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The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future
What will the economy of the future look like? Where will advancing technology, job automation, outsourcing and globalization lead? This groundbreaking book by a Silicon Valley computer engineer explores these questions and shows how accelerating technology is likely to have a highly disruptive influence on our economy in the near future--and may well already be a significant factor in the current global crisis. THE LIGHTS IN THE TUNNEL employs a powerful thought experiment to explore the economy of the future. An imaginary "tunnel of lights" is used to visualize the economic implications of the new technologies that are likely to appear in the coming years and decades. The book directly challenges conventional views of the future and illuminates the danger that lies ahead if we do not plan for the impact of rapidly advancing technology. It also shows how the economic realities of the future might offer solutions to issues such as poverty and climate change.
253 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
About the author
Martin Ford
44 books240 followersMartin Ford is the author of the two books Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (2015) and The Lights In the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future (2009) — both dealing with the effects of automation and mass-unemployment. He is the founder of a Silicon Valley-based software development firm, and obtained a computer engineering degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a graduate business degree from UCLA's Anderson School of Management.
Ford was the first 21st century author[1] to publish a book (The Lights in the Tunnel in 2009) making a strong argument that advances in robotics and artificial intelligence would eventually make a large fraction of the human workforce obsolete.[2] In subsequent years, other books have made similar arguments, and Ford's thesis has been supported by a number of formal academic studies, most notably by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne of Oxford University, who found in 2013 that the jobs held by roughly 47 percent of the U.S. workforce could be susceptible to automation within the next two decades.[3]
In his most recent book Rise of the Robots, he argues that the growth of automation now threatens many highly-educated people, like lawyers, radiologists, and software designers.[4] To deal with the rise of unemployment, he is in favor of a basic income guarantee.[5]
Both of Ford's books focus on the fact that widespread automation could potentially undermine economic growth or even lead to a deflationary spiral because jobs are the primary mechanism for distributing purchasing power to consumers.[6] He has warned that as income becomes ever more concentrated into the hands of a tiny elite, the bulk of consumers will eventually lack the income and confidence to continue supplying demand to the mass market industries that form the backbone of the modern economy.[7]
Ford strongly supports both capitalism and continued technological progress but believes it will be necessary to adapt our economic system to the new reality created by advances in artificial intelligence, and that some form of basic income guarantee is the best way to do this.[8] In Rise of the Robots he cites the Peltzman effect (or risk compensation) as evidence that the safety net created by a guaranteed income might well result in increased economic risk taking and a more dynamic and entrepreneurial economy.
Ford has also argued for incorporating explicit incentives — especially for pursuing education — into a basic income scheme, suggesting for example that those who graduate from high school (or complete an equivalency exam) ought to receive a somewhat higher guaranteed income than those who drop out. Without this, many marginal or "at risk" students would be presented with a perverse incentive to simply drop out and collect the basic income.
Ford was the first 21st century author[1] to publish a book (The Lights in the Tunnel in 2009) making a strong argument that advances in robotics and artificial intelligence would eventually make a large fraction of the human workforce obsolete.[2] In subsequent years, other books have made similar arguments, and Ford's thesis has been supported by a number of formal academic studies, most notably by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne of Oxford University, who found in 2013 that the jobs held by roughly 47 percent of the U.S. workforce could be susceptible to automation within the next two decades.[3]
In his most recent book Rise of the Robots, he argues that the growth of automation now threatens many highly-educated people, like lawyers, radiologists, and software designers.[4] To deal with the rise of unemployment, he is in favor of a basic income guarantee.[5]
Both of Ford's books focus on the fact that widespread automation could potentially undermine economic growth or even lead to a deflationary spiral because jobs are the primary mechanism for distributing purchasing power to consumers.[6] He has warned that as income becomes ever more concentrated into the hands of a tiny elite, the bulk of consumers will eventually lack the income and confidence to continue supplying demand to the mass market industries that form the backbone of the modern economy.[7]
Ford strongly supports both capitalism and continued technological progress but believes it will be necessary to adapt our economic system to the new reality created by advances in artificial intelligence, and that some form of basic income guarantee is the best way to do this.[8] In Rise of the Robots he cites the Peltzman effect (or risk compensation) as evidence that the safety net created by a guaranteed income might well result in increased economic risk taking and a more dynamic and entrepreneurial economy.
Ford has also argued for incorporating explicit incentives — especially for pursuing education — into a basic income scheme, suggesting for example that those who graduate from high school (or complete an equivalency exam) ought to receive a somewhat higher guaranteed income than those who drop out. Without this, many marginal or "at risk" students would be presented with a perverse incentive to simply drop out and collect the basic income.
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March 1, 2020
I meant to read this over a year ago, but didn’t get around to it at the time – although I did read Rise of the Robots, which I enjoyed very much. The title of this one is a bit daft, and the metaphor it is based on is also a bit daft too – which is a pity, because this is compulsory reading – if a little old now. All the same, the arguments are still current and he is very readable.
I’m going to start by saying that this is one of those topics that I am not sure which side I should come down on. When I read his robots book, I don’t think I had read Castells’ Rise of the Network Society. In that he makes the quite sensible observation that if you were looking for a collapse in the number of jobs, then the last 100 years or so hasn’t really been over-abundant in evidence for your cause. The automation of house work – mostly the washing machine – has sent an enormous number of women into the work force. This has moved them from ‘reproduction’ to ‘production’. Even if they are mostly constrained to ‘pink collar’ jobs – grossly underpaid ‘caring’ professions – they have still moved into the paid workforce in droves. This is hardly evidence of a growing shortage of jobs. And only a couple of months ago The Economist had a cover story discussing The Rich World’s Jobs Boom (https://www.economist.com/leaders/201...).
So much for technology destroying jobs, then.
Except, what this book asks isn’t quite the same as this. It is, where are the new mass, middle class jobs going to come from? And this is a seriously interesting question. Much of the history of the industrial revolution has been a history of deskilling labour, finding ways in which work can be done with the aid of, or by, machines in ways that simplify the production process.
The new forms of technology are growing in power at an exponential rate – Moore’s law. This has occurred at a time when tertiary education in much of the developed world has become a mass form of education. To give you some indication of the rapidity of the growth in tertiary education rates, in 2001, 12.9% of people aged over 15 in Australia had a bachelor degree or higher. By 2016, 22% of that population did. If the growth rate in tertiary education is impressive, the rate of growth over that time of technology has been breathtaking.
The author’s argument here is not that jobs displaced by technology in one area of the economy are not replaced by other jobs in the economy by new and possibly better jobs. His argument is that exponential growth is very difficult to keep up with. And if you are the average employee, there doesn’t seem to be ‘good’ jobs that are being created in new industries that you will be able to do with ‘average’ skills to replace the job you lost.
The most interesting part of this book is where he looks at the most common job categories from 2006 with at least one million people employed doing those occupations. And he points out that he was able to find only ONE of those that had not existed in the 1930s – fast food workers didn’t exist in the 30s. It is not that new technology doesn’t create new jobs – it is that new technology is much more likely to create highly specialised new roles that the ‘average’ employee will simply not be qualified to get. And, at the same time, technology displaces labour in a range of jobs, but most profitably in jobs in the middle – where the cost of the job to the employer is enough to make replacing or simplifying that job worthwhile.
The economic argument here is that we need to find new ways to redistribute wealth. The reason being that lots and lots of people in the middle are going to struggle to remain in the middle, that the gap between rich and poor is going to accelerate and become even more pronounced and that will put the viability of the market system at risk. This is because the market system depends on there being customers for products produced – and if you have too few people able to buy stuff, the market system can no longer work.
This book should be read as a companion to another book by another Mark – Capitalist Realism: There is an alternative. Mostly because this book stresses Mark Fisher’s main point – that we now seem completely incapable of even contemplating an alternative to free market capitalism. In fact, this book proposes radical changes so as to maintain the market system at whatever cost. That being the one constant that must never be adjusted.
One of the things I’ve found interesting about what people tend to say about the future, is that it will belong to entrepreneurs. The problem is that this particular job category, even while it is being touted, is rarely defined. When it is, the jobs of the future look like a nightmare. They look like the jobs of the 1840s, but without the security. Workers being paid piecemeal, having to go cap in hand from employer to employer for bits of roles, cut out from the housing market, praying they or anyone they love doesn’t get sick. That is, living in a world where not only health care and shelter, but even food is a privilege, rather than a right. The future looks affluent and desperately poor at the same time. That some books choose to focus on one rather than the other of these futures, probably tells you a lot about the author, and rather less about the future.
I’m going to start by saying that this is one of those topics that I am not sure which side I should come down on. When I read his robots book, I don’t think I had read Castells’ Rise of the Network Society. In that he makes the quite sensible observation that if you were looking for a collapse in the number of jobs, then the last 100 years or so hasn’t really been over-abundant in evidence for your cause. The automation of house work – mostly the washing machine – has sent an enormous number of women into the work force. This has moved them from ‘reproduction’ to ‘production’. Even if they are mostly constrained to ‘pink collar’ jobs – grossly underpaid ‘caring’ professions – they have still moved into the paid workforce in droves. This is hardly evidence of a growing shortage of jobs. And only a couple of months ago The Economist had a cover story discussing The Rich World’s Jobs Boom (https://www.economist.com/leaders/201...).
