In a recent article, with the by-line, “What happens when good jobs disappear? It’s a question that has been asked for centuries”, Dr. Paul Krugman states, “Today, a much darker picture of the effects of technology on the labor is emerging. In this picture, highly educated workers are as likely as less educated workers to find themselves displaced and devalued, and pushing for more education may create as many problems as it solves”. “Sympathy for Luddites”, Paul Krugman, The Global Edition of New York Times, Page 9, Saturday-Sunday, June 15-16, 2013,
In this description Dr. Krugman uses the commonly used version of “technology” (i.e) Digital Technology. The real world of technology is far larger than mere limitations and constraints of DT. The industrial society has to come to the realization that Technology in its broader context is an integration of Science, Engineering and Management of any phenomena of nature. This broader view of technology opens limitless possibilities for the educated work force. Absent such Transformation in their learning and thought process the broader range of educated work force – and their educators and the society at large – will not be served well by the constant evolutions in DT. This is not to suggest that DT is a detriment. Instead it has to be used wisely and prudently with technology pertaining to other fields to create a stream of new solutions.
We agree with Dr. Krugman in that the opportunities even for the highly educated is limited to a narrow set of jobs, where knowledge is integrated from everywhere across the globe (using DT as an enabler for such integration) and hence create a constant stream of “New” solutions. There will also be a large range of low wage jobs, where the skills of educated work force is not much needed, thanks to standardization and de-skilling of the work and as a result automation and outsourcing of the jobs. Most others – in the middle – will find uncertainty and loss of economic competitiveness as the norm, which we have come to accept as the crisis of the middle class. For details on this emerging Binary Economy and the Transformational Skills to cope with that please see:
STIMS Institute 