Injustice - Developers Among Us (SciFiDevCon 2024)
3b The effects of the use of on-line services
1. The effects of the use of on-line services on employment Mr. Powell
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Notas do Editor
Unemployment has occurred as many jobs involving car workers have been replaced by robots. Many clerical duties involved with applications such as payroll are now performed by computers. Car park attendants have been replaced by microprocessor operated machines. Many shop workers and bank workers have lost their jobs because of on-line services. Many jobs have been lost because: ICT can make someone more efficient at their job, a company can therefore employ less people to complete that job.
For example: In a factory , skilled technicians and machinists have been replaced by computer-controlled robots which can work faster, for longer and more consistently. In a factory , many dirty and dangerous monitoring jobs have been replaced by data-logging equipment using sensors. In a factory , many quality control jobs involved routine sampling and were very boring, many have now been replaced by automatic machines. In a warehouse , many loading and sorting jobs have been replaced by a few staff running a computer-controlled warehouse.
In an office , many typists can be replaced by one person using a word processor. This is a lot more efficient, for example documents can be saved and reloaded for editing rather than being re-typed and mail merging can be used to create apparently custom-typed documents. In an office , many payroll clerks using calculators and paper-based records can be replaced by one person using a spreadsheet to calculate a company's payroll. In an office , many clerks updating paper-based files in filing cabinets can be replaced by one person using a database. In a telephone exchange , operators have been replaced by computer systems that make the phone connections automatically. In a car park, the car park attendant can be replaced by automatic ticket machines and barriers using control technology. In a shop , online shopping means sales staff and cashiers etc. are replaced by staff selecting and sending out goods from a warehouse etc. In a shop , stock control staff can be replaced by automated with bar-code readers recording items entering the building and being sold. In a bank , ATM machines mean less cashiers are needed inside the bank to deal with customers. Working with ICT requires new skills and many workers found it difficult to retrain because they found the new skills to hard to learn. Converting a business to make use of ICT can be very expensive and many small companies could not afford to make the change and could not compete against those that had.
The use of ICT obviously makes more jobs available for technically qualified people such as computer programmers, systems analysts, computer technicians and people who can perform robot maintenance. In addition, call centres have created fresh opportunities particularly for women in the developed countries and for men and women in developing countries. Many jobs have been created because: Computerisation has created many new jobs or radically changed existing jobs. For example: Engineers are needed to build the new computerised machines. Programmers are needed to write the new programs that the computers run. Systems analysts are needed to design the new computerised systems. Skilled workers are needed to operate the new computerised machinery. Skilled workers are needed to use new software such as graphics packages, web-design software and CAD programs. More staff may be needed because of the increased business generated by improved efficiency.