So much for technology destroying jobs, then.
Except, what this book asks isn’t quite the same as this. It is, where are the new mass, middle class jobs going to come from? And this is a seriously interesting question. Much of the history of the industrial revolution has been a history of deskilling labour, finding ways in which work can be done with the aid of, or by, machines in ways that simplify the production process.
The new forms of technology are growing in power at an exponential rate – Moore’s law. This has occurred at a time when tertiary education in much of the developed world has become a mass form of education. To give you some indication of the rapidity of the growth in tertiary education rates, in 2001, 12.9% of people aged over 15 in Australia had a bachelor degree or higher. By 2016, 22% of that population did. If the growth rate in tertiary education is impressive, the rate of growth over that time of technology has been breathtaking.
The author’s argument here is not that jobs displaced by technology in one area of the economy are not replaced by other jobs in the economy by new and possibly better jobs. His argument is that exponential growth is very difficult to keep up with. And if you are the average employee, there doesn’t seem to be ‘good’ jobs that are being created in new industries that you will be able to do with ‘average’ skills to replace the job you lost.
The most interesting part of this book is where he looks at the most common job categories from 2006 with at least one million people employed doing those occupations. And he points out that he was able to find only ONE of those that had not existed in the 1930s – fast food workers didn’t exist in the 30s. It is not that new technology doesn’t create new jobs – it is that new technology is much more likely to create highly specialised new roles that the ‘average’ employee will simply not be qualified to get. And, at the same time, technology displaces labour in a range of jobs, but most profitably in jobs in the middle – where the cost of the job to the employer is enough to make replacing or simplifying that job worthwhile.
The economic argument here is that we need to find new ways to redistribute wealth. The reason being that lots and lots of people in the middle are going to struggle to remain in the middle, that the gap between rich and poor is going to accelerate and become even more pronounced and that will put the viability of the market system at risk. This is because the market system depends on there being customers for products produced – and if you have too few people able to buy stuff, the market system can no longer work.
This book should be read as a companion to another book by another Mark – Capitalist Realism: There is an alternative. Mostly because this book stresses Mark Fisher’s main point – that we now seem completely incapable of even contemplating an alternative to free market capitalism. In fact, this book proposes radical changes so as to maintain the market system at whatever cost. That being the one constant that must never be adjusted.
One of the things I’ve found interesting about what people tend to say about the future, is that it will belong to entrepreneurs. The problem is that this particular job category, even while it is being touted, is rarely defined. When it is, the jobs of the future look like a nightmare. They look like the jobs of the 1840s, but without the security. Workers being paid piecemeal, having to go cap in hand from employer to employer for bits of roles, cut out from the housing market, praying they or anyone they love doesn’t get sick. That is, living in a world where not only health care and shelter, but even food is a privilege, rather than a right. The future looks affluent and desperately poor at the same time. That some books choose to focus on one rather than the other of these futures, probably tells you a lot about the author, and rather less about the future.
July 4, 2013
It is hard to describe how wrong this sorry excuse for a book is. In fact, so hard I just spent over 12 hours writing down a list of things I felt was wrong or misleading. Here I will give you just a brief synopsis.
First some positives: it is entertaining. I read until the end. It poses some important questions about how the economy will change with the advent of "strong" automation which is likely to displace most of the jobs today. Ford presents reasonable intellectual honesty when he points out that certain idea are or are not supported by evidence. At least when he makes stuff up, he admits it, and that is honorable. This book is an excellent motivation for vociferous debates.
The entire book is based on the assumption that there are fixed number of jobs, and as those jobs are automated, people will be put out of work. With no work, the economy, which depends upon consumers, will collapse.
This is exactly the argument made by the Luddites in 1812 when looms were being automated. Most people call this the "Luddite Fallacy" because those worried that there were a fixed number of jobs, and that automation would eliminate job opportunities, did not realize that automation of one job brings in a whole host of other jobs. It is not always obvious what those new jobs would be. We talk about car manufacturer eliminating the need for "buggy whip" manufacturers, but nobody a century ago ever imagined that there would be a new market for after-market turbo chargers. You simply can't know what the new jobs will be, when the existing jobs are being eliminated.
Ford argues that "this time is different". He spends chapter 2 (80 pages) trying to prove that this time the Luddite Fallacy is not a fallacy. All the reasoning is based on assumptions that are not supported by evidence. He makes up a "human skills curve" which is shown to be leveling off. Apparently he believes there will be no new skills needed as technology advances. This is crazy especially for someone who started a software company -- software development is a profession unimaginable 100 years ago. He puts this on a chart showing Moore's law, and claims this is evidence that there is a big disruption when these curves cross.
He spends a reasonable time exploring the nature of exponential growth, but then page 31 claims that exponential growth explains why the rich keep getting richer. Actually, it is exactly the opposite: if the rich and the poor are both on exponential growth of the market, the ratio of their positions will remain EXACTLY the same. He never really explains why exponential growth of processor speed is related to wealth of entrepreneurs. Even though my computer today is a million times faster than the one in 1980, it still takes 5 minutes to boot up, and I am not a million times more productive. There are other effects at work.
He considers two jobs: one fairly skilled and one fairly unskilled. He claims that the skilled one (radiologist) will eventually be automated, while the relatively unskilled on (housecleaning) will not. The entire analysis is deeply flawed.
He is correct in pointing out that what a radiologist does today will be automated, but does not seem to understand that there is so much MORE for a radiologist to do. Radiology is far from being "solved" and providing complete information about the scanned body. As the routine tasks today are automated, it will free the radiologist to look at higher level functions. Until all disease and cancer is cured, there will always be the need to do more with these tools. Automation will allow the radiologist to do much more much faster, and we are in no danger of that everything possible will automated. Ford simply misses the idea that new jobs created by automation are hard to see or understand today.
As for housecleaning, he feels that this not automatable, and uses this as the basis of the argument that humans will tend to do less and less skilled jobs in the future. However, there is lots of evidence that such tasks are more automatiable than he thinks. For example, driving a car was considered not automatable, and Google has them today. Face recognition was considered a unique human skill, and today it is impossible to buy a camera without that built in.
All this reasoning leads Ford to the conclusion that humans will occupy less skilled work, college will be useless and avoided, machines will take over all the skilled work, there are no new skills to learn, there are a fixed number of jobs, so .... there is going to be widespread unemployment. Ford then continues into some wildly entertaining ideas of how to solve this problem, like government subsidies to support consumer behavior in order to keep the existing companies alive.
The "Lights in the Tunnel" is a reference to a visualization of the economy where consumers are points of light, and businesses form a kind of tunnel wall around 1 billion people, while 5 billion poor are left out of the tunnel. The brightness of a point of light is the spending power, and economic activity is signified by waxing and waning of the light strength. All of this supposed to give an "instinctual" feel for the workings of the market economy but certainly for me it does not. Nor is there any real insight that can be gotten from this visualization (which he calls a "simulation"). He make an intuitive conclusion based in this imaginary visualization that middle income people form the most dominant light. However, statistics and actual market data do not support this position.
To me, Ford's flaw rests primarily in his professed belief that "the economy creates jobs". It is a simplistic view of economics that recognizes the exchange of money for consumables, but ignores the long term value of work being done, as well as the driving source. The economy is just a place where people can exchange money for work, but it does not provide the primal impetus for that work in any way.
Jobs are "created" by need to have problems solved, and by people specializing to solve those problems. The cure for every disease is not known, and until every cure is known, there will be jobs for people trying to cure disease. Today, the need for food, clothing and shelter may be the primary drivers of the economy -- occupying many more people than those trying to cure cancer. It is not that cancer research is not important, it is just that we have too many things to do just to live.
As automation steps in to take over these jobs of providing basic food production, basic manufacturing, basic lower skilled job, it will FREE UP people to work on jobs that still need to be done. The fact is that there are many jobs we would like to be doing today, but can't. Automation will allow us to do the mundane things faster with fewer people, but that will NOT cause everyone else to sit on the street. With basic needs met by automation, we will work on research, understanding the universe, understanding psychology and why some people have such a hard time coping, and medicine. These needs will still be there, and there will remain an economy of people wanting to pay others to do this work. Ford seem oblivious of this effect. He argues that since the world is a closed system, there are no new jobs to be done, ever in the future. Rather short-sighted in my opinion.
He also ignores the effect that the price of a product drops dramatically when its manufacture is automated. He argues that automation will allow companies to let go of workers, and keep all the income to the elite, but he does not see that the total income will drop as well. Similarly, since these things are cheaper, there is less need for consumers to have as much money. There are many shifts that the market makes as automation is introduced and he does not consider the effect of this change in price at all in his analysis.
It is hard for anyone to predict what this future will bring, but if his claim was true that the singularity brings (nearly) complete automation of all basic needs production -- food, clothing, shelter -- then the result of this extreme automation would be to make everything free; there would be no need for jobs. Neither Ford nor I are saying that automation will be complete and that everything will be free, but there is a correlation: to the extent that automation eliminates people from the production of basic goods, the price of those goods will drop by an exactly equivalent amount. This would still not eliminate all jobs: instead it frees up people to work on jobs that we simply can not get to today because we are too busy with basic goods.
