Whether or not a machine can replace me, I will still work. I enjoy work, I get great satisfaction from doing work and completing a project I set out to do. It may be an open-source project, it may be in my garden, but I will still work because I do it for me. I personally can't wait until I have a robot to do the heavy digging in the garden. I enjoy the planning part, and the smelling of the roses more than the digging part.
Also, as a small manufacturer I am forced to train the people I have to adapt to the new world order. The article implies that the uneducated worker is to be replaced with the educated worker. I can't just replace my staff with all new people. I would lose the tribal knowledge. I can't avoid automation that my competitors have; it would put me at a big disadvantage. In fact the biggest advantage I can get is to automate a process that we do manually. This is why mcmaster.com will send you a huge catalog (printed) for free. It is because the people that order from the catalog are price insensitive. I certainly am when I have a broken machine. My automatic sand blaster needed $1000 worth of bearings overnighted last month.
To make a big advantage in automation I need the help of the guy who has been doing it manually. So we work on bottlenecks in production one after the other. Every month we figure out what is slowing us down, or causing quality variations, or supplier problems and we try to come up with a way to improve things. The obvious first place to look for solutions is with the person suffering with the problem. The next obvious thing to do is to use some technology to make repetitive tasks easier. So my welder is now learning to use Arduino, and we are working on updating some old machinery with new automation. He might not do the coding, but he will certainly be the guy bolting the hardware together.
So I would say the workers are not at war with the machines. The workers are working with the machines.
Also, as a small manufacturer I am forced to train the people I have to adapt to the new world order. The article implies that the uneducated worker is to be replaced with the educated worker. I can't just replace my staff with all new people. I would lose the tribal knowledge. I can't avoid automation that my competitors have; it would put me at a big disadvantage. In fact the biggest advantage I can get is to automate a process that we do manually. This is why mcmaster.com will send you a huge catalog (printed) for free. It is because the people that order from the catalog are price insensitive. I certainly am when I have a broken machine. My automatic sand blaster needed $1000 worth of bearings overnighted last month.
To make a big advantage in automation I need the help of the guy who has been doing it manually. So we work on bottlenecks in production one after the other. Every month we figure out what is slowing us down, or causing quality variations, or supplier problems and we try to come up with a way to improve things. The obvious first place to look for solutions is with the person suffering with the problem. The next obvious thing to do is to use some technology to make repetitive tasks easier. So my welder is now learning to use Arduino, and we are working on updating some old machinery with new automation. He might not do the coding, but he will certainly be the guy bolting the hardware together.
So I would say the workers are not at war with the machines. The workers are working with the machines.