Chapter 8: “The Techno-Social Institutions”
2. In what industries will robots replace human workers? How should workers and their families and communities handle this transition, especially if they are over the age of 50 or so?
Robots have already begun to replace people in the workforce. I travel around the country competing at horse riding competitions and every rest area I stop at contains some sort of fast food joint. Each fast food joint has the option to order at a kiosk rather than ordering from the cashier. I have personally seen people order from the kiosk rather than going up to the cashier even when there is not a single person in line. I do NOT understand the thought processes behind this, but anyway…
These kiosks are not a new thing and they have been creeping up for the last few years. It started in big name stores such as Walmart and Shoprite with their self-checkout stations. I remember when there used to be a rule for these self-checkout areas that you could only have up to ten items to keep the area clear and keep everything moving quickly. They were designed to allow people who had two or three things to avoid waiting behind people who had their full grocery carts. Sadly, this rule seems to have fallen to the wayside. I frequently see people with overflowing carts going through the self-checkout stations which caused more traffic causing the stores to remove more of their cashier checkouts and installing more self-checkouts.
These self-checkout and self-serve kiosks are causing people to lose their jobs because stores only need to hire one person to man an area of six self-checkouts rather than hiring six cashiers. People are going to have to learn how to service these machines if they want a chance to keep their jobs because someone needs to know how to run or fix them because that’s one thing that the machines can’t do (Yet…) This transition is going to be super rough for people. The older demographic know how to work with and communicate with people and may not adapt well to these new automated and computerized services. It is going to be a learning curve and the curve has already started. Why do we feel the need to change something that has been working just fine for the last however many decades? Why must we computerize everything?
Pieces of Me 