Event #12

When was the last time you bought a train ticket at the counter rather than online? Or a cd in an actual music shop? Or that you set foot in a bank? You’re not alone. The individual result is more immediate convenience, the collective one is the end of those job positions. Machines have always replaced manpower. First blue-collar work, in heavy labour. Now white-collars, too. It used to be that if you lost your job in manufacturing, you moved over to the service industry. But now the machines are running too fast, destroying more jobs than they manage to create. After globalization and finance, it’s the Web and robots that are killing the middle class. For the cheaper machines become, the more expensive human beings seem to be in comparison. This future is already here, but its outcome is not inevitable. As long as we take some radical countermeasures.