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And finance Allah shmoop What is technological change Well let's

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see We all benefit from technology Just think about it

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We're talking to you through time and space thanks to

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a little thing called the Internet Yeah great No big

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deal In economics technological change is used to describe anything

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that increases output without increasing input In other words technological

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changes magic It's anything that makes creating economic value more

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efficient like the Internet and computers are tools that we

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often think of when we hear technology But changes in

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processes count as technology as well For instance the invention

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of the assembly line and great process there was first

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put into play by Henry Ford in the late nineteen

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twenties and it was the key to making mass production

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possible By combining the use of machines with stationed workers

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and interchangeable parts Ford was able to produce far more

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vehicles with the same amount of inputs as before Even

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hammers wristwatches and dialogue were once leading technological change Today

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we've got self driving cars flying cars three D printing

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and neural network development increasing market efficiency and well yes

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Granted our relationship with technology has never been straightforward in

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the case of the assembly line While workers in Ford's

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factories did have better working conditions In some ways they

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had worse working conditions In other ways workers didn't have

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to do any heavy lifting or low stooping like they

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did before And there were jobs almost anyone could dio

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plus the assembly line allowed for to pass on some

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of those efficiency gains from technological change to workers wage

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improvements Despite these benefits the turnover at Ford's assembly line

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jobs was incredibly high For a while workers could on

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Lee do the mind numbing jobs for so long It

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was also argued by Karl Marx that doing the same

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little repetitive task over and over and over again made

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it difficult for workers to feel like they were actually

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contributing anything meaningful in their jobs Well guess what The

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turnover at Ford's factories was so high that Ford decided

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to give his workers two days off working only five

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days a week eight hours a day What a concept

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That's right The technological change of assembly lines lead to

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increased market efficiency and supreme boredom among workers which then

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led to the forty hour work week who go forward

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Increasingly these repetitive type tasks are being done by advanced

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robots Even more creative jobs like writing for shmoop and

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making music composition are now being done by robots It's

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nothing personal It just makes sense for business to use

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more robots If doing so allows them to doom or

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with less well as technological change progresses it's increasingly a

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concern that robots will take up so many jobs There

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won't be many left for a human Beings will have

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a huge part of the workforce just permanently unemployed then

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Plus most economic gains from technological change in the last

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several decades haven't ended up in workers pockets which is

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kind of a concern We've always had a love hate

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relationship with technological change We love how easy it makes

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our lives but sometimes it makes them too easy can't

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live with robots and well can't live without him What

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