The working place of tomorrow: how far should the development of technology go?
Technology is a key component of most people’s work nowadays. Even the most unpretentious jobs like factory workers, post deliverers, or taxi drivers need to develop some amount of computer skills. But isn’t there still too much reliance on technology in solving problems that might arise at the working place? Doesn’t technology have a potential to dehumanize people? Hasn’t the speed of technological progress exceed the needs of societies? It is mistaken assuming that technology exists absent of people for whom it is designed to use. Every technological fit needs to be correspondingly accompanied by an alteration or improvement in how humans will use the technology. As the former secretary of labor in Clinton administration has said: ‘There is no such thing as a technological fix without personal input.’ In the lines to come, I will follow this exposition presenting a futuristic idea of an absolute self-sufficiency of human-made robots and whether there should be a place for them in the society nowadays and/or in the future.
Hardware and software products are sold easily because they are exciting, flashy, and gaudy. The producers and distributors emphasize the reliability and safety of a product, the ease of its assembly and manipulation, and the service check or money return when a malfunction occurs. They simply guarantee customer’s complete satisfaction. What this creates, however, is an illusion of technology’s simplicity and finality. In fact, many of those who sell it have an interest in preserving this illusion. The coin is two-sided, though, with the human potential as a representative of logic, reason, and evaluation ― a prerequisite of technological development ― on the other side.
While companies increasingly rely on technologies that are thought to substitute people’s work the notion of a human capital as the most unique asset in a company has been in decline. Although new information technologies do create new working opportunities while simultaneously increasing the demand for contract labourers and flexible work locations, they constitute a “burnout” making the companies rush for “non-standard” forms of employment (reduction of workforces, temporary staff, or sub-contractors). Even though such restructuring strategies enable the companies to be more agile in the capitalist competition the excessive “temporization” and “mechanization” might actually constitute a significant threat to the integrity of the working environment.
The flexibility that technology brings into the workplace of tomorrow might successfully correspond to new challenges associated with the globalization of world economy but the essence of work remains still the same. In few centuries the technology might develop immensely to manage the workplace by sound, light, and movement sensitive chips. There might be no need for telephones, secretaries, or accountants. Whether or not there is a chance to succeed is questionable because while employees change their behavior according to the management expectations they do not necessarily change their beliefs and values. The technology, in essence, reflects the imperfection and limitedness of people who attempt to simplify due to a lack of their own capacity.
In this context, the future working place can feature high dynamics, extreme flexibility, and stunning fastness. There will be no need for devices like telephones, or facsimiles, employees like secretaries or accountants, and services like post offices or banks. The number of regular offices as we know them nowadays will shrink immensely. The major hub of the working environment will be outside the windows and doors in the open-air bureaus teeming with humanoid robots flying crash, heat, scratch, and corrosion proof “roboscooter-planes” and “robomobiles” equipped with the self-generating, data processing software.
The robots will gradually evolve from general purpose manipulators programmed to do only well-defined, limited segments of activities to application specific robots with unique capabilities and functionality. They will be truly fascinating to watch. Some will bartend, play your favourite song, and then recycle the cup immediately after the consumption in a portable recycler placed on robot’s back, some will interact with children in museums and spin pardons through the air at amusement parks, some will do accountings, process the data, and wire transfer them to the central registry that is going to double check it with the system, then notify the government that the figures are accurate and inspection, therefore, unnecessary.
The robots will communicate through the antenna head bands with sound, light, and movement sensitive chips resembling a “mini traffic light” that will colourfully distinguish the urgency, difficulty, and cost of the task assigned. The artificial minds of the mechanical bodies will not only be capable of autonomous work but they will also be self-aware. Scientists themselves place computing power equivalence to human brain functions at around or before 2030. The more conservative stream would place the readiness of human equivalent robots at around 2050. Why then robot ladies shouldn’t care to have their ceramic, laser-polished, scratch-resistant nails maintained, attend one of the VW exhibition to have a new RW (“Robotwagen”) presented, or exchange the antenna headband according to the latest virtual fashion trends?
What we will witness in the future is a two dimensional working place divided between the land and the air. While the land will be a domain of people with creative tasks like acting, dancing, politics, and management remaining exclusively within the realm of human engagement the air will be governed by robot masters that in between performing laborious and mundane jobs that humans are not interested in doing anymore will also have enough time to “have their robot fling.”
One of the most essential issues that this fantasy creates is to which extent the mechanization and automation followed by the decline of human capital as a most unique asset in a company will dehumanize people. The author of robots, Czech novelist and publicist Karel Čapek, has dissociated himself from the idea ‘that mental contraptions would ever replace human beings’, which he would deem as a dark prospect of overestimation of machines or a grave offence against life. How would we like that to happen?
Šárka Anna Havránková