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Many years ago I stood on the second floor of the English building and watched below as about 100 Chinese men dig up a small section of cement with shovels. It reminded me of an ant hill,  as the men wore navy or black and were scurrying around the work place. The road needed to be repaved, which meant tearing up the existing road. One small section of the road would be closed, dismantled, removed and then swept before they would move on to the next section. Road projects took forever. I asked my students about it one day, pondering why they didn't just bring in machines to do the work and have it done in a week, as opposed to a year and a half project. They looked at me horrified and replied, "And put all those people out of work?"

I've thought about that many times since returning back to my homeland. I've watched ATMs become so commonplace that banks have cut back on the number of bank tellers needed. Cashiers in grocery or department stores become less as self-service lanes open, sack boys no longer bag and deliver groceries to the car, and gas stations are now self-service only, eliminating 2-3 positions at each gas station of young men who gladly pumped gas.

Yesterday the News & Observer talked about how technology is slowly eliminating middle class jobs. The most recent example was Duke Energy putting chips on our meter boxes that automatically send wattage usage to the company, eliminating the need for meter readers. Whereas the company used to have 60 meter readers, they now have 6. And the list went on, from car manufacturing positions to now librarians at NC State (which are now robots evidently).

And that always takes me back to that conversation with my little communist students. They understood what it meant to look after other people. Inconvenience was something everyone simply lived with if it was in the best interest for society, such as keeping people working and contributing. I think about that everytime I pay a bill via the mail and someone asks "why don't you pay that online?" and I think about our almost bankrupt postal system. I squirm a little when I need to get money from the bank, and the teller lines are long but the ATM is almost empty. Do I give Nancy a few more minutes of business, or imply her job is not important by using a machine that does her very job? Am I joining the throng of people saying "We need to do something about this economy?" while my actions are saying convenience and a buck or two is much more important than a person? At what point does "advancement" actually begin the downward assent on the other side of the mountain?

I don't have answers. I enjoy technology, as much as I hated searching for a job in high school for six months when no one, not even fast food places, were hiring. (And I'll save my rant on kids today who say they can't find a job when I drive by 20 fast food places with NOW HIRING signs up for another day.)  And each time I near an ATM or the self-checkout desk at the library, I'll ponder which is more important: a person's job or convenience.



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