How Technology is Creating Jobs and Not Taking Them
Humans resist change because they know change comes with uncertainties. They believe that change may not favor them. When it comes to technology, though we use it enthusiastically, there is always that fear that technology is likely to phase out some professions.
However, I am of the opinion that instead, technology, over the last 30 years, has created more jobs than it has destroyed. Yes, the mail carrier is no longer so important because you can get your email in a split of a second from a sender who’s 5000 miles away from you, but there are new people in the pipeline making sure you get that email. Let’s look at where jobs are being created.
- Enhancing the importance of some industries
In the early industrial revolution, people feared mechanization would lead to job losses. Indeed, it did, but new industries emerged, manufacturing, processing and other supportive industries like logistics, accounting, and many others.
Today, when the mailman loses his job, he can work in an e-commerce order delivery unit. When a teller loses his job at the bank, he can get a job as a teller in a mobile money service outlet. New and emergent industries have emerged. In the next two decades, robotics, electronics, automation, and artificial intelligence will be the leading industries. Jobs will be created in these industries.
- Creating new companies
Technology creates the need for new services and service providers. Today, we have companies entirely focusing on e-commerce, something that never existed 30 years ago. We have seen technology giants like Google, Apple, Samsung, Amazon, Alibaba, and others emerge to offer services that were nonexistent 30 years ago.
These companies offer search services, mobile phone service solutions, analytics, and a host of many other services. Today, a single phone can do what an entire department could not do just 30 years ago.
A single phone can host an e-commerce website, take pictures, conduct social media marketing, receive or make calls and emails, schedule or make payments, analyze data and prepare progress reports and many others. To make all these things happen, you need people with skills to make that happen.
- Creating new departments
Courtesy of technology, some departments that never existed just two decades ago are now a reality. In fact, such departments are too important to the company that without it, the company faces certain closure. The ICT department is becoming a must-have department for companies operating in the 21st century.
Such departments have engineers, programmers, network administrators and many others. Such departments exist courtesy of technology progress and serve to augment other departments.
- Creating new job descriptions
Today, you can go to the university to study, information technology, software development, analytics, and artificial intelligence and many other courses that never existed just two decades ago. They give rise to new job descriptions and a host of new realities.
In conclusion, yes there are professions that will be phased out eventually, but as the world changes, humans must adapt and take advantage of the emergent opportunities.
About the author
Summit Shah is a tech guru specializing in how people and companies adopt emergent technologies. He also writes extensively on this subject. He is also a technology engineer with over 10 years of practice.