In conclusion, my vision of the future is somewhat rosier than Ford's. I completely reject his notion that automation will eliminate jobs and put people on welfare, and similarly reject his ideas that the government should give money to people so they can consume products. I don't claim to be an economist or expert on the future, however I can point out the flaws in the logic that leads to Ford's conclusions. It is surprising that Ford does not see that automating jobs today, will require new skills, and produce new jobs tomorrow. His fixation on there being a fixed set of skills, a fixed set of jobs, and a fixed overall economy, undermines all of the conclusions he makes in this book.
First some positives: it is entertaining. I read until the end. It poses some important questions about how the economy will change with the advent of "strong" automation which is likely to displace most of the jobs today. Ford presents reasonable intellectual honesty when he points out that certain idea are or are not supported by evidence. At least when he makes stuff up, he admits it, and that is honorable. This book is an excellent motivation for vociferous debates.
The entire book is based on the assumption that there are fixed number of jobs, and as those jobs are automated, people will be put out of work. With no work, the economy, which depends upon consumers, will collapse.
This is exactly the argument made by the Luddites in 1812 when looms were being automated. Most people call this the "Luddite Fallacy" because those worried that there were a fixed number of jobs, and that automation would eliminate job opportunities, did not realize that automation of one job brings in a whole host of other jobs. It is not always obvious what those new jobs would be. We talk about car manufacturer eliminating the need for "buggy whip" manufacturers, but nobody a century ago ever imagined that there would be a new market for after-market turbo chargers. You simply can't know what the new jobs will be, when the existing jobs are being eliminated.
Ford argues that "this time is different". He spends chapter 2 (80 pages) trying to prove that this time the Luddite Fallacy is not a fallacy. All the reasoning is based on assumptions that are not supported by evidence. He makes up a "human skills curve" which is shown to be leveling off. Apparently he believes there will be no new skills needed as technology advances. This is crazy especially for someone who started a software company -- software development is a profession unimaginable 100 years ago. He puts this on a chart showing Moore's law, and claims this is evidence that there is a big disruption when these curves cross.
He spends a reasonable time exploring the nature of exponential growth, but then page 31 claims that exponential growth explains why the rich keep getting richer. Actually, it is exactly the opposite: if the rich and the poor are both on exponential growth of the market, the ratio of their positions will remain EXACTLY the same. He never really explains why exponential growth of processor speed is related to wealth of entrepreneurs. Even though my computer today is a million times faster than the one in 1980, it still takes 5 minutes to boot up, and I am not a million times more productive. There are other effects at work.
He considers two jobs: one fairly skilled and one fairly unskilled. He claims that the skilled one (radiologist) will eventually be automated, while the relatively unskilled on (housecleaning) will not. The entire analysis is deeply flawed.
He is correct in pointing out that what a radiologist does today will be automated, but does not seem to understand that there is so much MORE for a radiologist to do. Radiology is far from being "solved" and providing complete information about the scanned body. As the routine tasks today are automated, it will free the radiologist to look at higher level functions. Until all disease and cancer is cured, there will always be the need to do more with these tools. Automation will allow the radiologist to do much more much faster, and we are in no danger of that everything possible will automated. Ford simply misses the idea that new jobs created by automation are hard to see or understand today.
As for housecleaning, he feels that this not automatable, and uses this as the basis of the argument that humans will tend to do less and less skilled jobs in the future. However, there is lots of evidence that such tasks are more automatiable than he thinks. For example, driving a car was considered not automatable, and Google has them today. Face recognition was considered a unique human skill, and today it is impossible to buy a camera without that built in.
All this reasoning leads Ford to the conclusion that humans will occupy less skilled work, college will be useless and avoided, machines will take over all the skilled work, there are no new skills to learn, there are a fixed number of jobs, so .... there is going to be widespread unemployment. Ford then continues into some wildly entertaining ideas of how to solve this problem, like government subsidies to support consumer behavior in order to keep the existing companies alive.
The "Lights in the Tunnel" is a reference to a visualization of the economy where consumers are points of light, and businesses form a kind of tunnel wall around 1 billion people, while 5 billion poor are left out of the tunnel. The brightness of a point of light is the spending power, and economic activity is signified by waxing and waning of the light strength. All of this supposed to give an "instinctual" feel for the workings of the market economy but certainly for me it does not. Nor is there any real insight that can be gotten from this visualization (which he calls a "simulation"). He make an intuitive conclusion based in this imaginary visualization that middle income people form the most dominant light. However, statistics and actual market data do not support this position.
To me, Ford's flaw rests primarily in his professed belief that "the economy creates jobs". It is a simplistic view of economics that recognizes the exchange of money for consumables, but ignores the long term value of work being done, as well as the driving source. The economy is just a place where people can exchange money for work, but it does not provide the primal impetus for that work in any way.
Jobs are "created" by need to have problems solved, and by people specializing to solve those problems. The cure for every disease is not known, and until every cure is known, there will be jobs for people trying to cure disease. Today, the need for food, clothing and shelter may be the primary drivers of the economy -- occupying many more people than those trying to cure cancer. It is not that cancer research is not important, it is just that we have too many things to do just to live.
As automation steps in to take over these jobs of providing basic food production, basic manufacturing, basic lower skilled job, it will FREE UP people to work on jobs that still need to be done. The fact is that there are many jobs we would like to be doing today, but can't. Automation will allow us to do the mundane things faster with fewer people, but that will NOT cause everyone else to sit on the street. With basic needs met by automation, we will work on research, understanding the universe, understanding psychology and why some people have such a hard time coping, and medicine. These needs will still be there, and there will remain an economy of people wanting to pay others to do this work. Ford seem oblivious of this effect. He argues that since the world is a closed system, there are no new jobs to be done, ever in the future. Rather short-sighted in my opinion.
He also ignores the effect that the price of a product drops dramatically when its manufacture is automated. He argues that automation will allow companies to let go of workers, and keep all the income to the elite, but he does not see that the total income will drop as well. Similarly, since these things are cheaper, there is less need for consumers to have as much money. There are many shifts that the market makes as automation is introduced and he does not consider the effect of this change in price at all in his analysis.
It is hard for anyone to predict what this future will bring, but if his claim was true that the singularity brings (nearly) complete automation of all basic needs production -- food, clothing, shelter -- then the result of this extreme automation would be to make everything free; there would be no need for jobs. Neither Ford nor I are saying that automation will be complete and that everything will be free, but there is a correlation: to the extent that automation eliminates people from the production of basic goods, the price of those goods will drop by an exactly equivalent amount. This would still not eliminate all jobs: instead it frees up people to work on jobs that we simply can not get to today because we are too busy with basic goods.
In conclusion, my vision of the future is somewhat rosier than Ford's. I completely reject his notion that automation will eliminate jobs and put people on welfare, and similarly reject his ideas that the government should give money to people so they can consume products. I don't claim to be an economist or expert on the future, however I can point out the flaws in the logic that leads to Ford's conclusions. It is surprising that Ford does not see that automating jobs today, will require new skills, and produce new jobs tomorrow. His fixation on there being a fixed set of skills, a fixed set of jobs, and a fixed overall economy, undermines all of the conclusions he makes in this book.
May 22, 2011
Martin Ford is one of the few people out there who has realized that relentless technological development, especially in AI and robotics, and the free market economy as we know it are inherently incompatible because it will essentially lead to the creation of an almost purely autonomous but jobless economy.
Since the free market economic engine is the mass market, who will be the future consumers of goods and services when intelligent machines take over their jobs? If nothing is done about this often overlooked problem, we could be in for a shock in the future as the very technology that was supposed to bring us economic growth and prosperity will ultimately lead us on a downward economic spiral. Thankfully the author does propose a somewhat workable solution which modifies the free market economy such that we can retain its benefits while accelerating technological development even further.
One might be tempted to scorn the author as a neo-Luddite but the author is the owner of a silicon valley software development firm and has 25 years experience in computer technology. If anything, we should all take his thoughts on the matter more seriously. Download the ebook for free online from the author's website and be prepared for a mind blowing read!
Since the free market economic engine is the mass market, who will be the future consumers of goods and services when intelligent machines take over their jobs? If nothing is done about this often overlooked problem, we could be in for a shock in the future as the very technology that was supposed to bring us economic growth and prosperity will ultimately lead us on a downward economic spiral. Thankfully the author does propose a somewhat workable solution which modifies the free market economy such that we can retain its benefits while accelerating technological development even further.
One might be tempted to scorn the author as a neo-Luddite but the author is the owner of a silicon valley software development firm and has 25 years experience in computer technology. If anything, we should all take his thoughts on the matter more seriously. Download the ebook for free online from the author's website and be prepared for a mind blowing read!
September 26, 2014
I thought the "lights in the tunnel" metaphor was not very illustrative, but I agreed with everything this book was saying about the upcoming problem. Increasing automation is reducing the ability of the average worker to find any job, and this situation will only get worse as computational power grows exponentially. At some point, many workers will be unable to find any kind of employment at all. I don't know about his solutions, though.
You can download this book for free at http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/
You can download this book for free at http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/
November 19, 2011
The fear of technological unemployment dates back to the eighteenth century when Ned Ludd famously smashed two stocking frames. The word "Luddite" was thus created for anyone who opposed technology. Of course, if you mention technological unemployment to most modern day economists they'll kindly remind you that machines don't actually take jobs from people, but rather, they create more jobs. And, until now, most modern economists have been right. Hence, a belief that machines takes jobs from humans is often called the Luddite fallacy. Ned Ludd may, however, be vindicated at some point in the near future.
