Topic 4: Internet of Things

Digital Society Internet of Things session

Group members

Group 2: Mitali Palsikar JustaTad Michael Brookwell Ornella Navari

Chosen topic

How does Internet of Things affect job growth

Exploring themes

Utopia

If more machines take over, blue-collar, working class jobs will be the first to be made redundant. Ideally, this means people would have more time to work on skills, improve their knowledge, take up higher paying positions and also less physical strain.

Dystopia

When IOT-controlled things go wrong or stop working the way you expect, its a bigger problem because it connects to so many things.

People will get so used to machines doing everything, it might end up in loss of crucial skills and if the time comes, we might be too dependant on machines to function without them.

Ethical considerations

People have the right to retain jobs. And while in the long term this is not ethically wrong, companies might be willing to replace men with machines as they are cheaper, don’t need payment or healthcare. But it is not very humane to just replace people with the cheaper as many of them will be left behind and will not be able to keep up with the times.

Questions to ask

Prompted more questions than answers

Things to explore

Will the future of IoT make us happier? Will it make life easier, or perhaps too easy? Will there be a new set of jobs that will require humans or not?

Skills relevant to this

In the future, everyone will have to be technologically literate to a basic level.

In the ideal situation, people will be able to focus on the work-life balance and focus on skills and hobbies that are important to them.