“Conventional wisdom” seems to indicate that technology results in taking jobs f
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Question
“Conventional wisdom” seems to indicate that technology results in taking jobs from people and resulting in lost jobs and higher unemployment. However, conventional wisdom is often wrong.
In 1811, a group of people in England protested the introduction of automated looms to make clothing. This group became known as the Luddites, and they believed that the machinery would result in loss of jobs. However, the equipment resulted in cheaper clothing – now people could afford more than one change of clothes! Since that time, people who oppose technology are known as Luddites.
Review pages 128-132. For your essay, describe one or more technologies that impact production (do not use the assembly line example from the text). What has been the impact of this technology? Your book notes that specialized skills can be made obsolete through change. What was the social cost of this technology?
Technological change doesn’t happen by itself – resources must be devoted to the process. Should the US government fund research? What types of research? Comment on industrial policy –should the government be involved in shaping the future path of our technology?
Explanation / Answer
The variance in technological advances that have driven productivity upwards is remarkable, underlining the ongoing importance of focusing on technology as a primary change agent. Innovative advances in technologies can be either leaps or increments, although the larger technological advances tend to take the limelight. In general, there are particularly notable categories:
Energy: Historically, animals and humans were the primary energy input for the generation of products. This was extremely expensive and time-consuming relative to more modern ways to power things, and has been improved upon dramatically over time. Electricity, heat, steam, water, solar, and a wide variety of other energy capturing methodologies have dramatically increased efficiency while freeing up man hours.
Transportation and Industrial Machinery: Trade has been a part of human history for nearly as long as civilizations knew of one another, bartering being a central component of human interaction. The improvement of trade venues, such as boats, cars, planes, trains, etc. has enabled rapid increases in trade quantity and efficiency. Similarly, industrial machinery utilizing similar vehicles have enabled mass increases in scale and efficiency, particularly agriculture.
Communication: Needless to say, the internet and mobile communications have rapidly expedited the transmission of knowledge, data, information, and networking. This has resulted in a massive increase in synergy across the world, alongside the development of economic learning and development.
Measuring the effects of technology on productivity is a difficult pursuit. It is generally approached through metrics such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), GDP per capita, and Total Factor Productivity (TFP). The former two attempt to capture the overall output of a given economy from a macro-environmental perspective. The latter is slightly more interesting, attempting to measure technologically driven advancement through noting increases in overall output without increases in inputs. This is done through utilizing production function equations and identifying when the output is greater than the supposed input, implying an advance in the external technological environment. This system is more specifically tailored for technological change than GDP.
The social cost of specialized skills is the training and development and education of the labors working. Training and education will make them aware of the work to be done in a better way. The gulf between the world of learning and the world of work can be wide. The former is often classroom-based and academic, while the latter is dominated by the practical demands of production processes, deadlines and workplace organization. Change happens fast in the world of work, driven by innovation and by developments in technology and markets. Keeping up with this pace of change is a continuing challenge for learning institutions. The active participation of employers’ and workers’ representatives in vocational education and training institutions is essential to bridging this gulf. Crossing the gulf can be particularly challenging for women, people with disabilities, and communities in remote rural areas and others without access to good-quality education.
Yes. The government should fund the research activities in the country. There are a lots of technologies advancement and innovations that the government has sponsored or financed (funded). Right from the start of supercomputers to the use of smartphones every innovation has been funded or assisted by the government. The government usually funds these researches from the money collected by the public. Technological innovations have also happened in the manufacturing industry with new machineries that reduce human efforts and increases productivity of the organizations always coming up through research.
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