In 2014, Thomas L. Friedman wrote in the New York Times editorial piece, “If I Had a Hammer,” about “Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee’s fascinating book, ‘The Second Machine Age.’”
Friedman emphasizes in the article that “something very, very big happened over the last decade. It is being felt in every job, factory and school.” He is describing the technological advances that Brynjolfsson and McAfee focus on in their book. Friedman concludes that the authors are saying that the technological advances, that our generation is seeing “will have more power to improve (or destroy) the world than any before, relying on fewer people and more technology.”
While watching TV — so when I say TV, I mean on the ABC player app on my iPhone, not during its regularly scheduled time — a commercial began, in between segments of a program. The commercial started with these words,
“So work is changing. We’re told the robots are coming for our jobs….”
This caught my attention, as it is the same point that Friedman was pulling from “The Second Machine Age.” He says this is possible because, according to the book “ ‘in many cases today artificially intelligent machines can make better decisions than humans.’ So humans and software-driven machines may increasingly be substitutes, not complements. What’s making this possible, the authors argue, are three huge technological advances that just reached their tipping points. ….”
The commercial continues to play and says, “but with great change comes even greater opportunity. Search for greatness. Search indeed.”
The job-search engine, Indeed is suggesting that there are jobs available for humans, and they are more than qualified, to not give up hope.
Friedman’s article points out that we should indeed press onward and suggests “we reinvent education, so more people can ‘race with the machines’ not against them.”
One of the three tipping points in technology advancing as quickly as it has is due to exponential growth. Brynjolfsson and McAfee focus on Moore’s Law and the “relentless doubling of digital computing power about every two years.” (Friedman)
According to Friedman, “we’ve got a lot of rethinking to do, they [Brynjolfsson and McAfee] argue, because we’re not only in a recession-induced employment slump. We’re in a technological hurricane reshaping the workplace — and it just keeps doubling.”
So, in this example, the television, or rather iphone commercial, on the app, captures hope with progress. The only constant in life is change. Let’s hope we can make the change for the greater good.