Reading this, it should be made perfectly clear.
I’m human, hence I ally myself with Humanity. I will always fight for humanity and Human Rights, as that benefits me and the people I care for the most in my life.
The Status Quo
In our lives, we see evidence of Automation everywhere.
- In factories and assembly lines
- Self-Driving Cars
- Software delivery pipelines
- Coffee machines
- Online delivery services
- Traffic lights and traffic control systems
- Elevators
- and much more.
Look Around
Look around you and think just how much of your life is automated? Where can you see automation? Write a comment below.
I Love Automation
I’ve thought a lot about automation, so much as to say it’s a core principle of mine.
- I’ve thought about Automation Maturity, as something corporations and teams need to strive for.
- There is a great article about Build Systems Not Heroes, that I truly believe is essential and it’s something I’ve personally employed a lot in my projects.
- When talking about Minimalism, which is part of my lifestyle, I note that automation is your friend.
- When it comes to time saving as well.
I Am Scared Of Automation
So why this article? Seems like I love automation? What’s with the ominous title?
Humanity is rapidly growing in numbers and those people need a means of survival. I’m scared that our jobs will get automated away.
I do believe that there are jobs that for the safety of humanity need automating (heavy machinery exists for a reason), jobs that require searching and indexing (phone systems, library indexes), jobs with repeatable monotonous tasks, jobs where human error or negligence could have catastrophic financial, ecological and humanitarian consequences (imagine nuclear reactor operation software) and others.
Other cases may include automation assisting, but not replacing, humans or automation benefiting a person or team.
Let’s be honest with ourselves, when we talk about the need for automation it usually comes from a desire to replace us. I agree with the sentiment that we are faulty. We lose concentration, we make mistakes (and we idolize that making mistakes is human nature and we should ask for forgiveness), we require more maintenance than machines or automation and in many cases, we are slower. Usually, adding more of us, doesn’t mean the process gets better, so we don’t scale that well either.
So, we are driven to “Automate away the human element”.
What’s Left For Us?
So what tasks are left for us? What jobs?
We act as overseers. Overseeing the automation we’ve put in place. Overseeing machines and robots doing what they do.
We act as social workers. We talk to others in our day to day job, trying to sell them things they don’t want. We preserve the human element when our clients need support on a problem to talk to (at least when talking), we serve others, take them around.
~~We act as content creators~~ No, wait. This one is being taken away by Artificial Intelligence, can we call AI a type of automation?
We do the odd jobs here and there. A small part of a big assembly line needs some precise automation that is too expensive to automate (at the moment)? Slap in a human.
We act as caretakers. We take care of each other, raising the new generation of hopeless individuals and making sure the previous generations have a nice life in their sunset years.
Finishing Thoughts
This article was a roller coaster of emotions to write. I’m just wondering if we aren’t shooting ourselves in the foot. Automation in many ways is the driving force of Capitalism and if we are left at the mercy of giant corporations, we are done for.
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