The Day the Job Market Stood Still

When I was in junior high school, our usual assembly program was a short film shown in a darkened auditorium.

One celluloid image I recall vividly was from a driver safety clip of an accident where the one of the pipes in a truck driver’s load had gone through his body.

A much less horrifying picture is of a Frankenstein movie where one of the peasants threw a giant boulder at the terrified fleeing monster and the huge “rock” bounced high up in the air over his head.

Then, one day there was a noticeable buzz of excitement in the school auditorium. A real live person had showed up to talk to us – a representative from the General Electric Company (GE). He was a young guy wearing a suit and tie and beaming like a little kid with a new toy on the brightly-lit spotlighted stage.

His toy was a round shiny object about the size of a large exercise ball used for physical therapy or for sitting or lying on at home. This silver ball was spinning around on the stage – all by itself!

“ I bet you’re wondering what this is,” the man said and the auditorium instantly hushed. “It’s a gyroscope”.

I don’t remember a thing he said about gyroscopes. I only recall the picture he painted with words at the end of that assembly period. Using unfamiliar terms like gyroscope, robots, and automatons he promised us all that by the time we were his age there would be no more need for people to work.

I was delighted with that idea. I couldn’t wait to turn 30 and experience a world like that – a world where I could do what I wanted instead of getting a job.

But then my 30th birthday came and went. It was true i wasn’t working that year, but the only robots I could see were the bored-looking workers at the South Carolina State Unemployment Department.

The country had just been plunged into a two-year recession. There were lines 200 people deep at the new construction site for a Piggly Wiggly grocery store opening in town and looking for cashiers. Tired of working scarce temp jobs, I left town and went to library school at the university in Columbia. South Carolina.

At age 40 I hoped I’d misjudged how old the GE guy was, but by age 50 I gave up hope. I figured the robot revolution just wasn’t happening. Not in my lifetime at least.

But… Just recently a former next-door neighbor from my hometown sent me a fascinating video of a high-end watch being put together. NOMOS is a company in Germany that makes simple but elegant non-digital watches for between $2,000 and $20,000 US dollars.

What I saw on the video was a lot of precision-drilling of small holes through metal by the kind of special-order machines that tool and die shops in my hometown used to create for manufacturers. I also spotted metallic robotic arms with pincer hands moving the watches along a typical automated factory assembly line.

Only occasionally in this time-lapse video does a human hand appear. When it does, it carefully uses tweezers to position a watch component  and then taps that piece into place. That’s primarily at the end of the process.

Shocked because I was finally seeing the impossible dream of a young man who foresaw a time when machines would replace almost all human labor, I realized we are closer to that vision than I thought. In fact, maybe we’re already there.

Gone forever are the jerky, clunky-looking robots at the Tech Museum in San Jose when it opened in the 1990’s. Today’s robots are highly functional and increasingly making their way as parts or even whole machines into every walk of human life

And, robots are taking over human tasks in all sectors, not just manufacturing. These range from “battlebots” for military and police operations to friendly bots providing home- and office-based services. Even some of my best friends are now cyborgs, able to do things with hip or knee replacements they never could before.

With the development of wireless computer-controlled devices, and brand-new technologies, such as 3-D printing, nano-technology, and bio-technology, the latter enabling robots to self-replicate themselves, we are posed to plunge full-throttle into the 21st Century.

Many makers of documentaries and films featuring robots are wondering whether or when bots might turn on us and seek to extinguish their creators. But my concern is a more immediate one. I wonder where automation will lead us in terms of our economy.

What happens on the day the job market stands still? When employment and earnings simultaneously shrink because, once made, “bots” work for free? How will the United States be able to ensure that employees, replaced by robots, do not end up on the streets, starving for lack of jobs and hence, money?