Thursday, October 04, 2018
Was the prediction right?
From a 1968 article in an RCA journal devoted to industry trends:
The need for human skills for the computer will increase markedly in the future before leveling off, with the biggest demand continuing to be for people to design programs and feed the data into the hardware. However, the programmer or systems analyst of tomorrow will probably have to be a specialist - an expert on the problems of one specific industry, such as petrochemicals. In fact, many computer people expect that many specialized software service companies will be established in the 1970s. These firms will provide expert programming and systems analysis help to the customer in fields too complex for the ordinary programmer. By the year 2000, many economists expect the computer industry to be the single largest employer in the United States, outranking even the auto industry.Hmm. How well did that turn out? Total employment is 133 million. Major sectors, with auto and computer sloppily separated out: Government 21 m (Most of govt is local, most of local is teachers.) Health care 17 m Retail trade 14 m Within retail trade, Car dealers 1 m Leisure and hospitality 13 m All manufacturing 12 m Within mfg, Auto manufacturing 1.5 m Mfg of computers and parts 1 m Wholesale trade 5 m Transportation 4 m Data processing 260 k Construction 5 m Financial 7 m Computer systems design 1.6 m From these categories, looks like auto total is 2.5 million and computer total is 2.8 million. By these hopelessly sloppy figures, computers did barely beat autos... but both are WAY down the list. Government and health care and casinos HUGELY dominate the numbers. Of course these numbers miss the big picture just as badly as the 1968 article. Within each sector there are plenty of specialized programmers, as the article correctly predicted. I can't find a census page with those internal job classifications nicely parsed out. Real point: The prediction was right in terms of consumption and usage. Sales of computers and cell phones exceed autos. Usage of cell phones exceeds every other sector, including breathing and eating and thinking and pooping. We** use cell phones more than we use life. The prediction was wrong in terms of AMERICAN JOBS because both of those industries INTENTIONALLY AND TREASONOUSLY STOPPED HIRING AMERICANS and moved their factories and employees overseas. = = = = = ** Pronoun disclaimer: We ain't me. I've never owned or handled or touched a cell phone. ¶ 3:43 AM
