Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy

by Tim Harford

The idea that technology can destroy or degrade some jobs isn’t new—that’s why the Luddites smashed machine looms two hundred years ago. But as we’ve seen, “Luddite” has become a term of mockery because technology has always, eventually, created new jobs to replace the ones it destroyed. Those new jobs have tended to be better jobs—at least on average. But they haven’t always been better, either for the workers or for society as a whole. An example: one dubious benefit of cash machines is that they freed up bank tellers to cross-sell dodgy financial products. What happens this time remains debatable; it’s at least conceivable that some of the jobs humans will be left doing will actually be worse. That’s because technology seems to be making more progress at thinking than doing: robots’ brains are improving faster than their bodies. Martin Ford, the author of Rise of the Robots, points out that robots can land airplanes and trade shares on Wall Street, but they still can’t clean toilets.18 So perhaps, for a glimpse of the future, we should look not to Rosie the Robot but to another device now being used in warehouses—the Jennifer unit. It’s a headset that tells human workers what to do, down to the smallest detail; if you have to pick nineteen identical items from a shelf, it will tell you to pick five, then five, then five, then four . . . which leads to fewer errors than if you were told “Pick nineteen.”19 If robots beat humans at thinking, but humans beat robots at picki...