to prevent these tasks from being taken over by the tools we ourselves
have created, we are preventing a new revolution in human capabilities. If the mundane and
common tasks where replaced what could humanity do in its place? Instead of worrying about
what will happen to our jobs we should run towards replacing them in effort to change the
purpose of work from earning to evolving.

Review
Reasons and Evidence
The printing press is the most common example of technology expanding knowledge and
also creating the fear of what people could do with this knowledge. Regardless of the jobs it
displaced from the already educated, it expanded the average intelligence and societys footprint
on the world. Other innovations in technology that threatened previous versions include the
airplane to the train, the cart to the vehicle, steam to sail. Most of these examples have been with
transportation of physical goods but now a day it is the speed and accessibility of information.
The digital age replaced file cabinets and secretaries but it still required data mangers.
These data managers then became databases and predictive analytics, but still required
administrators. The more advanced the technology becomes the higher educated the populace
needs to be in order to maintain it. Because of this drive, we create better tools to solve problems
on a global scale.

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Before Google maps on the android phone we had to ask for directions and buy physical
maps to know where we were going. In an effort to remove confusion and give people direction,
we designed Guide Star and later Tom Toms to help people with finding their destination. Today
everyone has a cell phone and along with it Google Maps, removing the need for paper maps and
asking people for directions. This relieves people of a burden so they can focus on their goal
rather than the path.
One of the more humanity-focused goals is the increase in medical technology. With the
spread of the internet and its use of information on a personal and social scale, we have tools to
track the start and use of drugs or viruses. Technology has allowed for a virtual operating table
that is mobile along with an entire library of medical education all on a tablet smaller than a
single book. With more people having, the ability to be whatever they need, it makes people with
the skills currently less and less valuable. The tools that we use are no longer only available to
the privileged are now accessible to everyone to make their dreams, or others a reality.
With all the improvements in accessibility to information eventually we need to advance
our physical manufacturing process to keep up with the creativity humanity is providing. Just
like the openness of information, we have to make a way to allow anyone the ability to create his
or her realities that is now possible. 3D printing is not a new technology but it is something that
has appeared into the light by society. Much like books threatened the need of instructors so does
the use of 3D printing threatens commercial markets but still provides an outlet for consumption.
Without the need for markets to trade, goods and information being openly assessable what
would drive humanity.
With the abundance of printing, anything including biological parts the only input needed
is material resources; this is when we move back to transportation and the stars. Asteroid mining

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is a buzzword and can easily flood the market with any resources we need. For instance, one
small asteroid of platinum would be more that we have mined in all of history and be values at
2.9 trillion USD. Figure 1 The introduction of such an asteroid would reduce the cost electronics,
electronic vehicles and open up research that once could not afford to begin.
Patterns in evidence
Many of the concepts are about removing gatekeepers and replacing information with
tools. History usually creates a sense of expansion but with the talk of dwindling resources,
global warming, and gas prices it feels like a glass ceiling is approaching and we need to focus
on efficiency rather than just expansion. Information is necessary to understand this growth and
even with technology that can mimic and replace work, creativity is still something that humans
do better than any logical pattern we can create. The skill that only we pose is what we should
focus our jobs on and find solutions with the tools. Anyone has the information and come up
with ideas but we are still so stuck on needing to be told to do a job that we cannot see the
possibilities before us. Even "google might eventually become an ouroboros, a snake eating its
own tail, unless something changes" (Lanier, 2013).
Technology today is simply, cheap, and nearly transparent. The tools we have can be
used by anyone if you have the knowledge. Systems like Facebook and Amazon reach the
community worldwide. Slowly the cost of good is lowering but we are focused on the numbers
so the entire system must rely on this addiction to fuel itself. We can use the data to create the
rules necessary to take over the jobs we have and replace them with control systems that allow us
to focus on monitoring them and creating them. This phase of replacing our work can help orient
it back to helping the community as a whole rather than minuet profit margins.

