The 12 most destructive technologies

McKinsey have released a new report on what they believe will be the most disruptive technologies, and the economic impact they will have. The report, produced by the McKinsey Global Institute, has had input from the likes of Hal Varian and Erik Brynjolfsson.

It concludes that the most disruptive technology will be the mobile Internet, with renewable energy failing to live up to its hype.

Of particular interest is the high placing of automating knowledge work. The report outlines how the rising intelligence of computing can be both a blessing and a curse, taking on some of the tedious work we do on one hand, whilst also of course removing whole jobs on the other hand.

Whilst automation made a huge impact upon manual work, the report suggests the impact upon knowledge work would be subtler and more nuanced.

Nevertheless, the report suggests that automation could be performing the role of over 110 million people by 2025. Whilst this may have many potential benefits in terms of better quality service, the knock on effect on society is pretty clear.

The full report is available below. It’s 178 pages, but well worth a read if you’re at all interested in what the future could bring.

12 Disruptive Technologies from adigaskell

7 thoughts on “The 12 most destructive technologies”

So automation = more unemployment and greater concentration of wealth in the hands of the few? Great.

So McKinsey think mobile is the next big thing? Is this the same McKinsey that were hired by AT&T back in the day to forecast the size of the mobile market, and returned a prediction that was just 1% of the actual market size?

Excuse me if I take whatever they say with a large pinch of salt.

In the long run (maybe 20 years?) computers will have an absolute advantage at producing anything over humans, it will take less time for a robot to produce a good than it would take a human. As well, humans will not necessarily have a power relationship over computers (right now we can usually literally just pull the power plug on many computers) so the computers will be not under any obligation to help us.

This leads to the question of would humans and autonomous intelligent robots trade.

There is a new world on its way and policy makers seem astonishingly unprepared for it. On one side there will be jobs that won't be replaced anytime soon: these involve manual work at point of delivery. Examples include plumbers, dentists, and auto-repair technicians. On the other side there will be jobs that involve human-to-human interaction (even if somewhat tenuously) and these include the usual run of sales, investment banking, innovation.

But… in the middle, where a lot of people used to find employment, the picture is bleak. Conventional middle-management jobs are already on the way out. Conventional assembly/manufacturing jobs are increasingly automated. Low-skill jobs (bank clerk, claims processor, everything in HR) will soon be almost entirely redundant. So what happens if you're not exceptionally clever and motivated, but not inclined to fight for one of the few manual labor service jobs remaining?