For the last couple of years, the tech community has tested no-strings-attached payments of 500 or 1,000 a month to those in dire need. Some of these experiments have happened in the heart of Silicon Valley, where a one-bedroom apartment rents for 3,000 a month and a modest house is often an unaffordable luxury. Silicon Valley's backing of these efforts has propelled the idea of a guaranteed income -- also known as cash transfers, unconditional cash and, in its most utopian form, universal basic income -- into the mainstream. But a bipartisan political consensus around the movement is fracturing even though the data seems to show that the programs are effective. In recent months, the Texas attorney general went to court to prevent public funds from being used in a basic income program in Houston.

We are at the cusp of the next industrial revolution--or maybe it's in full swing already. Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, cloud computing, smartphones, and a slew of other technologies that were unknown or sci-fi before the turn of the century are redefining and disrupting different aspects of life as we know it today. As with every industrial revolution, most of the changes overcoming our lives are pleasant. These are just some of the advantages brought by these technologies. But the same trends drag in tow some less appreciated disruptions, namely the upheaval of the socio-economic landscape.