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Money is our current driving force for work. We need money to eat, for clothing, and for
shelter, the fundamentals for life. Making things automated would pose the question of what if
we no longer had to fight for these things. What would be the purpose of working for money?
Material objects would come first to mind but for some but it will get old and intrinsic nature of
human beings will be to have a purpose. If we worked towards solving humanities issues rather
than solving short-term solutions we could create, an environment that is only limited by a
person will to live, leveling the playing field for everyone.
Address criticism
Empathy is always a problem with change. When someone speaks about changing things
for the better, the first thing that people think of is how will affect others or me negatively. This
again is something humans do naturally that prevents systems for fully replacing us. In addition,
I do not doubt that people are hurt by the changes mentioned above. Jobs will be removed the
further we replicate the mundane and completely documented. The Internet does not shape us;
society shapes it and therefore it grows. (Morozov, 2013) It is this criticism that creates change
and pushes innovation. Think of the negative side effects of people losing their jobs as an
immune system warning us of pain. When we get over a cold we do not go back to the way we
were biological, we adapt and become stronger knowing that going back to our original genes we
would simply invite the same problems over again.
It is human to error and therefore anything we create will need to be fixed. I am sure in
the future, we will have self-fixing machines but right now, we are just trying to make life easier
so we can focus on making life richer and more vibrant. Allowing everyone to partake in the
fruits of our labor not just the rich who gorge and horde these fruits for what is efficient in their
own eyes. This problem solution mentality is something that can fuel progress. You may think its

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negative looking for problems just so you have something to and eventually people might start
seeing problems when there arent any but its still a part of the human drive to improve our
surroundings. The machines we create will take over our jobs not because we cannot stop them
but because we wanted them to.
One solution proposed (Ford, 2009) was to tax based on world resource usage rather than
on worker count. Removing the funding from the individuals more on the business itself by
enacting a gross margin tax we can then turn back to funding social programs that allow human
kind to live a normal life with the necessities taken care of through these tax paychecks, which
will reduce, as you no longer need to attract workers with giant paychecks. This process would
also require that the details of taxation be removed from the political process and handled by an
independent agency similar to the Federal Reserve.

Findings
With the problem with the economy failing in 2008 and the fear of workforce automation
problems are present in everyone minds. The biggest issue is that people are afraid of trying
something new. If we are afraid of not being to support a family because we dont have a job to
do so then we should make it where a job isnt needed to do so. If we are afraid of not having
enough money to progress our image of economy then change the image. Second to money are
people in our society but maybe its time we switched that.

Discussion
Good Citizen
The people with the authority have a big responsibility to the rest of society and
sometimes when you are a seat that high, you lose perspective of things closest to you. Even the
automation of jobs requires the maturity of the individuals replacing them to not hold back and

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create a loophole in fear that they will no longer have a job. If we no longer had to work for a
living, the quality of life would rely heavily on the maturity and desire of the citizens within the
community. As this is a vital part of the suckling we are performing to survive in our society we
will surely be have a greater emotion that will soon create reach a volatility point where any
measure is acceptable for stamping out the problem. (Hayes, 2009)

Conclusion
The system should always be questioned and this includes the technology that we build
on the other hand, more importantly its use. However, this does not mean that we should be in
fear of what it can or cannot prevent from its use. If we spent less time working for others and
more time working to help others we might create a more fulfilling and harmonious life for the
entire human race. Nevertheless, this requires us to take control and let go of the comfortable in
fear of the unknown.

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References

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Brndn, H. (2013, December). Todays Technology Shift Has Paralles To When Universities
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Braverman, H. (1998). Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth
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Ford, M. (2009). The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the
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Hayes, C. D. (2009). The Rapture of Maturity: A Legacy of Lifelong Learning. Autodidactic
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Lanier, J. (2013). Who Owns the Future? Simon & Schuster.
Michael Braungart, W. M. (2002). Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. North
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Morozov, E. (2013). To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism.
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Samuelson, W., & Marks, S. (2011). Managerial Economics (7th ed.). Wiley.
T., P. (2012). Elon Musk: Biography of the Mastermind Behind Paypal, SpaceX, and Tesla
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United States Pirate Party. (n.d.). No Safe Harbor. In Essays About Pirate Politics.
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Appendix A

Figure 1