The Skeptic's Guide to Automation

Jeremiah Johnson: Automation has been part of industrial innovation ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the middle of the 18th century. What we try to argue is that automation has to be coupled with an effort to shepherd technology to create new capabilities and tasks for workers, he says. The book at times seems very skeptical of automation but it's not a bad thing if you use fewer humans to produce more stuff, writes Johnson. He believes there are two types of creative destruction - one where people do things they haven't done before as well as ones when robots take over routine jobs.