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Until There Is Nobody Left To Buy Anything. You Know, for Profit! How to Work for Free for the Richest Companies in the World: The pattern of fostering a community of people to essentially do your work for you -- to assume the risk of trying new ideas, without any guarantee of safety -- [is...]

This is a presentation by Marshall Brain, founder of How Stuff Works. He's written more extensively on the subject in an essay called Robotic Nation, which I haven't read yet. I think Brain might be overestimating the ability of machine-vision and natural language processing to supplant human intelligence, but the general trend towards fewer and fewer jobs is real one that I've written about a lot lately.

"There are therefore four logical combinations of the two oppositions, resource abundance vs. scarcity and egalitarianism vs. hierarchy. To put things in somewhat vulgar-Marxist terms, the first axis dictates the economic base of the post-capitalist future, while the second pertains to the socio-political superstructure. Two possible futures are socialisms (only one of which I will actually call by that name) while the other two are contrasting flavors of barbarism."

Hi, this is Steven Cherry for IEEE Spectrum's "Techwise Conversations." This is show number 79. Sixty years ago, there were about 350 000 switchboard operators working for AT&T. Today, there are fewer than 20 000. Nowadays, automation is moving up the skills ladder in just about every profession.

By James H. Lee Jobs are disappearing, but there's still a future for work. An investment manager looks at how automation and information technology are changing the economic landscape and forcing workers to forge new career paths beyond outdated ideas about permanent employment.