TECHNOLOGY
AUTOMATION IS NOTHING new . Industries all over the world have been subject to advances in technology over the course of centuries , even millennia .
Such advances through history , however , have often been met with resistance , especially when human capital is on the line in the short term . Indeed , being dubbed a Luddite stretches back to the early 1800s when handloom weavers protested against the mechanisation of the textiles trade .
While the immediate threat to livelihoods was no doubt a valid cause for Luddite angst , history has shown the Industrial Revolution led to enormous economic expansion and subsequent net gain of jobs versus those initially displaced by machinery .
So the questions begs , if history is to repeat itself again , should we really be worried about the latest wave of automation technology ? Fast-forward to 2017 and the world is an unrecognisable place compared to the 19th century . What was rapid in terms of technological progress during the Industrial Revolution seems pedestrian compared to what is commonly called the Fourth Industrial Revolution . The idea of a machine skilled enough to create textiles was alien in pre-industrial factories - the idea of machines talking to other machines probably a dream deriving from a generous dose of opium .
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