In this book, Ford asserts that technological unemployment is happening now and will only get worse in the future. His critics, however, dismiss his claims and accuse him of being a neo-Luddite. Given the developments in robotics, nanotechnologies, and artificial intelligence, I think Ford's concern is entirely warranted. Just because technology has created more human jobs in the past does not mean that it will forever, especially if we don't have the right economic structure in place.
I think many economists fail to realize that as the machines move towards increasing autonomy, the need for human labor will continue to decrease. This, however, is not necessarily a bad thing if we have the right economic architecture in place to support a world in which this is a reality. Right now, however, we don't. In the book, Ford reminds us that we need to challenge a few of basic economic assumptions that our modern free market is predicated on. There are also cultural assumptions that need to be challenged too.
Ultimately, I think Ford diagnoses the problem of technological unemployment quite well; however, I don't entirely agree with is proposed solutions.
In this book, Ford asserts that technological unemployment is happening now and will only get worse in the future. His critics, however, dismiss his claims and accuse him of being a neo-Luddite. Given the developments in robotics, nanotechnologies, and artificial intelligence, I think Ford's concern is entirely warranted. Just because technology has created more human jobs in the past does not mean that it will forever, especially if we don't have the right economic structure in place.
I think many economists fail to realize that as the machines move towards increasing autonomy, the need for human labor will continue to decrease. This, however, is not necessarily a bad thing if we have the right economic architecture in place to support a world in which this is a reality. Right now, however, we don't. In the book, Ford reminds us that we need to challenge a few of basic economic assumptions that our modern free market is predicated on. There are also cultural assumptions that need to be challenged too.
Ultimately, I think Ford diagnoses the problem of technological unemployment quite well; however, I don't entirely agree with is proposed solutions.
November 8, 2012
The Lights in the Tunnel convincingly describes the inevitability of automation and the effects it will have on the economy, i.e. massive unemployment which depresses demand to the point of systemic collapse. Ford's proposed solution is to redistribute wealth using a new taxation system that taxes capital rather than labor, and to create 'virtual jobs' where people get paid for doing activities that have positive externalities e.g. learning, civic participation, or living an environmentally friendly life. His proposal could work but I doubt it's politically possible to implement under capitalism. I don't understand how Ford can propose massive state interventionism while simultaneously harping on the wonders of the 'free market.' He wrote a chapter entitled 'Outsmarting Marx' where he not only misreads the man, but attempts to refute him with less than two pages of text. Ford's entire book illustrates a fundamental flaw of capitalism, i.e. capital accumulation, and proves that Marxism is as pertinent as ever. Despite that he thinks Marx deserves to be 'swept into the dustbin of history' because of the historic failures of communism (read: USSR). You can tell it was written by a Silicon Valley software developer, so I suggest you take his technological predictions seriously but throw out anything he says concerning politics/economics.
December 5, 2012
The author does a great job in describing and arguing how automation and technology is reducing the workforce in many sectors of the economy. He argues well that the question is not how can we create more jobs, but how do we live in an economy that does not require millions of people to actually work the way we have done for centuries? It is not only automation that is replacing the workforce, we simply do not need people to perform manual tasks that technology replaces (e.g. bank tellers, store clerks, assembly plant workers, computer technicians, fast food workers.) This means however that we live in an economy that depends upon people buying stuff to “grow the economy”, but yet more than half of the population has less purchasing power than they did 20 years ago.
While I disagree with the author that the free market system is the only type of economy that will work, it is very difficult and hard to argue that unemployment levels will ever again get below 8%. In fact, we will see higher levels of unemployment, going towards 10 and 12% over the next two decades. In some towns and cities, unemployment is already at 30 to 50%.
Even if you don't totally agree with the arguments made in Lights In the Tunnel, the author still shines light on the direction this economy is going.
While I disagree with the author that the free market system is the only type of economy that will work, it is very difficult and hard to argue that unemployment levels will ever again get below 8%. In fact, we will see higher levels of unemployment, going towards 10 and 12% over the next two decades. In some towns and cities, unemployment is already at 30 to 50%.
Even if you don't totally agree with the arguments made in Lights In the Tunnel, the author still shines light on the direction this economy is going.
April 27, 2013
Are there going to be more people than economically productive jobs in the future? Ford thinks so and he lays out the reasons why. His proposed solution may or may not be the best possible one and will likely ruffle the feathers of both economic conservatives and economic progressives (it borrows from both lines of thinking), but it's likely a lot better than what'll happen if we keep blinders on about the situation. Even though the book was written in 2009 and is thus slightly out of date regarding the latest economic and technological developments, it's still very relevant and I'd love to put copies in the hands of the world's policymakers.
I'm a little conflicted about how to review this book. I've written a little bit on this subject in the past myself, and I've come to more or less the same set of conclusions Ford has, albeit in far less detail. So for me this book pretty much preaches to the choir. And yet, I found some of its arguments unconvincing, which was strange -- I already agreed with both the premise and the conclusion but didn't think Ford always connected the two well enough to convince a skeptical reader. For example, he uses Moore's Law as the main argument that computers will become increasingly capable of performing white-collar work over time, while totally failing to mention the common, valid, objection to that line of reasoning: doubling the speed of a computer doesn't always make hard software problems such as those in AI any easier to solve, and it's as much the software as the hardware that determines what work a computer can do.
I also didn't find the "tunnel" visualization very useful. If this were a multimedia presentation where the tunnel could actually be animated visually, it might work a bit better, but as it is, Ford spends more time describing the visualization than it would likely have taken to clearly describe the underlying model. Maybe it will be of more use to more visually-oriented readers.
If I had to critique the actual content, I'd say there are a couple potential developments that may be worth incorporating into any analysis of exponential improvements in automation. The first is that people may not remain as limited a resource as the book supposes. While I agree with its assertion that we've already picked a lot of the low-hanging fruit in terms of improving traditional education of ordinary humans and that education will go down in economic value over time, technologically augmented humans may be a lot more resourceful. This doesn't even have to mean fancy brain implants (though we're making progress in that area) -- imagine Google Glass with a live contextual Wikipedia feed and smart display of how-to videos from YouTube. Cyborgs may well be competitive against pure machines even when plain humans aren't.
The second possible development is that the autonomous machines may themselves become consumers in the market. This doesn't even require full-on Turing-test-passing, singularity-triggering AI; if an autonomous system is implemented with an incentive system and enough smarts to try out new ways to meet the incentives, it'll start asking for new things and will have to pay to get them, thus becoming an independent economic actor to some degree.
Neither of these things really negate the thrust of the book, though; they're just nuances whose absence makes the analysis seem a little less thorough.
One thing Ford is spot-on about is the almost willful ignorance of economists (or at least ones to whose work I'm exposed) about the nature of exponential growth of technology. Ford's critique of traditional economic analysis of automation and offshoring exactly matches what I've read. This conventional wisdom -- which more or less dismisses the possibility that machines will ever significantly catch up to humans in the labor force, and thus fails to analyze at all what the results would be -- is going to be a huge barrier to doing anything useful about the situation before it starts to cause major problems.
Agree with it or not, this book is thought-provoking and well worth reading.
I'm a little conflicted about how to review this book. I've written a little bit on this subject in the past myself, and I've come to more or less the same set of conclusions Ford has, albeit in far less detail. So for me this book pretty much preaches to the choir. And yet, I found some of its arguments unconvincing, which was strange -- I already agreed with both the premise and the conclusion but didn't think Ford always connected the two well enough to convince a skeptical reader. For example, he uses Moore's Law as the main argument that computers will become increasingly capable of performing white-collar work over time, while totally failing to mention the common, valid, objection to that line of reasoning: doubling the speed of a computer doesn't always make hard software problems such as those in AI any easier to solve, and it's as much the software as the hardware that determines what work a computer can do.
I also didn't find the "tunnel" visualization very useful. If this were a multimedia presentation where the tunnel could actually be animated visually, it might work a bit better, but as it is, Ford spends more time describing the visualization than it would likely have taken to clearly describe the underlying model. Maybe it will be of more use to more visually-oriented readers.
If I had to critique the actual content, I'd say there are a couple potential developments that may be worth incorporating into any analysis of exponential improvements in automation. The first is that people may not remain as limited a resource as the book supposes. While I agree with its assertion that we've already picked a lot of the low-hanging fruit in terms of improving traditional education of ordinary humans and that education will go down in economic value over time, technologically augmented humans may be a lot more resourceful. This doesn't even have to mean fancy brain implants (though we're making progress in that area) -- imagine Google Glass with a live contextual Wikipedia feed and smart display of how-to videos from YouTube. Cyborgs may well be competitive against pure machines even when plain humans aren't.
The second possible development is that the autonomous machines may themselves become consumers in the market. This doesn't even require full-on Turing-test-passing, singularity-triggering AI; if an autonomous system is implemented with an incentive system and enough smarts to try out new ways to meet the incentives, it'll start asking for new things and will have to pay to get them, thus becoming an independent economic actor to some degree.
Neither of these things really negate the thrust of the book, though; they're just nuances whose absence makes the analysis seem a little less thorough.
