The widespread introduction of byte-collar workers into almost every profession, craft and trade will affect the American workplace in a countless number of ways. The transformation will invalidate long-held assumptions and principles, upset established relationships and procedures and force the development of new definitions and standards. Two of these effects, in particular, will be momentous:
• The prioritization of technological productivity
• The arrival of near universal unemployment.

The Prioritization of Technological Productivity

The ascendance of super-C machines will cause a tectonic shift in the way companies are managed. They will no longer rely on a 20th century axiom of capitalism – maximizing labor productivity or the amount of output they can extract per employee – for success. They will turn, instead, to a principle of 22nd century capitalism – optimizing technological productivity or the amount of output they can achieve per machine – to grow their businesses. As a consequence, efficiency will soar, and companies will operate at their peak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average will pass 100,000, and the American economy will enter a virtuous cycle that produces historic levels of corporate prosperity.

The shift will affect every aspect of the enterprise. Traditionally, companies have pursued a range of strategies to improve labor productivity. These included upgrades to:
• The workplace, including the office or plant layout, creature comforts and ancillary services (e.g., on-site child care and dry cleaning);
• The equipment, including the machines and tools that enable workers to increase the number of error-free tasks they accomplish in a given time period;
• The culture, including the organization’s leadership style and values that shape workers’ morale and performance; and
• The workforce, including the caliber and commitment of the people who are hired by the organization and the training they receive to suxstain their skills.

Circa 2118, all of these initiatives will no longer be necessary. Instead, companies will prioritize strategies that optimize machine productivity. These will include upgrades to:
• Machine capabilities, including newer and more powerful versions of technology that enable the organization to do more in less time and at a higher level of quality;
• Machine integration, including more accurate and timely interactions among the machines in an organization’s technology stack;
• Machine enrichment, including more expansive and timely access to internal and external data sources to feed machine learning and performance; and
• Machine health, including more accurate predictions and remediation of machine bugs, malicious attacks and other performance degrading pathologies.

Initially, the decisions to implement these priorities and investments will be made by human managers and executives. In the ensuring years, however, these corporate leaders will themselves become redundant. Machines will be able to oversee machines far more effectively and at a much lower total lifetime cost. They will also be programmed to maximize the quarterly earnings of the organization, so will quickly identify excessive or unnecessary expenses … including the salaries and perquisites of the executives. They will compile and reduce the data and make the dispassionate decision to terminate this cost of labor without prejudice. Their decision will mark the first time ever the phrase “It’s nothing personal” is literally true in a layoff.

The Arrival of Near Universal Unemployment

The business sector’s prioritization of technological productivity will make human labor unnecessary and establish a phenomenon never before seen in human history – near universal unemployment. Going to work in a job where you’re paid to accomplish tasks for the benefit of another person or an organization called your employer will no longer be a part of the American experience. Getting a paycheck or earning a salary, receiving a pink slip or being tapped for a promotion, enduring a performance review or sitting through an all hands meeting – all of that will pass into the pages of history books. Humans will still be workers – the need for meaningful and rewarding activity being a critical aspect of their lives – but they will be unable to play that role as a paid employee.

This loss of access to traditional employment will force most Americans to an existential tipping point. They will have no choice but to reimagine how they will fill the eight or ten or twelve hours each day they used to devote to their employers. They will be pushed to redefine what it means to be successful in their field as well as in their work. They will be driven to reexamine the standard of living they can achieve for themselves and their family. And, they will be compelled to reset their perception of the future they will bequeath to those they hold most dear.

As Hod Lipson, the director of Columbia University’s Creative Machines Lab, notes:

“If you’re talking 100 years, there’s no doubt in my mind that all jobs will be gone, including creative ones. And 100 years is not far in the future — some of our children will be alive in 100 years.”

Some of our children and all of our grandchildren and great grandchildren will live in a jobless society. It doesn’t matter what kind of employment they might seek – blue-collar, white-collar, pink-collar, gray-collar, rainbow-collar, no-collar – by early in the next century, they will have been displaced and replaced by a machine. Yes, there will be exceptions: professional athletes, movie stars, and those who work in humanly organizations, for example, will still have some form of traditional employment. But, they will be the exception to the rule of automation. For everyone else – for the vast, vast majority of the American workforce circa 2118 – machines will have terminated human employment.

That is the inescapable new reality coming to the American world of work. A change in the tax code won’t counter it. Investments in job creation won’t limit it. Government laws and regulations won’t stop it. And, sticking our heads in the sand won’t make it go away.

Which begs the question – the most important question we will face in our lifetime and our kids will face in theirs – what will our grandkids and great grandkids do? What work will be left for them to perform that machines can’t perform better? What will they have in their lives to challenge and fulfill them?