>> Is retail adapting to e-commerce ? Or is it mostly a really slow decline ?
It's both, really. For some retailers with brick-and-mortar shops online presence is a way to expand their market, for others - internet is slow death.
But again nothing drastic in terms of job reduction has happened overnight even though the whole "internet thing" changed the way things are done drastically af.
>> And maybe we can adapt - but we don't hear almost any ideas at all for many more new jobs...
It's hard to predict these things. But again I'm not buying the "zomg there will be riots" spiel. If anything there will be a whole set of new (or subset of existing) industries along the lines of how adoption of the internet-based tech spawned them.
Let's think about the Internet(in 1994) but in the abstract:
It was a new medium. New mediums create new advertising and content industries around them. So did the Internet. They also create many jobs to manage/improve the technical stuff - That's also true.
It's also a great distribution channel for software and goods. we've known this pretty early. and new distribution channels reduce a business cost thus increasing demand. They also create changes along the whole supply chain, so that's more work.
But the surprising fact about the net is it's ability to enable businesses targeting very tiny niches. But if you talked to a many direct marketing guys back in the day, before the net and explained to them about the technical possibilities of the internet(and moore's law and powerful computing) and let them think about it, one in a 10-100, would have told you: this could be great for small targeted businesses.
Or maybe that guy is working in prediction, or science fiction, etc.
But today we have blogs,and media business who would kill for an eyeball, so we should be able to hear from that smart guy .
So why aren't we hearing stories about all those possible new jobs ?
>> why aren't we hearing stories about all those possible new jobs ?
you tell me :) I'm not 100% sure why the automation narrative has primarily been of the "impending doom" variety.
I think just like with the internet - even if automation does take off big time there will be some "victims" but also new possibilities from the obvious ones - like manufacturing, supporting/updating, installing the "robots" to some things we (speaking for myself lol) can't envision until this actually happens.
It's both, really. For some retailers with brick-and-mortar shops online presence is a way to expand their market, for others - internet is slow death.
But again nothing drastic in terms of job reduction has happened overnight even though the whole "internet thing" changed the way things are done drastically af.
>> And maybe we can adapt - but we don't hear almost any ideas at all for many more new jobs...
It's hard to predict these things. But again I'm not buying the "zomg there will be riots" spiel. If anything there will be a whole set of new (or subset of existing) industries along the lines of how adoption of the internet-based tech spawned them.