One thing Ford is spot-on about is the almost willful ignorance of economists (or at least ones to whose work I'm exposed) about the nature of exponential growth of technology. Ford's critique of traditional economic analysis of automation and offshoring exactly matches what I've read. This conventional wisdom -- which more or less dismisses the possibility that machines will ever significantly catch up to humans in the labor force, and thus fails to analyze at all what the results would be -- is going to be a huge barrier to doing anything useful about the situation before it starts to cause major problems.
Agree with it or not, this book is thought-provoking and well worth reading.
October 2, 2010
I thought this was a very interesting book and am perplexed by the only other reader giving it one star. As with any book attempting to peer into the future, much of it is speculation. The author does however work with technology, so it is perhaps well-informed speculation. The title of the book is based on a little thought experiment in which a tunnel represents our free market economy. The many points of light are participants in this economy, each with an income that is spent and replenished by interactions with other points of light. Should many of these lights begin to lose their incomes, they would lose their ability to participate in the tunnel's activity. The author believes there is a real possibility this will happen within this century as technology replaces humans with machines in many occupations. He believes the way in which outsourcing has been made possible by the advance in technology is just the beginning of the trend, although many currently outsourced jobs will, in short order, be replaced by computers. Most vulnerable are "knowledge" jobs for which advanced educaiton is required. (He gives the example of looking for legal precedents in past cases, or radiologists reading scans---both jobs that could soon be done by computers.)Many of our social programs are funded by payroll taxes. What happens when fewer and fewer people have jobs? What happens to our society when fewer people see the value of advanced education? The question of machines replacing people has been addressed at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution by the Luddites (in 1811). Economists countered that "as automation increases the productivity of workers, it leads to lower prices for products and services,and in turn, those lower prices result in increased consumer demand. As businesses stive to meet that increased demand, they ramp up production---and that means new jobs." (p.95-6).This is called the "Luddite fallacy". The author poses the logical question: "Where will this increase in demand come from? Who is going to step forward and purchase all this increased output?.....When a substantial fraction of these people are no longer employed, where will market demand come from?...Nearly every consumer--every light in our tunnel--derives income from a job. If we automate the bulk of those jobs away, demand must fall...What happens when machines become workers---when capital beomes labor?" (p. 96-7)
Mr. Ford touches on a lot of interesting ideas, offers possible solutions, and, in an appendix, addresses possible criticisms of his theories. You don't have to agree with everything he presents to find the book interesting. I consider a book like this part of the "great conversation".
Mr. Ford touches on a lot of interesting ideas, offers possible solutions, and, in an appendix, addresses possible criticisms of his theories. You don't have to agree with everything he presents to find the book interesting. I consider a book like this part of the "great conversation".
May 16, 2015
Martin Ford is either totally insane or a total genius. I'm inclined to believe the latter. With his computer science and business background, Ford makes bold predictions about the rate of technological change and its implications for the economy and society of the future. I've actually been having a similar conversation with my college friends for the past few months - so it was encouraging to see an independently-derived prediction along those same lines. Ford essentially claims that automation will eliminate 80% of jobs by 2089 and that a fundamental socioeconomic transformation is necessary to prevent the world from falling into an economic tailspin. While I had anticipated the rise of a type of neo-communist centralized state, Ford comes down on the side of a market-based economy with heavy taxation on capital-intensive labor-light industries where wealth is redistributed to the masses to perpetuate a mass market. He proposes a redistribution scheme based on educational attainment, environmental stewardship, journalism, and healthy behavior (all of which he believes are essential for a healthy civil society). He claims that market-based systems are the only viable economic system - he doesn't really back this up besides the "look what happened to the USSR". However, as he himself says, the technological transformation of the coming years is going to fundamentally alter socioeconomic realities and I don't think he gave enough weight to the potential for a neo-communist state.
My only real complaint with this book is that Ford's writing style is a bit rough around the edges. But the content in this book is incredible. This is the most compelling technology-centric vision of the future I've ever read.
My only real complaint with this book is that Ford's writing style is a bit rough around the edges. But the content in this book is incredible. This is the most compelling technology-centric vision of the future I've ever read.
March 14, 2013
The book is written by a computer engineer, who is convinced that technology will take over jobs currently performed by humans. His arguments are unconvincing. He refutes the idea of past technological job removal, with few and poor arguments of present accomplishments and exponential progress. He makes no attempt to predict the jobs that could be created in the future. Surprisingly, he believes that it is mainly the high paid knowledge workers, whose jobs will be automated. He is seemingly unable to comprehend econometrics and he lacks imagination for technological progress, focusing on job automation and for instance not progress in human capabilities. It is an interesting thought experiment of how to organize a society where nobody/few works. The book contains several spelling errors and unimpressive analogies.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 25, 2015
His analysis was rigorous but all based on the fundamental assumption that automation will kill jobs off – leading to a global crisis. Either he believes in what he writes or he is writing up to the audience that most resonates with the end-of-the-world narrative. The reason why I disagree with him is two-fold: first, political processes (especially democratic ones) will erode the momentum of technology to replace workers, at least to the extent the author alludes to. And second, most of the world is still living in poverty by U.S. standards, giving rise to a huge surplus of cheap labor that is much more cost effective than the type of automation that the author writes of. Entertaining and well-written, the book either ignores or does not address some of these counter-points that I believe seriously damages its arguments.
September 28, 2011
Martin Ford is a Silicon Valley software engineer who worries about what Mr. and Ms. Jetson of the future will do for a job. As I recall, Mr. Jetson spent two hours a day pushing buttons at the factory, and in exchange earned enough to support a nice middle-class living for four. Martin Ford thinks the work for the middle class may go away, and the Jetsons won't be living their middle-class dream after all. Hence, his book.
May 11, 2014
Certainly a very interesting and probably presentient book. The only negative is the faith the author seems to have in the political process. It is basically our only hope and to me that is reason for concern.
April 20, 2011
Pretty good book about what the future might hold. In short: automation and unemployment. It is a convincing scenario.
October 8, 2017
Envision a tunnel. The tunnel is dark, but streaming through the tunnel are countless points of white light. As we watch the lights float past, we notice that the majority shine with a medium range of brightness. At the extreme, we can very occasionally see an intensely bright light, shining like a miniature sun. Still, as we watch the scene inside the tunnel, it is the overwhelming number of the average lights that truly captivates us. The tunnel walls are tiled with thousands upon thousands of flat panel displays. As we continue to watch the lights, we can now see that they are attracted to the various panels. As the lights touch the panel and bounce back towards the centre of the tunnel, we notice that they dim slightly while the panel itself pulses with new energy. We know that a natural cycle exists within the tunnel. Almost instantly, we can see that many thousands of lights scattered randomly shine a little more brightly. If we could watch the action in the tunnel over a long period of time, we would find that the tunnel is not at all a static place. Some of the panels on the walls gradually grow dimmer and attract fewer lights. In some cases, they may reverse their decline and become strong again. But in many other cases, they weaken and grow dark. Even as this happens, however, elsewhere on the tunnel walls, we see that new panels are appearing and growing stronger. Let's now move a few couple of decades further. Many of the average lights grow dimmer and in many cases disappear completely. Some of the brightest lights, however, are beginning to shine whit even more intensity. Now, finally, we begin to see a real difference in the tunnel. It becomes obvious that there are fewer lights. Just as this realization strikes us, we immediately feel that there is now a new sense of urgency pervading the panels that line the walls of the tunnel - they are growing dark. Now we see that many of the very brightest lights in the tunnel finally feel the impact and also begin to lose their light. The tunnel has become a far darker and more stagnant place. We sense clearly that the hope of even the remaining brighter lights are gradually evaporating into the emptiness of the tunnel. Now however, we notice something new in the tunnel. A green light has appeared. As we watch closely, we see that many more lights gradually begin to shift in hue. The intensity of the lights remains unchanged, but the color rotates between white and green. The green lights initially represent a small minority of the lights within the tunnel. Over time, however, we see that their number is increasing. The green light gradually comes to predominate. While the color rotation among the lights captures our interest for a time, the most striking realization is that nothing else has changed in the tunnel. Overall, we sense that stability has returned to the tunnel.
May 27, 2019
Good read about how offshoring of jobs from developed markets to developing markets is typically followed by automation. Discusses risks around middle class employment and consumption being disrupted by technology. Easy read.
January 1, 2020
Cumple lo que promete, pero se queda dando vueltas y repite el problema central una y otra vez, y la soluciones que da son relativamente poco imaginativas. Sin embargo es bueno en dar a entender los problemas de la automatización en general y su impacto en la economía del futuro.
November 27, 2019
Really interesting (and quite scary) book about the affect of automation on our society.
At times it becomes quite repetitive, but it definitely has some intriguing ideas.
At times it becomes quite repetitive, but it definitely has some intriguing ideas.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 7, 2021
A very thought provoking volume but with a nagging thought at the back of my mind about the implications for millions of low skilled low paid workers in the future
May 29, 2017
Loved it!
My guess is that most of us who are paying attention will find this book to be telling it like it is. As a population we need to recognize that computers and robotics will and are fundamentally changing the future of jobs. We can take the road of doing what is best for all or try to take the road of cut throat capitalism. Our choice, but we will be forced to chose.
