Pros Needn’t Fear New Technology

The prospect of losing one’s job to a machine has rarely troubled white-collar professionals, secure in the assumption that computers powerful enough to threaten their livelihood exist only as science fiction fantasies.

In fact, the threat may be more immediate, as a designer friend recently concluded. He thought that the arrival of desktop publishing in the late 1980s would drive him out of work.

The essence of his fear is that modest computer technology has taken the skill out of design and packaged it into software. The same pattern is affecting other professions: Spreadsheet programs perform tasks once reserved for accountants; on-line databases invite users to become their own librarians; even lawyers are getting the jitters as companies introduce software programs that help users write their own wills.

But let’s look at what is really happening. Spreadsheets are commonplace in our offices, yet accountants and bookkeepers are busier than ever. And advanced desktop publishing tools are quickly becoming fixtures in design offices.

It appears that only the simplest part of what professionals do is being packaged into programs. At the same time, however, computers are also changing the nature of professional work in profound and unexpected ways. Today’s librarian is occupied helping users thread their way through databases that were supposed to make library work obsolete. Lawyers have become profligate users of on-line research systems and personal computers are quickly replacing calculators as the accountant’s most basic tool.

My designer friend fears the consequences of seeing the skills of his trade sold as software, but the real headache for professionals is more likely to be the constant “reskilling” required for professional survival in an information age.

The challenge lies not in finding work to do, but in finding the time to do work between continuing education seminars and efforts to learn how to use new computer systems before they become obsolete. Effective professional use of information technologies also requires more than just retraining. More often than not, getting value out of a new computer system involves fundamental changes in organizational structures, furthering professional anxieties about the impact of machines on jobs.

In the long run, our new information tools are certain to change the nature of professional work beyond recognition. More than a few job categories will disappear, but newer tasks enabled by computer technology will emerge as well. This will be painful for those averse to change, but the impact on those who make the effort to keep up will be minimal.

Signs of this shift are visible in many professions today. More than a few librarians have abandoned institutional jobs to become highly paid electronic information consultants, and accountants routinely advise clients on computer matters.

Editors and writers have found new jobs in corporate publishing made possible by laser printers and word processors. Stock traders and financial analysts are discovering new ways to go into business on their own by leveraging computers and communications links to gain the sort of information leverage once accessible only to big players.

Even designers are getting into the act. My friend is so busy teaching design principles to desktop publishers that he hardly has the time to worry about the now-remote possibility that he will be replaced by a machine.