John Bernaden recently retired as Director of Corporate Communications at Rockwell Automation and vice-chairman of the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition. He’s still keeping his mind active in the manufacturing space. Here is a piece on LinkedIn on automation and jobs and robots with a whimsical title. Check out the comments (one by me).
Add your comments there or here.
I have written a few pieces on this topic myself: here, here, and here.
John tends to like Andrew McAfee, whom he got to speak at a session once. McAfee is OK, but he gets pessimistic and then the only way he can see out of his box is to start talking something akin to socialism–government hiring or something.
Demographic trends favor robots
Other things I have bee reading and listening to suggest that we are coming to a shortage of workers (check demographic trends) and the need to care for an increasingly elderly population–therefore we’ll really need robots and other automation.
I also believe that the human spirit is one of endeavor. We will make work. There could be an entirely different economy coming–maybe more knowledge work on one end and more craft work on the other. Even now we have a need for craftsmen in a variety of trades.