My guess is that most of us who are paying attention will find this book to be telling it like it is. As a population we need to recognize that computers and robotics will and are fundamentally changing the future of jobs. We can take the road of doing what is best for all or try to take the road of cut throat capitalism. Our choice, but we will be forced to chose.
February 9, 2017
You're fired!
I’m fired!
We’re all fired!
Imagine a world with over 75% of the population unemployed. Welcome to the automated economy.
On the bright side, instead of getting paid to work, maybe we’ll get paid to read books. That’s one idea from The Lights in the Tunnel.
Side note, I thought the title was a reference to “the light in the tunnel being an oncoming train” which is in some ways accurate. However, he is referencing something completely different.
Written at the height of the financial crisis in 2009, Martin Ford provides a rational and well thought out argument for the implications of an “automated economy”. The premise is machines are going to replace people in a massive number of jobs and across a wide spectrum of skills sooner than later and quickly as well. Before it surprises us, we should rethink how our economy will work with such a dearth of jobs now and be prepared.
I sense that the onset of the automation economy, which I do believe is happening, is similar to what I experienced in digital marketing and the “mobile revolution” over the last 15 years. Obviously this is a much smaller scale event than a global automated economy but there are parallels on how that evolved and how automation and artificial intelligence is evolving today.
In the case mobile marketing, as far back as 2000, I recall industry pundits claiming that accessing the web on a desktop computer was essentially over; everything will be done via the phone. From then on with the start of every New Year the same and newly minted pundits would predict, “This is the year of mobile”. It wasn’t, yet.
Things really heated up with the introduction of smart phones, particularly the iPhone and apps. But, widespread mobile adoption never quiet materialized through the 00’s.
Sure, there was a little more penetration, a little more adoption, a few more features but the desktop web still dominated – until it didn’t. Was it 2010? 2012? 2014? I’m not sure if one could put a fine point on the date or even the year but, while many still will use a desktop machine, the world is now mobile and not going back.
I believe the same thing is inevitable with the automated economy. When will driverless cars and trucks become dominate? When will drones make the majority of home deliveries? When will you 3-D print things vs. go to the store or get them delivered? When will you be examined, diagnosed and treated by a computer?
Next year? Doubtful. In five years? It’s unlikely but possible. In 10-20 years? Very plausible. And at the same time that is happening all kinds of other tasks and jobs will be significantly or fully automated.
This is almost certainly going to radically reshape things and, at the risk of sounding like a Luddite, could eliminate many jobs. In the past, as jobs were eliminated new ones emerged and perhaps this will continue to be the case. However, what if it’s not? Then what?
If you’re not familiar with computers and Artificial Intelligence (AI) read the whole book. If you are more technical and follow AI, skim through chapters 1 (the Tunnel) and 2 (Acceleration) and dive in on page 107 where chapter 3 begins (Danger).
While Ford’s ideas on shifting to an “automated economy” and compensation are radical and seemingly impractical, I do appreciate them. Especially since I do agree we are likely on the cusp of an upheaval that has never been seen before.
On page 235 Ford is particularly prescient with what appears to be happening today (July 2016) in the political arena. The “Brexit” and The “Donald” are two real time examples of his risk analysis with irrational politics happening in real time.
And speaking of politics, Ford lays out some pretty radical socialistic ideas for solutions but acknowledges the resistance and also separates his suggestions from communism. If one keeps an open mind and thinks about it from the context of his predictions being correct they do look interesting and perhaps even attractive, at least on a white board. But they would be very difficult to implement successfully in practice, I suspect.
This is a good book to gain some foundational perspective on that light at the end of the tunnel, which, in my opinion, is indeed a train. An automated train of course.
ps - I recommend Keith Swenson's counterpoint review of the book and thanks to Tom Cunniff for the recommendation!
I’m fired!
We’re all fired!
Imagine a world with over 75% of the population unemployed. Welcome to the automated economy.
On the bright side, instead of getting paid to work, maybe we’ll get paid to read books. That’s one idea from The Lights in the Tunnel.
Side note, I thought the title was a reference to “the light in the tunnel being an oncoming train” which is in some ways accurate. However, he is referencing something completely different.
Written at the height of the financial crisis in 2009, Martin Ford provides a rational and well thought out argument for the implications of an “automated economy”. The premise is machines are going to replace people in a massive number of jobs and across a wide spectrum of skills sooner than later and quickly as well. Before it surprises us, we should rethink how our economy will work with such a dearth of jobs now and be prepared.
I sense that the onset of the automation economy, which I do believe is happening, is similar to what I experienced in digital marketing and the “mobile revolution” over the last 15 years. Obviously this is a much smaller scale event than a global automated economy but there are parallels on how that evolved and how automation and artificial intelligence is evolving today.
In the case mobile marketing, as far back as 2000, I recall industry pundits claiming that accessing the web on a desktop computer was essentially over; everything will be done via the phone. From then on with the start of every New Year the same and newly minted pundits would predict, “This is the year of mobile”. It wasn’t, yet.
Things really heated up with the introduction of smart phones, particularly the iPhone and apps. But, widespread mobile adoption never quiet materialized through the 00’s.
Sure, there was a little more penetration, a little more adoption, a few more features but the desktop web still dominated – until it didn’t. Was it 2010? 2012? 2014? I’m not sure if one could put a fine point on the date or even the year but, while many still will use a desktop machine, the world is now mobile and not going back.
I believe the same thing is inevitable with the automated economy. When will driverless cars and trucks become dominate? When will drones make the majority of home deliveries? When will you 3-D print things vs. go to the store or get them delivered? When will you be examined, diagnosed and treated by a computer?
Next year? Doubtful. In five years? It’s unlikely but possible. In 10-20 years? Very plausible. And at the same time that is happening all kinds of other tasks and jobs will be significantly or fully automated.
This is almost certainly going to radically reshape things and, at the risk of sounding like a Luddite, could eliminate many jobs. In the past, as jobs were eliminated new ones emerged and perhaps this will continue to be the case. However, what if it’s not? Then what?
If you’re not familiar with computers and Artificial Intelligence (AI) read the whole book. If you are more technical and follow AI, skim through chapters 1 (the Tunnel) and 2 (Acceleration) and dive in on page 107 where chapter 3 begins (Danger).
While Ford’s ideas on shifting to an “automated economy” and compensation are radical and seemingly impractical, I do appreciate them. Especially since I do agree we are likely on the cusp of an upheaval that has never been seen before.
On page 235 Ford is particularly prescient with what appears to be happening today (July 2016) in the political arena. The “Brexit” and The “Donald” are two real time examples of his risk analysis with irrational politics happening in real time.
And speaking of politics, Ford lays out some pretty radical socialistic ideas for solutions but acknowledges the resistance and also separates his suggestions from communism. If one keeps an open mind and thinks about it from the context of his predictions being correct they do look interesting and perhaps even attractive, at least on a white board. But they would be very difficult to implement successfully in practice, I suspect.
This is a good book to gain some foundational perspective on that light at the end of the tunnel, which, in my opinion, is indeed a train. An automated train of course.
ps - I recommend Keith Swenson's counterpoint review of the book and thanks to Tom Cunniff for the recommendation!
February 1, 2015
A short and simple "thought experiment" that challenged my thinking about economics and development. The topic is compelling even though the argument put forth in this short volume is a bit thin.
The author proposes a parable of the global economy as a tunnel that is lit up by millions of "lights" or consumers/producers - most importantly consumers because demand drives the economy after all - that are daily contributing to global prosperity. The author then discusses technological advances and observes the structural unemployment that is even now impacting advanced economies. With the exponential increases in technology, we are rapidly approaching a time when an even greater share of what most of us do for our incomes will be able to be done better and more economically by technology. The author even spends a few lines discussing the "convergence", that point in time beloved of Sci-Fi writers when computers become smarter than us and artificial intelligence reaches a point where it can have a real impact on the future of technology and the direction of the economy.
Basically, the question of the first part of the book is what if more and more "lights" go dark? Answer: a large portion of consumers become unemployed - or more precisely - unable to consume more because of lack of income. Even those lights shining the brightest - the very wealthy among us - will begin to dim if enough other, smaller lights go out. That is to say, without consumers who have income to consume, who will spend money in this structurally automated economy? This structural imbalance speeds up the process of inequality causing some lights to shine very brightly indeed while others dim and go out. The handful of billionaires left "shining" simply won't be able to spend enough to drive the economy. Essentially, the looming danger is structural unemployment or underemployment caused by advances in technology that will eventually tip the scales to such a degree that insufficient conusmer demand remains to drive our economy. The lights in the tunnel start going out and then the trouble starts.
In the "90's I read a book by Jeremy Rifkin called "The End of Work" that made pretty much the same diagnosis. His was lengthier and more researched. However, this one was simpler and didn't pretend to be a well researched thesis but, a "thought experiment." Rifkins' book scared the heck out of me and I remember thinking later as unemployment shrunk during the 2000's that Rifkin mis-diagnosed how information technology would play out. I suspect that Ford is mis-diagnosing as well. However, what scares me about Ford's diagnosis is his economic analysis, as oversimplified as it may be I can't find an argument against the warning of a future sans sufficient consumers with sufficient income.
