In his just released book, THE LIGHTS IN THE TUNNEL: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future, a Silicon Valley computer engineer and entrepreneur argues that advancing job automation technology is poised to eliminate a large fraction of the routine jobs held by average people in the next ten to twenty years.
Author Martin Ford says “I believe that accelerating technology is driving us toward an unsustainable concentration of income, and that this may well be an important underlying factor in the current economic situation. I also think that even more severe disruptions are likely in the future if we don’t address this issue.”
The problem, according to Ford, is not simply unemployment, but the potential impact on consumer spending. “Consumer spending is ultimately what drives the entire economy,” says Ford. “At some point, as more and more people lose their jobs or begin to fear that their job will be automated or offshored in the future, there will be too few viable consumers to effectively support mass-market business models—the mass market will begin to be numerically undermined.”
The book also predicts that the widely held view that job automation impacts primarily lower skill workers with little education will be proved incorrect as technology advances. Software automation and applications utilizing artificial intelligence will increasingly threaten knowledge workers and professionals with college degrees.
Economists, according to the author, are almost universally blind to this issue—or in denial. “Most of economics has really become ‘Freakonomics’”
“Economists are predicting another jobless recovery, and they’re saying that the job market may take years to recover,” says Ford. “What they don’t seem to realize is that technology is going to keep advancing during those years, and it’s going to make it increasingly difficult to get back to full employment. The job market is like a piece of elastic that’s been stretched beyond its limit—it’s going to get harder and harder for it to spring back into shape.”
THE LIGHTS IN THE TUNNEL employs a powerful thought experiment to explore the economy of the future. An imaginary "tunnel of lights" is used to visualize the economic implications of the new technologies that are likely to appear in the coming years and decades.
Price and Availability
THE LIGHTS IN THE TUNNEL is available now at Amazon.com or from the book’s website: http://www.TheLightsintheTunnel.com. The paperback version is priced at $15.95 and an Amazon Kindle version is available for $9.95.
Bookstores interested in ordering the book can visit the publisher’s website: http://www.acculant.com.
About the Author
Martin Ford is the founder of a Silicon Valley-based software development firm. He has over 25 years experience in the fields of computer design and software development. He holds a computer engineering degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and an MBA degree from the University of California, Los Angeles.
