The year is 1779. You’re a professional weaver living in England…
And you’re about to lose your job.
For nearly 300 years, your family members have been employed as independent artisans who worked out of their homes and lived comfortably, thanks to well-developed trade skills.
You take pride in your work, just as your father had taught you to, as did his father before him.
Unfortunately for you, times are changing… and it’s becoming increasingly clear that your family heritage — as well as your financial well-being — are in grave danger.
There’s a new factory in town that’s installed several knitting machines called stocking frames. While you can certainly make a finer garment than the stocking frame can, you cannot produce garments nearly as quickly. These machines cause a rise in textile supply that pushes prices so low that you can no longer support yourself through manual weaving.
You’ve been offered a job by the factory owner, but the suggested wage is nothing short of insulting — and the atmosphere of the factory is far from anything that could be considered pleasant.
As time passes, you watch your wealth disappear and you fall into a state of depression. You are eventually whipped for idleness and even taunted by local villagers.
Your entire lifestyle is being threatened by a simple machine, and you can only see one way to stop it…
One day, you take to the textile factory with a large sledgehammer in hand. Inside, you find two brand-new stocking frames — the cause of all your sorrows.
In a fit of rage, you raise the hammer high above your head, pause briefly, and proceed to smash the knitting machines into complete obliteration.
Luddites or Losers?
The events described above mark the legacy of a man named Ned Ludd. With the exception of some minor embellishments, the story is completely true.
Unknown to Ned at the time, his actions would spark what became known as the Luddite movement.
During a period when skilled labor was rapidly being replaced by mechanical production, Luddites began burning down factories and attacking merchants who were selling industrialized goods.
Unfortunately for the Luddites, their efforts were never all that successful.
Eventually, the British government deemed “machine breaking” a crime punishable by death and sent in the Redcoats to deter the rebellion. After 60 men were charged at a mass trial in 1813, the Luddite movement quickly subsided.
While many of us are sympathetic to the plight of Ned Ludd, the truth is he was a stubborn and simple-minded man…
Instead of adapting to the changes around him, Ned chose to fight a battle that could not (and cannot) be won: the battle against technological progress.
Tomorrow’s Stocking Frame
In August of this year, Gartner Research released a report on the hype cycle of emerging technologies for 2013.
In the report, Gartner Vice President Jackie Fenn describes the overriding theme of the year as the “evolving relationship between humans and machines.” Within this relationship, Fenn points to a primary trend: machines replacing humans.
The prospect of losing your job to a robot is probably one of the last things on your mind right now… but the truth is it could happen sooner than you think.
Moshe Vardi, a computer science professor at Rice University, predicts that by 2045, intelligent machines will be capable of doing “if not any work that humans can do, then, at least, a very significant fraction of the work that humans do.”
Like many prominent computer scientists, Vardi believes robots will soon be smarter than humans — and they will put millions out of work as a result.
If you doubt that this will actually happen, a look into the recent past will likely change your mind…
Just two centuries ago, 70% of the American workforce lived on farms. Today only 1% of those jobs remain, thanks to automated technologies.
In hindsight, these developments seem like an obvious progression to us. However, if you lived as a farmer in the 1800s, there was simply no way you would have been able to conceive of most of the jobs that exist today.
Every time technology faces a new challenge, there are naysayers who claim that it cannot be done: “It’s different this time. This particular skill is specific to human intelligence,” they say.
But time and time again they are proved wrong.
In the last 15 years, we have gone from the first computer programs beating chess masters… to self-driving cars… to IBM’s Watson beating Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings.
By the end of 2013, there will be one robot for every 5,000 people on the planet.
Robots are already filling prescriptions, mining resources, checking out customers as retail cashiers, serving food and drink, and even writing articles for Forbes. Most of us never thought it would be possible for a robot to write a story, but software developed by Northwestern University’s Narrative Science has already proven that premise wrong.
The truth is none of our jobs are immune to automation. Sooner or later, a robot is going to replace each and every one.
As this happens, there will be winners and losers. The losers will arise in the form of neo-Luddites, who fight against inevitable progress. The winners will be those who accept change, and position themselves appropriately as it’s all happening.
If you take one look at industrial robotics company Adept Technology’s (NASDAQ: ADEP) performance over the last year, you’ll realize just how explosive these opportunities can be.
While Ned Ludd was angrily smashing knitting machines, factory owners were sharing massive profits with investors wise enough to fund their operations.
When it comes time for robots to perform your job, which side will you be on?
Turning progress to profits,
Jason Stutman
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