In today’s world, information technology plays a vital role; it’s changing everything around us, from the way people work to the way we spend our free time. We have seen very fast paced growth in IT and this growth can have either good or bad influence on society. In this post I will be discussing the impact that information technology has had on society especially how it has changed the way we work and what jobs we do. My goal with this post is to provoke a little discussion about this impact – do you perceive it as only positive or do you see the negative aspects of it too?
Digitalization has changed the way companies and people work. Nowadays, we try to make almost everything automated which entails that most (physical) jobs have been made obsolete. Furthermore, with the rise of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence machines can now also think and learn better than humans, which is why many experts say that most cognitive intensive jobs will be replaced by machines as well. However, we need people that understand how these machines work, and most importantly can program these machines.
This will entail two major changes in the workforce. Firstly, physically intensive jobs as well as light cognitive jobs will be replaced by machines – the reason being is that computers and machines can do most of these things way faster than people. Secondly, there will be new jobs for people that can program, develop and design software and hardware – the machines and computers that do our “easy” jobs still need to be controlled by someone. If they crash, somebody needs to fix it.
Summing up, I personally don’t think that the rapid growth of IT, and our extensive implantation of it, is a negative thing. As long as the people keep developing themselves and adjust to the technological advancements there will always be work for everybody. So instead of being afraid of digitalization, we should embrace it.
