Also in the past, many people used to be employed in the fabrics industries making cloth and clothing. A factory could employ hundreds of workers operating looms to weave cloth. These days one person can oversee several dozen machines that are controlled by computer.More example, in the car industry, on the production, robots have replaced many repetitive jobs. These machines are more reliable than humans accurate, never needing a break or a holiday and they work at top speed 24 hours a day. They can work in total darkness, at low temperatures, thus saving on electricity bills. They can also be used in hazardous areas, such as fume-filled rooms or radioactive environments
Steel making today is a high-technology industry "in the vanguard of computer-integrated manufacturing". Traditional large and labour-intensive open-hearth plants are being "driven out by more efficient and environmentally sound basic oxygen converter and electric arc furnace operations". More efficient production of new, lighter steels means that less raw steel is required in each finished product and hence less workers to produce it.
New production processes are "attracting new capital to highly efficient, strategically located steel plants", which tend to be much smaller than the huge integrated steel mills that were the norm in the past. Because they are closer to markets and employ fewer workers, "mini-mills", as they are known, have proved highly competitive. "The TRICO mini-mill in the United States, a joint venture of US, Japanese and British steel companies, has a workforce of less than 600 producing 2 million ton of steel a year, whereas in the United Kingdom 4,000 workers directly involved in steel making produce 3 to 4 million ton" over the same period.
In the computer industry machines are used to assemble circuit boards. These used to be done by people, but computer-controlled machines are much faster, more reliable, and it reduces the risk of injury of workers, according to the historic statistic, the compensation of workers’ injury is one of the biggest cost in the companies.
New technologies have created a real revolution in reducing the amount of human work thanks to robots, computers, telecommunication and now the combination of these different items we call Multimedia.
As above, we have known the good effect of the new technology that brings to us. Let’s go through the consequences of it. Many people nowadays are generally fearful and distrustful of change. Change that involve new and complex technologies are especially stressful, particularly to older and less educated workers. They are fearful of losing their jobs, of losing control to machines, and of becoming useless.
Changes brought by technology have made the job market far less flexible than it was before. Many of the skills required in the past are no longer advantageous or beneficial in today's modern society. The biggest effect has been on the band covering upper-working and lower-middle class employment, which has been reduced in size. One of the ways of attempting to combat this problem has been a push for education with a greater number of young people entering higher education
From the graph we can clearly see the differences between all types of training skills that all jobs reqired to train. The most needed skill the is always related to the computer compare with others, which is over 100%. A lso I dare to say, the gap between training computer skills and others will become larger, as the development of technology, in the future computer skill is a must learned subject, or people will be outdated. Few years ago, that is already a saying spread all over china, “There are three must learned skills that all people should have: computer, English and driving skills.
The changes being brought by computers have fundamentally changed the shape of working life. The biggest problem is that it has created an underclass that has fallen out of the bottom of the job market. They are effectively excluded from economic activity and live in poverty. Because of their lack of education and their increasing disconnection from mainstream society they are becoming less and less attractive as prospects for employment and are reliant on state handouts to survive. They do not have the skills to survive in the wider society and have to be supported by it. The result, not surprisingly, social problems and crime.
The last but not the least, biological technology should be concerned, what if workers misuse the tools carelessly, the cost would be very significant. A classic example is the use of pesticides in agricultural work. Workers can be exposed to toxic chemicals in a number of ways when spraying pesticides: they can inhale the chemicals during and after spraying, the chemicals can be absorbed through the skin, and the workers can ingest the chemicals if they eat, drink, or smoke without first washing their hands, or if drinking water has become contaminated with the chemicals. The workers' families can also be exposed in a number of ways: they can inhale the pesticides which may linger in the air, they can drink contaminated water, or they can be exposed to residues which may be on the worker's clothes. Other people in the community can all be exposed in the same ways as well. When the chemicals get absorbed into the soil or leach into groundwater supplies, the adverse effects on the natural environment can be permanent.
On the whole, the introduction of new technology has led to the reduction in the number of jobs available and this has affected some parts of the country more than others. On the other hand it has led to the creation of different jobs. Many of the new jobs created by computerisation are very interesting, requiring skilled and well-trained individuals. However, for some people who work with the machines, it could be argued that their jobs do not require many skills and the job is often very boring. So one unskilled person looking after machines has replaced many skilled workers. Some people argue that the skills that have taken many generations to learn and pass on to new workers will soon be lost and we then will be totally dependent on technology to do the job.
Bibliography:
<future life >-----------------Jamie Peck
<Social study>---------------------Liu Xing
<Analyze the future of work>-------------------------------Cheng Fan
<Sociology, work and Industry>---Watson