Dimensions
152 x 229 x 25mm
This essential book details the ascent of automation and the antidote-showing how professionals of all kinds and in all industries can find sustainable careers in the near future. Nearly half of the total U.S. employment is at risk of termination because of computerization. It's not just blue collar jobs at stake; now even knowledge workers are threatened by artificial intelligence. In the first era of automation, machines relieved humans of work that was manually exhausting and mentally enervating. The industrial revolution pulled workers off farms and into factories, proceeded to make most of them unnecessary with contraptions like the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, and the power loom. Today, Era Two of automation washes across the entire services-based economy that arose after the massive productivity gains wiped out jobs in agriculture, then manufacturing. Era Three, dawning with the 21st century, is bringing automation to knowledge work; computers are now proving in various settings that they are capable of making better decisions than humans. This time, the potential victims are not tellers and tollbooth collectors, much less farmers and factory workers, but rather all those "knowledge workers" who assumed they were immune from job displacement by machines. Brilliant technologies can now decide, learn, predict, and even comprehend much faster and more accurately than we humans can, and their progress is accelerating. Where will this leave marketers, sales reps, and editors? Davenport and Kirby reframe the conversation of automation to the most useful mode of pursuing the advantage now through augmentation. Workers remain employed, and accomplish feats never possible before, by having their contributions supported and enhanced by technology. Talking about augmentation instead of automation is a simple rhetorical shift, but it has deep implications for how organizations are managed and how individuals strive to succeed. Ultimately, it changes knowledge workers' stance toward smart machines from seeing them as interlopers to seeing them as partners and collaborators in creative problem solving as we move into the next era.
