if there is a silver lining to your observations, it is in the recently announced investments in computer science education at the high school level (US, UK & AU at least). this should help to offset the inequality that may be occurring or near by.

the new literacy JPB detected twenty years ago was based on the idea that not only could everyone contribute ideas, the data & literacy that the world runs on, but they could build the new framework, the new, responsive, participatory and transparent library & machines that contained those very symbols & conversations.

the new literacy, is built off our old library. and whether tatters of social democracy exist or not, the old library is taking time to update with new authors. after all we were all taught to read and write, regardless of whether our work would appear in a library one day.

perhaps the conversation should not look for which worker is replaced by which algorithm (or pre Asimovian floor sweeper, courtesy of Alphabet), but should instead consider which worker will create which algorithm for others to supply literature & data to & build upon themselves.

intellectual inequality, where we neither run on the same intellectual fuel, nor even the same operating system, is far more dangerous than even a precipitous division of labour.