Fords prescription? Begin grappling with an automated future by contemplating universal income. Yep, tax those corporations more and provide an incentives based universal income. Incentives might include paying people for educational and intellectual pursuits, cultural and civic pursuits, etc... With some level of guaranteed universal income, consumers could still drive demand that powers the economy.
Because this topic is so compelling, I wanted to give the book five stars. Because it was thin on the prescription side - Ford admitted as much - I only give it four. Despite my suspicions of his diagnosis and currently unimaginable prescription, I was left convinced that we must look closely at structural aspects of our economy and begin thinking about how to respond if we are indeed moving towards some tipping point in the automated economy where we risk waking up in a world without enough consumption mo-jo to power our economy. I found myself reflecting on Thomas Malthus' "failed" predictions about mass starvation in the 19th century based on similar reasoning and on Jeremy Rifkins' "failed" diagnosis about technology driving massive structural un and underemployment in the 90's. But, maybe these other author's predictions aren't failures at all but, just early?
The author proposes a parable of the global economy as a tunnel that is lit up by millions of "lights" or consumers/producers - most importantly consumers because demand drives the economy after all - that are daily contributing to global prosperity. The author then discusses technological advances and observes the structural unemployment that is even now impacting advanced economies. With the exponential increases in technology, we are rapidly approaching a time when an even greater share of what most of us do for our incomes will be able to be done better and more economically by technology. The author even spends a few lines discussing the "convergence", that point in time beloved of Sci-Fi writers when computers become smarter than us and artificial intelligence reaches a point where it can have a real impact on the future of technology and the direction of the economy.
Basically, the question of the first part of the book is what if more and more "lights" go dark? Answer: a large portion of consumers become unemployed - or more precisely - unable to consume more because of lack of income. Even those lights shining the brightest - the very wealthy among us - will begin to dim if enough other, smaller lights go out. That is to say, without consumers who have income to consume, who will spend money in this structurally automated economy? This structural imbalance speeds up the process of inequality causing some lights to shine very brightly indeed while others dim and go out. The handful of billionaires left "shining" simply won't be able to spend enough to drive the economy. Essentially, the looming danger is structural unemployment or underemployment caused by advances in technology that will eventually tip the scales to such a degree that insufficient conusmer demand remains to drive our economy. The lights in the tunnel start going out and then the trouble starts.
In the "90's I read a book by Jeremy Rifkin called "The End of Work" that made pretty much the same diagnosis. His was lengthier and more researched. However, this one was simpler and didn't pretend to be a well researched thesis but, a "thought experiment." Rifkins' book scared the heck out of me and I remember thinking later as unemployment shrunk during the 2000's that Rifkin mis-diagnosed how information technology would play out. I suspect that Ford is mis-diagnosing as well. However, what scares me about Ford's diagnosis is his economic analysis, as oversimplified as it may be I can't find an argument against the warning of a future sans sufficient consumers with sufficient income.
Fords prescription? Begin grappling with an automated future by contemplating universal income. Yep, tax those corporations more and provide an incentives based universal income. Incentives might include paying people for educational and intellectual pursuits, cultural and civic pursuits, etc... With some level of guaranteed universal income, consumers could still drive demand that powers the economy.
Because this topic is so compelling, I wanted to give the book five stars. Because it was thin on the prescription side - Ford admitted as much - I only give it four. Despite my suspicions of his diagnosis and currently unimaginable prescription, I was left convinced that we must look closely at structural aspects of our economy and begin thinking about how to respond if we are indeed moving towards some tipping point in the automated economy where we risk waking up in a world without enough consumption mo-jo to power our economy. I found myself reflecting on Thomas Malthus' "failed" predictions about mass starvation in the 19th century based on similar reasoning and on Jeremy Rifkins' "failed" diagnosis about technology driving massive structural un and underemployment in the 90's. But, maybe these other author's predictions aren't failures at all but, just early?
July 18, 2013
There is a huge change coming, and very few people are talking about it. In the not-too-distant future almost everyone is going to lose their job. Not to offshoring—the Chinese will lose their jobs too. Robots and computers will be doing all the work.
Martin Ford wrote this book as a wakeup call. There is an incredibly bright future ahead of us, he says, but only if we navigate the transition to this jobless future well. The key is figuring out how to pay people an income even though they aren’t working, because in order to keep a consumer-based economy going people need money.
There is another possible future, Ford warns: the wealthy owners of the machines keep all the money, the unemployed masses can no longer buy anything, and the economy collapses.
This book was published in 2009, so it was written when the financial collapse of 2008 was still raw. But Ford was already predicting that this recession would be followed by another “jobless recovery,” because the high unemployment rate is only partly caused by the financial collapse. The main cause is the increasing automation of jobs.
Think of all the jobs that have become obsolete in the last twenty years: gas station attendant, cashier, phone operator, bank teller, receptionist, etc. The list of professions that are endangered is longer: accountants, lawyers, and radiologists are just an example.
In fact, Ford says, jobs like house cleaning and auto repair are two of the safest career choices for the near future (although those will eventually go too.)
His book is filled with facts and tables that are very convincing. Unfortunately, though, I think his main analogy is weak. The “lights in the tunnel” represent the people with high-enough income to be part of the global mass market. The richer you are, the brighter your light. The walls of the tunnel are covered with the light-filled displays of businesses, large and small. Light is basically a reflection of commerce happening.
When most of us lose our jobs to robots, if we have no income, consumer spending will plummet and the lights in the tunnel will go out. The problem with this analogy is that it doesn’t convey any deeper understanding of the issue.
This is a complex idea to convey in an image. One of the things that’s missing is the concept of interrelationship: my prosperity feeds yours, and if we break the chain we will all be poorer. A healthy society forms strong feedback loops that continuously raise everyone up in an ascending spiral. But when those loops are broken, for a time the richest will get a little richer, but eventually the whole society gets hollowed out.
I also had some trouble with his characterization of the average person. When he imagines 50 or 75% people of the population unemployed, he pictures most of these people wallowing on the couch all day watching television. He argues that in order to get people to “do something of value,” we must “drive” people to act responsibly when they no longer have to work.
Of course there would be a small number of people who were like that. But I have a higher opinion of humanity. I think that after a time of enjoying the new leisure (taking an extended vacation), most people would start naturally expressing themselves via an interest or passion. Whether it would be volunteering to visit lonely old folks (I don’t think we’re ready to give up interpersonal relationships quite yet), or cataloging every episode of a favorite television show on a website, or writing a novel or a symphony, I think the vast majority of us would blossom given the chance. We wouldn’t need to be driven by some outside entity to do something of value.
Well-worth the read.
Martin Ford wrote this book as a wakeup call. There is an incredibly bright future ahead of us, he says, but only if we navigate the transition to this jobless future well. The key is figuring out how to pay people an income even though they aren’t working, because in order to keep a consumer-based economy going people need money.
There is another possible future, Ford warns: the wealthy owners of the machines keep all the money, the unemployed masses can no longer buy anything, and the economy collapses.
This book was published in 2009, so it was written when the financial collapse of 2008 was still raw. But Ford was already predicting that this recession would be followed by another “jobless recovery,” because the high unemployment rate is only partly caused by the financial collapse. The main cause is the increasing automation of jobs.
Think of all the jobs that have become obsolete in the last twenty years: gas station attendant, cashier, phone operator, bank teller, receptionist, etc. The list of professions that are endangered is longer: accountants, lawyers, and radiologists are just an example.
In fact, Ford says, jobs like house cleaning and auto repair are two of the safest career choices for the near future (although those will eventually go too.)
His book is filled with facts and tables that are very convincing. Unfortunately, though, I think his main analogy is weak. The “lights in the tunnel” represent the people with high-enough income to be part of the global mass market. The richer you are, the brighter your light. The walls of the tunnel are covered with the light-filled displays of businesses, large and small. Light is basically a reflection of commerce happening.
When most of us lose our jobs to robots, if we have no income, consumer spending will plummet and the lights in the tunnel will go out. The problem with this analogy is that it doesn’t convey any deeper understanding of the issue.
This is a complex idea to convey in an image. One of the things that’s missing is the concept of interrelationship: my prosperity feeds yours, and if we break the chain we will all be poorer. A healthy society forms strong feedback loops that continuously raise everyone up in an ascending spiral. But when those loops are broken, for a time the richest will get a little richer, but eventually the whole society gets hollowed out.
I also had some trouble with his characterization of the average person. When he imagines 50 or 75% people of the population unemployed, he pictures most of these people wallowing on the couch all day watching television. He argues that in order to get people to “do something of value,” we must “drive” people to act responsibly when they no longer have to work.
Of course there would be a small number of people who were like that. But I have a higher opinion of humanity. I think that after a time of enjoying the new leisure (taking an extended vacation), most people would start naturally expressing themselves via an interest or passion. Whether it would be volunteering to visit lonely old folks (I don’t think we’re ready to give up interpersonal relationships quite yet), or cataloging every episode of a favorite television show on a website, or writing a novel or a symphony, I think the vast majority of us would blossom given the chance. We wouldn’t need to be driven by some outside entity to do something of value.
Well-worth the read.
September 15, 2014
This is a stunningly important book and I cannot recommend it highly enough. While the central metaphor ("the lights in the tunnel") is a bit odd, don't let that distract you from the message: namely that automation is improving and spreading at a rapid rate and this has serious implications for our economy. This is the clearest, most concise statement of the problem I've come across that treats this problem in depth. What's more, this is one of the few attempts I've seen to seriously think out all the social and economic implications of advancing automation and artificial intelligence.
