A short thought about automation and cultural bubbles
My brother and I were talking about the fears of automation and it led to him searching for articles arguing against those who were concerned. Among them he found this one: "Opinions: The robots aren’t threatening your job" [Washington Post]. It offers the general dismissals of a journalist living in Washington DC in 2015. The Great Robot Freakout of 2015 has begun, and it looks a lot like the robot freakouts that came before it. In a new survey by CNBC, Americans were asked how concerned they were, if at all, that their jobs could be replaced by technology in the next five years. The level of automation angst was astonishing: About 1 in 8 workers indicated was worried about being displaced. Among those earning less than $30,000, it was a whopping 1 in 4. ... Then, as now, such premonitions embraced the so-called Luddite Fallacy : that technological developments would permanently reduce or even eliminate the need for human ...