PART III. THE PACE AND IMPACT OF MODERN TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

INTRODUCTION

Technological change and its impact on manpower have been the subject of a long and sometimes bitter controversy. Indeed, in the early part of the industrial revolution in England, groups of laborers, the Luddites, organized bands to burn plants and smash machines which they thought were depriving them of jobs.

Unacceptably high and rising levels of unemployment over the past 10 years have once more thrust the debate into manpower deliberations. Present assertions that the pace of technological change is accelerating come not only from the labor movement, but also from businessmen and economists. Several considerations are presented to support the thesis of accelerating change. For one, the range of application of mechanized systems has been dramatically broadened. Until recently, it is argued, only relatively simple production systems could be mechanized, usually at great expense and over a substantial number of years. However, the rapid advance of technology, supported by massive research and development efforts in recent years has opened up whole new areas of application in personal and professional services as well as the goods-producing sector of the economy. Moreover, the so-called marriage of the computer to the machine has relieved human labor of the burden of repetitive instruction and control of work in addition to the work itself. The new systems are also said to be more versatile-multipurpose-rather than performing single specialized duties.

These developments represent only the technological potential, however. Those who feel that the stepup in use will occur have in mind that managements, public as well as private, are under great pressure to increase efficiency and quality of output. Mechanization is an obvious route to that end. It has been claimed that the costs of automation have been reduced absolutely by the availability of smaller multipurpose, or modular equipment units, and relatively by the savings to be gained in a variety of ways in addition to reduced labor costs.

There are disclaimers to the prospect of accelerating technological change. However, the conflict sharpens greatly when the question of impact enters the discussion. The range of opinion on this matter varies widely, from viewing technological change as the key ingredient to job creation and economic growth at one extreme, to the ultimate destroyer of jobs at the other. Specific industry examples of rapid technological change or automation have been cited as evidence for both extremes. Inferring the general from the specific is hazardous, precisely because the existing evidence varies so much from industry to industry. In fact, relevant considerations may vary

from company to company within industries. However, the general measure of technological change, changes in output per man-hour, does not appear to offer a great deal of insight into the problem at this point either. Annual changes have varied greatly from year to year, and data for periods less than a year are not available for comparison with important cyclical changes in output and levels of capacity utilization.

It is abundantly clear, however, that the postwar rate of productivity increase is substantially higher than earlier in the century. Output per man-hour in the private economy rose by an average annual rate of 3 percent since 1947, compared with an average of 2 percent in the 1909-47 period. Moreover, even a constant rate of change necessarily affects a larger number of people as the labor force expands.

There are few who would argue that technological change can take place without labor force adjustments. However, opinion varies greatly over how big the problem is, or what solutions, if any, are needed.

In contrast to the controversy over the impact and role of technological change as it affects the general level of employment, there appears to be fairly general agreement that technological change from now on will exact higher skill requirements from the labor force. (A few have argued, however, that this will only be true for a few jobs "at the top.") Part of this conclusion rests on the feeling that nearly all aspects of the educational process have failed to keep pace with changes thus far effected, or that a substantial part of the labor force has been unable, for one or several reasons, to avail itself of adequate preparation for the modern job market. Existing shortages of skilled personnel for some jobs have been compared to increased rates of unemployment and the lack of job growth at the lower end of the skill ladder to demonstrate the gap between current manpower needs and resources. It is from this point that future labor force growth looks ominous even without an inordinately large change in the rate of technological change. Young people, those seeking jobs for the first time, are expected to account for a disproportionately large part of the decade's labor force growth. Of the anticipated 26 million new labor force entrants during the 1960's it is estimated that some 712 million will have less than high school educations. Thus, despite the tendency of young people to remain in school longer, more than a fourth of new job seekers are expected to be equipped with less than what has come to be regarded as a minium education for most jobs being generated in the economy. It is argued by some that even this minimum requirement will be meaningless unless the quality of education is substantially upgraded.

The papers and statements in part III assess the pace and nature of present and future technological change, show some of the considerations by managements in arriving at decisions to mechanize, and examine some of the skill implications of an increasingly mechan ized economy.

[From Automation and Technological Change, the American Assembly, printed by Prentice-Hall, Inc.]

THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY: THE HISTORIC DEBATE

(By Robert L. Heilbroner)

In an age when it is possible to write seriously about a death-of-theworld machine, it is hardly necessary to waste words on the power of technology to affect society. The shoe is now on the other foot: the brooding question is no longer what technology will make of man, but what man can still accomplish in the face of his technology. And it is not merely the apocalyptic potential of nuclear warfare which thus tilts the scales. At least in the Western World, where the typical landscape is industrial, where human life is sustained by the ceaseless operation of an enormous technical apparatus, where mechanical contrivances have penetrated into the smallest interstices of private life, It is not mere rhetoric to ask if things are not already in the saddle, riding man.

This extraordinary predominance of technology is the decisive characteristic of modern times. The political and ideological agonies of our age are not without parallels in the past. What gives them their "modern" character, what distorts their historic comparability, is above all the technological attributes of the situation to which they now apply. The conduct of peace as well as war, the most routine flow of the economic process, even the intimate details of social existence must cope, at every instant, with the magnifying presence of a gigantic and dynamic technological foundation for contemporary life. And what is perhaps more chastening is the realization that we are still only entering upon this age of technological predominance. Science-the moving force behind technology-is only now emerging from its infancy: it has been said that of all the scientists of whom civilization has any knowledge, 90 percent are alive today. And industrial technology-the practical handmaiden of science is equally new: half of all the research and development expenditures in the history of the United States have been made in the last 10 years. Hence the curve of the technological revolution continues to rise nearly vertically beneath our feet. With each year its impact-on work and play, on mind and body-becomes more unmistakable, more inescapable.

What will be the ultimate impact of this profound and cumulative change in the shape of our environment? To what extent will technology reorder society as it reorders nature; to what extent will the machine civilization of tomorrow liberate its creators-or impose upon them a mechanical jig? If the specific focus of inquiry is on matters of economic concern, the wider issues are readily visible in the back

ground.

into the ultimate issues themselves. It will be, rather, to establish a But our purpose in this introductory chapter will not be to plunge perspective from which to judge contemporary efforts to comprehend

and control our

technological civilization. For the concern with tech

nology is not new. A long history of debate, both on its narrower economic aspects and on its broader social and philosophic influence, provides a background against which our contemporary investigations may be viewed, and indeed, without which they cannot be fully understood. Hence it is a review of the historic debate that must first command our attention. What have the economists, the sociologists, the philosophers of the past 200 years to say about the revolution which already in their day was irreversibly altering the condition of human existence?

THE ECONOMIC ISSUES

Adam Smith: The debate opens

It is worth our while to note at the outset why we begin a consideration of the debate only 200 years ago, when clearly the impact of technology is traceable infinitely further back. The reason is not far to seek. Whereas the capacity of technology to alter the possibility of life was clearly visible to a Leonardo or a Bacon-not to mention an Archimedes-it would be premature to describe their interest in machinery as "economic." Until a separate economic sphere of life had become visible within the larger social matrix, until employment, incomes, and output, for example, had become the unsettled variables of the social process, the impact of technology was necessarily restricted rather than general.

Thus it is not surprising that technology enters the debate in virtually the same breath as that which presents us with our first comprehensive insights into the operation of nascent capitalism itself. In his epochal "Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith sets the stage for an integration of technological change and economic growth.

The role of technology is not, however, immediately apparent. What, asks Smith, is the fundamental principle which underlies the disparities among the wealth of nations? His answer is the division of labor, as a consequence of which some nations achieve "the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts*** which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends to the lowest ranks of the people."

But what in turn determines the degree to which labor can be divided and specialized? To Smith this primum mobile is "the extent of the market"; that is, the number of the population which possesses "the power of exchanging." And here is where technology makes its vital contribution. For Smith conceives of technical improvement and advance as a means of extending the market, not only by cheapening goods, but by augmenting the demand for labor itself:

The number of workmen in every branch of business generally increases with the division of labor in that branch, or rather it is the increase in their number which enables them to class and subdivide themselves in this manner.

In other words, the growing market makes possible the introduction of a labor-specializing technology, and this technology, by attracting labor, in turn helps the market to grow. And to give yet another impetus to this reciprocal mechanism

As the operations of each workman are gradually reduced to a greater degree of simplicity, a variety of new machines come to be invented for facilitating and abridging these operations.