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Can Marc Andreessen Stop Technology From Eating Our Jobs? (hackernoon.com)
Technology writer Tom Chanter explores the life story of venture capitalist Marc Andreessen to ask whether software will not only eat the world, but also the jobs of what one historian predicts will be a "massive new unworking class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value." Can Marc Andreessen prevent a so-called "useless class" who "will not merely be unemployed -- it will be unemployable"?
Andreessen grew up in New Lisbon, Wisconsin (population: 1,500), and taught himself the BASIC programming language at age 8. He co-developed the original Mosaic web browser before he'd graduated from college, went on to co-found Netscape, and by age 23 was worth $53 million. He then transformed into a "super angel" investor in companies like Twitter, Airbnb, Lyft, Facebook, Skype, and GitHub. "Having been an innovator in the tech start-up game, Andreessen is now an innovator in the tech venture capital game," writes Chanter. "He is a jedi that has become the master." In 2011, Marc Andreessen published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, Why Software Is Eating The World. He wrote, "Over the next 10 years, the battles between incumbents and software-powered insurgents will be epic...." 7 years later, it's clear Andreessen was correct. Lyft has destroyed taxi jobs. Airbnb has destroyed hotel jobs. Amazon destroyed independent bookstores. How does Andreessen feel about that? "Screw the independent bookstores," he said in his New Yorker profile. "There weren't any near where I grew up. There were only ones in college towns. The rest of us could go pound sand."
But the 4,900-word article also notes Andreessen's pledge to give half his income to charitable causes -- and his observation in a 2015 interview that outside of the United States, global income inequality is falling, not rising. "He has seen technology transform his own life, and has seen how technology has bridged the global wealth gap. Why shouldn't he be optimistic about the future of America's working class?"
And Andreessen's ultimate answer to the jobs destroyed by technology may be Udacity. The article cites Andreessen's investment in the company in 2012, and points to the online education platform's hopeful mission statement. "Virtually anyone on the planet with an internet connection and a commitment to self-empowerment through learning can come to Udacity, master a suite of job-ready skills, and pursue rewarding employment."
As a boy in Wisconsin he was starved for information. He has created an education institution accessible from Wisconsin to Africa. As a boy in Wisconsin he was starved for connection. He has married an innovative philanthropist and author, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen. They have a son named John. Andreessen is optimistic for both the working class and the future tech elite.
In his New Yorker profile he says of his son, "He'll come of age in a world where ten or a hundred times more people will be able to contribute in science and medicine and the arts, a more peaceful and prosperous world."
He added, tongue in cheek, "I'm going to teach him how to take over that world!"
Andreessen grew up in New Lisbon, Wisconsin (population: 1,500), and taught himself the BASIC programming language at age 8. He co-developed the original Mosaic web browser before he'd graduated from college, went on to co-found Netscape, and by age 23 was worth $53 million. He then transformed into a "super angel" investor in companies like Twitter, Airbnb, Lyft, Facebook, Skype, and GitHub. "Having been an innovator in the tech start-up game, Andreessen is now an innovator in the tech venture capital game," writes Chanter. "He is a jedi that has become the master." In 2011, Marc Andreessen published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, Why Software Is Eating The World. He wrote, "Over the next 10 years, the battles between incumbents and software-powered insurgents will be epic...." 7 years later, it's clear Andreessen was correct. Lyft has destroyed taxi jobs. Airbnb has destroyed hotel jobs. Amazon destroyed independent bookstores. How does Andreessen feel about that? "Screw the independent bookstores," he said in his New Yorker profile. "There weren't any near where I grew up. There were only ones in college towns. The rest of us could go pound sand."
But the 4,900-word article also notes Andreessen's pledge to give half his income to charitable causes -- and his observation in a 2015 interview that outside of the United States, global income inequality is falling, not rising. "He has seen technology transform his own life, and has seen how technology has bridged the global wealth gap. Why shouldn't he be optimistic about the future of America's working class?"
And Andreessen's ultimate answer to the jobs destroyed by technology may be Udacity. The article cites Andreessen's investment in the company in 2012, and points to the online education platform's hopeful mission statement. "Virtually anyone on the planet with an internet connection and a commitment to self-empowerment through learning can come to Udacity, master a suite of job-ready skills, and pursue rewarding employment."
As a boy in Wisconsin he was starved for information. He has created an education institution accessible from Wisconsin to Africa. As a boy in Wisconsin he was starved for connection. He has married an innovative philanthropist and author, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen. They have a son named John. Andreessen is optimistic for both the working class and the future tech elite.
In his New Yorker profile he says of his son, "He'll come of age in a world where ten or a hundred times more people will be able to contribute in science and medicine and the arts, a more peaceful and prosperous world."
He added, tongue in cheek, "I'm going to teach him how to take over that world!"
Teaching everyone to code is not going to work, as basic hierarchy of competence still applies. There is still finite amount of coding that has to be done, and there still automation of coding tasks that will take place - so with this approach we will be trading unemployed factory workers for unemployed coders.
