Digitisation and Mass Extinction
Every time there is a game changing technology, there is mass extinction of those who could not adapt, refrigerators closed down many ice factories, online trading made remisiers jobless overnight .
For many thousands of years man relied on animals for transport, camels, horses donkeys, elephants etc. Don’t get me wrong these animals are still being used in many places across the globe, but they are a far cry from the heydays of animal husbandry.
Trains have been available long before cars, the first train track with steam traction was in service in 18251, between Stockton and Darlington in England to be precise, but they run on tracks and are useless anywhere else, leaving the vast untracked space to be navigated on animals.
Cars eventually came around in late 19 century and took their sweet time to become commercially available to the masses, Ford Model T changed history of transportation. Henry Ford infamously said,
Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it’s black
Slowly cars took away the task from animals, coaches eventually became a part of history of books.
Then there were ice cutters, who were replaced by ice factories, who eventually were replaced by refrigerators. Don’t get me wrong, ice plants or factories still exist, mainly for commercial and industrial purposes. The things is that the ice cutters did not venture into ice factories and neither did the ice factories venture into the refrigerator industry
There are many more examples of such, and today computers and the internet are reshaping a new world. Internet started by making telegram and print mail obsolete except for official correspondence, parcels or sending and receiving of goods were once a rarity are now a commonality in almost every corner of the earth.
Likewise artificial intelligence or AI as it is more commonly known, is a new game changer, albeit we should take technology with a grain of salt, as it is a mere tool that is just as good as the person using it. That said, as the examples given, “tools” have a tendency of wiping out entire industries and livelihoods and opening new ones.
Cars did almost eliminated animal transport in its entirety, but opened up a new industry altogether which includes manufacturing, workshops, dealerships, highway building and the list goes on.
Likewise with the end of the ice cutters, a new industry popped up which today includes cold chain, frozen foods and many other benefits. Artificial intelligence per se is similar, it will close the doors to many while opening them to many more.
Those in the workforce, can start looking into AI and upskill accordingly. Many of those being replaced by AI or rather being displaced by AI are the ones that are on the boundaries of digitisation, such as clerks, cashiers, front desk staff and those who deal with a lot of documentation.
Hope is not lost, AI is expensive to adapt on en masse, there is still time to learn new things, though the window keeps shrinking as the seconds tick by.
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2019, July 3). Stockton & Darlington Railway. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stockton-and-Darlington-Railway