Marshall Brain: We are about to see a seismic shift in the American workforce

[chrisa]

59. The end of full-service gas had nothing to do with technology.

It was just a change in American culture. There's nothing stopping gas stations from doing full service gas now. They just don't.

Your complaint about the computer help menu right now is actually because the help menu is not advanced enough to help you. What if you were able to talk to an algorithm that is so intelligent, it would fix that bank issue itself? In fact, scratch that - it wouldn't need to because the technology is so precise, the error would have never happened in the first place. However, if you were the .000001% that still had an account problem. what if it were better than talking to a human? It might not be now, but trust me, it will be.

Second paragraph - as opposed to typing everything out by typewriter, or having to write by hand - the computer has changed absolutely everything. The work day didn't get shorter because companies realized that, with it taking less time to do things, more can now be done.

It also takes me at most an hour to throw together a power presentation when aiming for quality - not even 5 minutes for a bare-bones one.

Making a presentation by hand was less efficient and took tons more time - it was so inefficient that it's unheard of now in some areas (for too many reasons to name).

Before the washing machine, washing clothes was a tremendous amount of work. With automation, this time can be spent doing something else. Who doesn't like having more time to ourselves? We as humans like it when the work is done for us so that we don't have to.

The vacuum cleaner also saves a lot of time - imagine having to clean everything with a dust pan and broom. In the future, we will even have a hands-off vacuum cleaner that knows how to clean your house for you - much more efficient than what we do now, and frees up even more time to do other things.

Life right now is actually the same as it was in the 50's? In 1900? In 1850? We're typing on the internet right now. If you want to order something, you can just go to a website and do so. UPS brings the package to your doorstep. Someone wrote this website for you to talk to other people when you used to either have to write letters, speak over the phone, or just talk to your local people. Want to learn all about a 9-banded Armadillo? You can just go on Wikipedia and learn all about it in not even 5 seconds. The internet is an explosive advancement that nobody has given enough respect yet - this is the greatest invention ever. Nothing ever invented has ever lived up to it in the history of mankind. Imagine then, what will be invented in the future?

Our life is much better now. In fact, it's not even close. Our lives will get easier and easier in the future - so much so that even thinking about it right now is somewhat unfathomable.