The future is bleak unless we can re-invent how society works. There isn't a job for most people. Maybe we can re-invent society, but it appears to me that future for masses will be joblessness.
I suspect that the old practice of wealthy families employing full-time household servants will make a significant comeback over the next couple of decades, when legions of low-skill but able-bodied people find themselves irresistibly replaced by software and robotics. Sure, there'll be crying and grumbling over having to take jobs that many folks today consider to be beneath them, but personal servants for the rich were the norm for much of human history after the rise of agriculture and cities. Social expectations shifted during the Industrial Revolution and will shift again with the Robotics Revolution.
It also seems likely that that skillfully created handmade items such as fine furniture will see wider adoption among the upper crust as their wealth relentlessly increases, leading to steady employment for craftsmen in hundreds of thousands of small boutique shops. This is a historical norm as well although the scale will be larger. The rapidly advancing state of the art in low-cost but capable computer-controlled home milling machines and 3D printers obviously will help fuel this trend. In a side note, I suppose that using automated tools kind of blurs the definition of "handmade," but c'est la vie.
Likewise, personal services should see a continuing rise in popularity -- in-home pedicures, manicures, massages, and haircuts as well as expert home cooking by visiting chefs and so forth. In particular, cooking well is a wildly popular skill, and most otherwise low-skilled folks undoubtedly could pick up the knack if motivated. Really, this all happening already, but the pace should pick up quite a bit once robot-driven mass unemployment becomes a thing. Technology leads to fun possibilities -- for example, it's easy to visualize a lumbering beast of a food truck that hosts expert chefs who prepare custom orders for delivery within a limited service area around the truck by small, speedy delivery robots. Needless to say, said food truck bristles with touch screens that display a steady stream of orders from cellphone apps that also provide continuously updated GPS coordinates for the delivery robots. "Hey, Bob -- looks like your Maine lobster with lemon butter is here. I see the food truck bot coming from that corner."
The basic idea is that wealth always, always seeks avenues for spending. Few people indeed gather paper riches merely for the sake of giggling behind closed curtains over their bank balances. Admittedly, a lopsided distribution of wealth will kind of suck for those at the bottom, but outside of the true unfortunates who live on the streets, the bottom class will still be richer than kings were a thousand years ago. Who among us in the developed world doesn't have a cellphone, a color television, and access to enough cheap food to grow mightily into a fat boy or "woman of considerable girth"? Moreover, depending on political winds, a future United States might indeed see a universal basic income that very effectively persuades the have-littles from ever seriously contemplating revolution. I don't imagine the upper-crust types will squawk too much about the huge cost of such social bribery as long as they can keep tootling around in their auto-piloted Rolls-Royces and sipping their top-shelf boutique wines with Beluga caviar while smiling servants buff their toenails. That's the beauty of the increasingly automated production of wealth -- buying off the peasants becomes more and more affordable for the have-alls, and unlike ancient Rome, there aren't any Visigoths hammering on the gates.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
The fact that this whole story culminates in the punchline, "The answer is Udacity!" is kind of a sick joke. Udacity, from what I've seen of it, is comically awful. Sebastian Thrun seems to be mostly a carnival shyster from what I can tell. Their original premise was to offer a full college education (and "disrupt", run existing colleges out of existence), and they've long since retreated from that goal. Their attempt at solving the remedial-math problem was an epic disaster (link). I haven't really heard anyone hype Udacity in a few years now.
Review of Thrun's Udacity statistics course, from a statistics professor (me), on my blog:http://www.madmath.com/2012/09/udacity-statistics-101.html
Previously featured on Slashdot: https://news.slashdot.org/story/12/09/10/129231/the-problems-with-online-math-classes
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
On odd days we see stories about how civilization is going to collapse because robots will steal all the jobs.
On even days we see stories about how there there won't be enough workers to support the retiring boomers.
The only thing certain is that civilization is going to end. We just can't agree on the reason.
On odd days we see stories about how civilization is going to collapse because robots will steal all the jobs. On even days we see stories about how there there won't be enough workers to support the retiring boomers.
Those two problems aren't that different. Arguably they are the same problem.
Retiring boomers are a problem because there may not be a large enough tax base to fund social security benefits from individual workers. This is made worse if less young people have jobs. Retiring boomers are also a problem because there will be a larger percentage of our population needing care workers, but that costs money. If that is automated then we still have the low worker problem, if people do it they need to be paid and we still have the funding problem.
None of these are that catastrophic of a problem, we just need to move more of the taxation burden to those who are benefiting the most from automation instead of from average citizens. Currently there is significant resistance to raising taxes on the rich and big business, but that will either break under the pressure of increased automation and globalization or we will shift further into a plutocratic / feudal society (hopefully the former).
Even though there are solutions to our problems, we still need to fight vigorously to ensure we choose solutions which are more inclusive. The default result of inaction is simply more concentration of wealth and less equality, which is the natural result of unregulated market forces.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke