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proportions of the nation’s labor force are
engaged in jobs that emphasize expert thinking
or complex communication – tasks that
computers cannot do.
If the set of products and services produced
in the economy did not change, there
would be less and less good work for humans
to do as advances in computerization increased
the possibilities for substitution. Such a trend,
however, would run directly counter to the
profi t motive. A task, once computerized, is
potentially easy to replicate and so invites
intense competition. The response to the competition
is a constant drive to use advances in
computer technology to develop new products
and services – cell phones, DVDs, broadband
Internet, computer-assisted surgery,
fi nancial derivatives, sensors in cars – the list
is endless. This drive to develop, produce and
market new products relies on the human
ability to manage and solve analytical problems
and communicate new information, and
so it keeps expert thinking and complex communication
in strong demand.
the next 10 years
In 1960, Herbert Simon took the risk of predicting
how computers would change the mix
of occupations by 1985. We take a similar
chance, speculating on how computers will
change the job market in the years ahead.
We will not look as far into the future as
Simon did – 10 years will be suffi cient for our
purpose. But we will expand on Simon by
considering a broader set of consequences.
Simon focused on how computers would
change the corporation’s mix of occupations.
From society’s perspective, that change is the
fi rst step in a longer process. Out in the job
market, the mix of occupations can change
faster than workers can change their skills – a
differential that computers have enlarged. Big
wage changes are the result, as demand for
some workers increases while demand for
others plummets. Big wage changes, in turn,
spur individual responses – seeking new
training, going on to the disability roles. Big
wage changes can also motivate political
responses – changes in the tax laws, programs
to improve education, limits on imports. We
cannot pretend to predict this entire chain of
events, but we will sketch some possibilities.
Mary Simmons’s Job
A starting point is the job of Mary Simmons,
a telecommunications customer service representative.
When Mary started in 1975, her
work primarily consisted of explaining the
company’s policies, services and products to
customers in nearby towns. She kept most of
the information she used in her head. Today,
Mary still explains her company’s policies
and products to customers, but relies on a
78 The Milken Institute Review
computerized database for access to the information
she needs. The database’s large capacity
complements Mary’s communication and
problem-solving skills, enabling her to do
work that formerly required several people
– addressing hundreds of questions each day
from customers in several states about a large
variety of products and service plans.
Computers have also changed Mary’s job
in another way. Her employer now uses technology
to monitor most aspects of Mary’s
work: how many calls she answers per hour,
the length of each call, the content of selected
calls, and the number of minutes Mary takes
for bathroom breaks or to catch up on paperwork.
While technology creates the possibility
of monitoring, its use refl ects Mary’s bargaining
position. Few employees willingly accept
such monitoring. But Mary and her fellow
operators are not in a suffi ciently strong position
to prevent monitoring while earning
their present salaries.
With or without monitoring, it is unlikely
that Mary Simmons’s job will exist many
years longer. To be sure, possibilities for total
computer substitution are modest. Many of
the answers Mary gives are ultimately rulesbased
responses, but Mary’s interaction with
customers is, in computer terms, very complex.
When a customer calls, Mary must fi rst
extract the words from her caller’s conversational
speech, dealing with “umms,” sentence
fragments, ellipses, accents and other irregularities.
She must clarify the caller’s problem
and translate it into a question that her computerized
database can answer. Then she
needs to converse interactively (and tactfully)
to be sure the customer understands her answer
　
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