I hold a belief that many people find uncomfortable: our country’s technological backwardness, so often the subject of derision, has quietly kept millions employed in our midst. We are living in a world where technology is hurtling us towards a future where machines are our only companions, and our backwardness has been a stubborn, life-sustaining brake on that progress.
I am not romanticizing poverty and inefficiency here, nor am I unaware of the frustration that comes with slow systems, long lines, and work being done by hand instead of by machine, no matter how much faster the machine is. But I am also not unaware of the fact staring me in the face: it is because we have not fully put our factories, our offices, and our streets under the control of machines that people are still able to make a living by the sweat of their brows, however honest that living may be. Our backwardness, in this sense, has been an accidental safety net for our society.
In very advanced countries, machines have long since gobbled up jobs that used to sustain communities, jobs that used to be the bread and butter of many families. The factories are humming with robots that don’t need sleep, complain, or ask for pay. The offices that used to be bustling with clerks, bookkeepers, and assistants are now silent, their jobs taken over by software and programs, all in the name of efficiency and profit, and many workers made to get out and “retool” or “reskill” as if it were as simple as downloading an app on their smartphones.
But here we are different. Our manufacturing plants still require human hands; our offices still require people to file, encode, check, and double-check. Our streets are filled with vendors, drivers, porters, and messengers—jobs that would have been made redundant in hyper-automated economies. This is not to say that we have excelled in the use of technology; it is to say that we have found ways to employ people in imperfect ways that still keep hunger at bay.
There is dignity in work, even if it is menial and repetitive, even if it is physically exhausting or technologically unsophisticated. A job, no matter how menial, gives purpose to the day and meaning to the effort. I have seen firsthand the impact that having a regular income, earned through work and not subsidy, gives to the individual and to the family. I have seen the pride that comes from earning and the sense of purpose that cannot be replicated by aid programs no matter how well-intentioned.
But this is a double-edged sword. Technological backwardness cannot and should not be a long-term solution; I would be disingenuous if I said that I think it should be. We cannot cling to inefficiency and low productivity and low wages; that is not the future we should aim for.
What bothers me is that some people celebrate the coming of technology and the attendant loss of jobs without seeming to care that there are real human beings who are made redundant by the process. Development is not just about increasing productivity or having clean spreadsheets; it is about helping people through change without discarding them in the process.
I am not arguing against progress; I am arguing against recklessness. We must modernize, yes, but we must modernize with a commitment to protecting our livelihoods in the process. If there is one quiet lesson in our technological stagnation, it is that progress that ignores people is no progress at all, and the smartest progress is the kind that lets machines augment our work, not diminish our value.
