How New Tech is having the Same Consequences as the Industrial Revolution.
by Lucas MacCallum
In the late 1700’s into the 1800’s the way people worked was revolutionized by the Industrial Revolution. Artisans slowly became irrelevant because factories were generating 1000 times the goods they could make by hand. This phenomenon transformed the path that the average person took in order to get a job and make a living. Instead of learning a trade and becoming an apprentice, you would work in a factory and get paid wages.
New age technology is once again changing how people will get jobs. In the case of the food industry, food delivery apps have been blowing up since around 2018 and the pandemic has only furthered this.
This will change how the food industry is employed, with more people ordering food at their convenience there will be less need for waiters who serve food in house. This is leading up to a future where restaurants exist that do not have any seating whatsoever, they are merely hubs for various online delivery apps (see Mr. Beast Burger as an example). While this does not have a huge impact on the amount of jobs that are offered in this industry, it does mean that in order to get the a job you have to be able to use these apps, you have to be more technologically inclined.
Zooming outwards from the food industry, the factory worker mindset is going to be (if not already has been) completely reversed. When big corporations find ways to automate their factories, transportation, ect, there will be no need for the factory workers that took over in the first industrial revolution. This means that the most jobs that will be open for humans to do will almost require a college degree. Jobs that involve human creativity and interaction (Marketing, doctors, ect) will require a degree in order to be seen as a viable candidate for employment, and people who want to program said robots will have to go through college in order to figure out how to do so (plus they wouldn’t be seen as a real candidate for jobs if they did not). This clearly creates an even further separation between the low and high class. Not only from the sense of CEO to average worker, but from someone who can afford college to someone who can’t. If someone could not afford college nowadays, they would have to pick up a low skill job to pay for it (or pay loans off while in school). However, with robots doing these jobs it would be infinitely harder for someone to make it through school. On the other hand, people who’s parents already went to college would most likely have the money to pay for enough of their kids tuition to put them through school so they can do the same for their kids. The cycle continues.
Now, this title says that new tech is creating consequences, but I do not believe that new tech is actually creating this cycle of oppression. It is merely further reinforcing said cycle. The divide between the rich and poor has existed for a long time, and it is still incredibly hard to rise from the lower class in a system designed to keep them down. However, with robots taking all of the jobs that people can use without college degrees, it makes this rising process that much harder.