Tech evolution and the rise of meritocracy

Coupled with my reading on technological evolution and the whole shebang in relation to my thesis, I've been also thinking a bit about what all of this means for society at large. The current discourse seems to roughly go along the lines of blaming a failing and fragile economic system which has been pushed over the edge by reckless behavior. This is causing ripple effects in employment and causing a lot of people, especially youngsters who have shed a fair bit of money for the degrees, to become a bit grumpy. The two presented solutions for solving the economic problems in Europe revolve around either implementing austerity measures or alternatively shelling out even more money to stimulate growth and employment. And so on.

But all the while I have this nagging feeling that people are overlooking the fact that one of the more important drivers behind unemployment is that recent rapid changes in technology are causing the landscape to also change at a very quick pace, making a lot of old positions disappear as, well, people are often inherently very inefficient. In practice, for instance, a lot of the tedious white collar work done in offices can relatively easily be automated, if this was wanted. Another example is how governments are often blaming outsourcing for jobs being lost to lower cost Asian countries, but in the longer run changes in e.g. manufacturing technologies will ultimately kill even those jobs. I, for instance, was able to design and start printing stainless steel buttons for my blazer in less than a few hours. And the prices for these types of technologies will just be going down, making it even more attractive.

So ultimately this leads to a situation where many of the jobs which existed due to inefficiencies will now become increasingly rare and make the world much more meritocratic. Amusingly enough many people say that they want a world which is fair, but with the world becoming very fair very fast, I'm not entirely certain that this is really what people will want.

The logical next question is what to do when the dust settles, or how to start countering this trend already now. Personally I've been spending a fair bit of time just doing things; writing code, reading, playing with all types of things. Ultimately trying to regain enough competence that when the meritocracy hits into gear, I'll hopefully be competent enough to stay afloat. As another interesting note, I have a hunch that fancy degrees will not stand closer scrutiny in a meritocratic world and as such, relying on success because you have an MSc in your pocket will also fail. But we'll see.