It must be said up-front this is not an "anti-technology" book. It is not the advance of technology that is the root of the problem we're facing, it is our political and economic institutions. Ford is very clear that advancing technology is the reason our standards of living continue to advance. This is not a call to go smash our computers. It is a call for us to write our congressmen. It is a call for us to actively inspect and debate these topics.
There are a number of classic objections one might raise to the concerns about automation and unemployment. Fine. Please bring your objections with you and measure them carefully against the arguments in this book. In my opinion, the "Luddite fallacy" is well-refuted, but either way, I think it is less important that you agree with everything Ford says than you at least understand it all. Even if you think his core assumptions are wrong, the application of these ideas to modern unemployment and poverty is an interesting exercise.
Ford proposes a number of interesting solutions to the central problem. The arguments are level-headed and reasonable but in the end all the solutions Ford proposes will probably not work for some reason or another. That isn't what is important. What is import and is that we start looking for solutions! I don't think you should judge this book by whether or not you agree with all of them. It is hard to think of what an economy that has never existed before will look like, or how its political institutions work. The key takeaway is that we can think about solutions and start to explore them now. Furthermore, if we wish to avoid possible catastrophe, we must engage these issues as soon as possible.
It must be said up-front this is not an "anti-technology" book. It is not the advance of technology that is the root of the problem we're facing, it is our political and economic institutions. Ford is very clear that advancing technology is the reason our standards of living continue to advance. This is not a call to go smash our computers. It is a call for us to write our congressmen. It is a call for us to actively inspect and debate these topics.
There are a number of classic objections one might raise to the concerns about automation and unemployment. Fine. Please bring your objections with you and measure them carefully against the arguments in this book. In my opinion, the "Luddite fallacy" is well-refuted, but either way, I think it is less important that you agree with everything Ford says than you at least understand it all. Even if you think his core assumptions are wrong, the application of these ideas to modern unemployment and poverty is an interesting exercise.
Ford proposes a number of interesting solutions to the central problem. The arguments are level-headed and reasonable but in the end all the solutions Ford proposes will probably not work for some reason or another. That isn't what is important. What is import and is that we start looking for solutions! I don't think you should judge this book by whether or not you agree with all of them. It is hard to think of what an economy that has never existed before will look like, or how its political institutions work. The key takeaway is that we can think about solutions and start to explore them now. Furthermore, if we wish to avoid possible catastrophe, we must engage these issues as soon as possible.
June 21, 2015
I want my ocular implant as badly as the next person (actually I probably want it more), so I spend a lot of time looking for signs and symbols that my implant will be a reality for me not my grandchildren hence I read this book. Of course my biggest disappointment was that this book had absolutely nothing to say on the topic of ocular implants, but what he did have to say about technology and the future economy was thought provoking. His central thesis is that as technology accelerates, "machine automation may ultimately penetrate the economy to the extent that wages no longer provide the bulk of consumers with adequate discretionary income and confidence in the future." He talks about how the elimination of labor as a rate limiting step in the economy would impact wages, consumers, businesses, investors, and workers. He turns the idea of wages and working for a living on its head with the idea of automation being pervasive throughout the management strata and across industries including factories, customer service, small businesses, and high-end knowledge jobs. It was a broad ranging book and had many simplistic arguments and ideas that ranged from well reasoned to tedious. One of his more intriguing ideas was replacing the payroll tax with a gross margin tax that would neutralize the impact of tax you pay on employees and thus offshoring jobs and automation of jobs would no longer be a competitive advantage. The article in the NY Times on April 1st was a better read about the same topic. It would have helped if Ford had paired with an economist to write this book however it definitely made for some interesting conversations with others.
February 18, 2013
The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future was an interesting read given recent media attention to automation in the workplace and talk of a "jobless recovery". The author argues that we are on the cusp of a major shift in workplace automation and that today's manufacturing automation is synonymous with the early days of the computer industry. Martin Ford sees that there will be a very distinct non-linear or exponential increase in automation at work in the near future and that unlike the past, where low skilled jobs have been impacted, the next decade and beyond will see highly skilled workers displaced. The author looks ahead to the year 2089 and paints a very different picture of the workplace and society as we currently know it. What will happen to all of the displaced workers? How will we be able to function as a society that relies on a healthy mass market of consumers? What will happen to the distribution of wealth and power as increased automation takes hold? These are just some of the questions the author poses and attempts to answer. Interestingly enough, Martin Ford proposes some solutions which are sure to make many readers uncomfortable, but this is what gives you pause for thought as you read it. My only disappointment with the book is that there wasn't as much focus on specific game-changing technologies as I might have liked, being someone who is interested in the specifics of science and technology. That said, the higher level ideas and the theoretical framework of the book are well mapped out.
April 3, 2012
The author is trying to motivate people, and mostly governments, to prepare for the eventual future when so much of the work people do is automated, that we no longer have enough people employed to support our economies.
There were a couple of points in the book that I thought were a bit... hand-wavy.
The author provides a graph showing the capabilities of computers vs the capabilities of humans, mapped over time, with the human graph leveling off as the technology graph easily surpassing it. That may very well be true, but the author didn't base it on any data, instead he simply drew what he thought was a reasonable graph. I'd rather have seen some data to back up his claim. It seems to ignore the advancement in knowledge that people have acquired, and it also assumed that humans are replaced by technology, rather than using it to augment their abilities.
The other point I think the author missed out exploring is how to existing nations that are much smaller than say the US or China manage to compete? If you compare Canada or Scandinavia to the US, they are in a sense already operating under the condition of competing with more automated, or at least, more productive nations. Yet their unemployment rate is lower. This seems like a line of investigation the author should have explored to determine if it's sustainable in the future he describes.
There were a couple of points in the book that I thought were a bit... hand-wavy.
The author provides a graph showing the capabilities of computers vs the capabilities of humans, mapped over time, with the human graph leveling off as the technology graph easily surpassing it. That may very well be true, but the author didn't base it on any data, instead he simply drew what he thought was a reasonable graph. I'd rather have seen some data to back up his claim. It seems to ignore the advancement in knowledge that people have acquired, and it also assumed that humans are replaced by technology, rather than using it to augment their abilities.
The other point I think the author missed out exploring is how to existing nations that are much smaller than say the US or China manage to compete? If you compare Canada or Scandinavia to the US, they are in a sense already operating under the condition of competing with more automated, or at least, more productive nations. Yet their unemployment rate is lower. This seems like a line of investigation the author should have explored to determine if it's sustainable in the future he describes.
December 29, 2011
An interesting view of the future which gets bogged down a bit sometimes its own analogy (the lights in the tunnel) and has a habit of making things a bit complex. But I liked some of the ideas and thoughts about the future, and I rarely walk into a big supermarket or department store these days without thinking about what is going to happen to all those retail jobs that are bound to disappear. Just look as space in your local Tesco's is given over to self-checkout. And this is just the start of it. Where have all the bookshops gone, and Kindle has only been out about two years?
There is some thought provoking stuff in this book, but a lot of it washed over me. The book is a bit dry and could do with a bit more verve and style to make it a truly engaging read. It's also easy to roll forward a particular idea without rolling forward other social changes. How many of those retail jobs, for example, will be replaced by jobs in supply chain as we order up all these goods from our TV's, tablets and PC's? What other collection services will evolve? Because one thing is for sure, we ain't going to stop shopping anytime soon!
There is some thought provoking stuff in this book, but a lot of it washed over me. The book is a bit dry and could do with a bit more verve and style to make it a truly engaging read. It's also easy to roll forward a particular idea without rolling forward other social changes. How many of those retail jobs, for example, will be replaced by jobs in supply chain as we order up all these goods from our TV's, tablets and PC's? What other collection services will evolve? Because one thing is for sure, we ain't going to stop shopping anytime soon!
February 6, 2013
Interesting read. One certainly can't accuse Ford of not thinking outside the box.
I have the general feeling that his predictions of increasing workplace automation and increasing productivity underestimate the ability of the free market and advancing technology to create new jobs. That is to say, he may be underestimating the resiliency of creative destruction in the face of advancing technology. I'm no economist, and neither is the author, and I just get the sense that there is a little bit of the "blind leading the blind" going on here.
The solutions the author suggests are creative, but bordering on farce. He proposes a slew of new taxes aimed at raising $trillions annually so that the government can pay full salaries to unemployed people to read books, exercise, and be environmentally friendly, in what essentially amounts to a collectivist utopian planned economy. Basically a 21st century Gosplan, but this time it's gonna work.
I have the general feeling that his predictions of increasing workplace automation and increasing productivity underestimate the ability of the free market and advancing technology to create new jobs. That is to say, he may be underestimating the resiliency of creative destruction in the face of advancing technology. I'm no economist, and neither is the author, and I just get the sense that there is a little bit of the "blind leading the blind" going on here.
The solutions the author suggests are creative, but bordering on farce. He proposes a slew of new taxes aimed at raising $trillions annually so that the government can pay full salaries to unemployed people to read books, exercise, and be environmentally friendly, in what essentially amounts to a collectivist utopian planned economy. Basically a 21st century Gosplan, but this time it's gonna work.
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