The Future Of Work: Intelligent Automation At Scale

Originally published on SKAEL's Blog, republished (Feb 2021) "Work is work, and what matters to the worker is neither the product nor the technical process, but the pay, the hours, the attitude of the boss, the physical environment. The application of [technology] to industry will mean very little. What they will care about is what their fathers and mothers care about today -- improvement in the conditions of labor." The quote above was written in 1950, imagining a working world 50 years in the future in the year 2000. Huxley imagined that a huge increase in technological capabilities would change the nature of work substantially and it would be very different from what the farmers and factory workers did in his time. It's nearly impossible for today's working generation to imagine going to the office and seeing rows upon rows of desks with typewriters and adding machines clicking away, with secretaries delivering hand-typed memos and letters to physical inboxes as the primary form of written communication.