Technology Advances=Less Routine Work

The future of technology is one big reason schools need to foster creative, innovative thinking. And I say this aside from earlier posts about American industries' need to stay competitive by developing new technologies. Yes, technological advances are our best hope for achieving global economic leadership.

But I am following another line of thought. I am thinking about how many jobs are being eliminated or streamlined because technology does it better, faster, and cheaper. For example, when I worked at NASA I once did a half-hour interview with a computer. No, it was not some machine with advanced artificial intelligence. It was a woman aged sixty-something, whose first job in the 1940s was to sit all day at a desk and repetitiously perform arithmetic functions based on data from test facilities. Her job title was "computer," and there was a whole cadre of them. In a way, she was the Rosie the Riveter of knowledge work. She and some managers from the same era told me about punching cards and trekking from building to building to pick up and deliver the cards. In my time at NASA (1987-1996), I saw the labor-intensive part of scientific computing shrink rapidly and many tasks that required a specialist become routine. In fact, there were only a few people who could create presentations in Freelance (a precursor to Powerpoint) and we had a whole department for training secretaries to use management information systems that today they would figure out in a couple of sessions on their own. People who could write code were well-paid and in-demand. Now that skill is not enough. Many skilled jobs in computing have become much less time-intensive because software has been integrated and made easier to use.

Or consider this: Ohio is still one of the top manufacturing centers in the United States, but it has lost nearly 250,000 manufacturing jobs in recent years because of automation.

Then there are all the jobs that have become (or can become) almost completely automated—answering phones and routing calls, checking out groceries, many aspects of banking, booking flights for travelers. These jobs are much less plentiful.

So while high tech jobs in America today are plentiful and pay well, there has been erosion at the bottom of the high-tech pay scale. A new computer software company or engineering firm in a depressed area will not create significant jobs for people without technical training or college degrees.

Frank Levy and Richard Murnane call this a "new division of labor." In their 2004 book of that title, they predict that jobs consisting of following defined rules and performing repetitive activities are not the key to middle class wages.

I would probably venture that children need some experiences with structure and rules. Following directions, consistency, and efficiency will always be needed. But being good at using rules and following directions are not ends in themselves. Increasingly, rule-based tasks will be valuable only as a way to support creative, innovative work.