IT Replacing Labour and the Possible Fragility of the Economy

Latest stats on the US Economy, written up about by Andrew McAfee. He posits the fact that unemployment’s not going up while other economic stats are might be due to greater IT spend — technology replacing labour? Seeing what I’ve seen in my half decade in the workforce I can’t say I disagree: too many jobs are still out there because of a (possibly deliberate) refusal to embrace automation.

Then again, there is a problem with a too-highly-automated workforce, when efficiencies and optimisations are taken a step too far; where redundancies in processes mean the weakest link breaks the system, making it far too fragile.

If IT’s replacing more of the workforce, could it mean we might be approaching an increasingly fragile economy, dependent on automated systems we might not even be properly aware of?

Just a thought.

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