Does IT lead to job elimination, or job enhancement Essay

Does IT lead to job elimination, or job enhancement - Essay Example s are assembled or foods processed, through the use of robotic arms and conveyer belts, a job that may have been retrospectively been done by a hundred unskilled workers can be done by just a handful of machine operators. Inevitably, given the sensitive nature of labor issue, machines were not very well received by the workers they stood to replace; even today the interrogation of technology is often condemned by those who view it as a negative force rendering people jobless especially in labor intensive economies. While this is a logically sound argument, it is nevertheless one sided in view of the fact that the relationship between labor and technology is not as simple as that. In as much as technology may result in unemployment in some sectors, it has spawned millions of jobs in in numerous sectors and one can even argue that in the end it creates more jobs than it destroys. In the late 19th century at the height of the industrial revolution, a group of artisans working in the textile industry started a revolution of sorts in Britain against the use of machines in the production of textiles. They were afraid that automation of the process of production would cause them to lose their jobs since less skilled and therefore cheaper employees rendering them redundant could operate the machines. The Luddites as they were known became a significant social and political movement and they engaged in numerous acts of destruction in protest of adaption of machines in their industry (Baggaley, 2010). So much so that it is estimated that British soldiers were at some point involved in fighting the luddites than engaging napoleon. Ultimately, the movement was crashed through a series of trials in which the Luddites were convicted for machine breaking, which had been made a capital crime, and many were executed (Edgerton, 2011).  Today, the term Luddite is used to d escribe someone who is seen as being opposed to or slow to incorporate technology (Baggaley, 2010). Proponents