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Read this interesting essay written by DEREK THOMPSON
For centuries, experts have predicted that machines would make workers obsolete. That moment may finally be arriving. Could that be a good thing ?
The end of work is still just a futuristic concept for most of the United States, but it is something like a moment in history for Youngstown, Ohio, one its residents can cite with precision: September 19, 1977.
For much of the 20th century, Youngstown's steel mills delivered such great prosperity that the city was a model of the American dream, boasting a median income and a home ownership rate that were among the nation's highest. But as manufacturing shifted abroad after World War II, Youngstown steel suffered, and on that gray September afternoon in 1977, Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced the shuttering of its Campbell Works mill. Within five years, the city lost 50,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in manufacturing wages. The effect was so severe that a term was coined to describe the fallout: regional depression.
Youngstown was transformed not only by an economic disruption but also by a psychological and cultural breakdown. Depression, spousal abuse, and suicide all became much more prevalent; the caseload of the area's mental-health center tripled within a decade. The city built four prisons in the mid-1990s—a rare growth industry. One of the few downtown construction projects of that period was a museum dedicated to the defunct steel industry.
The future will tell us whether or not this pans out as he envisions. What does SN think will happen ?
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @11:55AM
The summary doesn't mention if/what he envisions, at all.
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:58PM
Ha, that happens to me almost every time I submit a story! I'm so preoccupied with finding the right quotes from the article, tinkering them together without distorting the meaning too much, checking the links, finding a better article on another page, scrapping everything and starting from the beginning, looking up words in dictionaries and throwing my own thoughts into it, that the headline or whatever almost never fits to what gets submitted in the end. (Not no mention that I always forget to choose a topic and the error message is so hard to see..)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @05:18PM
You know, there's no law that a summary must consist mainly of quotes. Indeed, I've always considered that the lazy option.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @10:42PM
Yup.
...then again, that way you can't honestly be accused of twisting the words of the original.
...and even when your submission consists 100 percent of the blockquoted words of someone else, some Soylentil will say you have an agenda.
Want no one to ever criticize you?
Don't ever type anything into a comment box.
-- gewg_