Right. Automation increases the overall productive capacity of a society, but does so in a way that (by reducing the demand for labor), allows holders of capital to capture more of the value generated by that production for themselves.
That said, I'm not sure what to do with that realization other than hold on to it as a vaguely disquieting feeling. I'm certainly not advocating that engineers do less in the way of creating automation or communications technology. I tend to believe its the job of the political class to reconcile technological change with societal well-being. But that same thinking applies to engineers in the defense industry as much as engineers in the automation industry.
> I tend to believe its the job of the political class to reconcile technological change with societal well-being.
In a democracy (including a representative democracy) the "political class" is the citizenry at large, so that responsibility belongs to everyone in such a society. (Accepting, arguendo, that it is an obligation of the "political class".)
I tend to believe its the job of the political class to reconcile technological change with societal well-being.
I agree-- but I also don't trust the current "political class".
It's made worse by the current Silicon Valley arrogance, which assumes everything "big" (esp. government) to be intractably mediocre (and, therefore, useless) because the whole populace (i.e. the full IQ spectrum) is a part of it. I feel like this secessionism is a rather Machiavellian move by the technological elite to convince their underlings not to see the big picture, because it's all mediocre and inefficient out there anyway. The attitudes coming out of both the technological and political elites (both anti-intellectual and limited in their own ways) are bad for both sides.
That said, I'm not sure what to do with that realization other than hold on to it as a vaguely disquieting feeling. I'm certainly not advocating that engineers do less in the way of creating automation or communications technology. I tend to believe its the job of the political class to reconcile technological change with societal well-being. But that same thinking applies to engineers in the defense industry as much as engineers in the automation industry.