Gigaom AI Minute – July 23

Transcript

History shows us greeting labor saving technology with mixed feelings, often, though, with anger and hatred. As rapid manufacturing advances swept through the eighteenth and nineteenth century, every invention was greeted with hostility from labor. French textile workers resisted the automated looms by throwing their wooden shoes into the machinery. In England, the Swing Riots resisted the automatic threshing machines by smashing them. Boatmen destroyed the first attempts at a steam engine, which they felt would put them out of work. So overwhelming was the protest against ribbon looms in Germany that they were ordered burned by the government. When the fly-shuttle was invented to make weaving easier, its creator John Kay was mobbed. James Hargreaves, who created another breakthrough in textiles called the spinning jenny, saw his creation burned by yet another mob in England. John Heathcoat, who created technology to make the creation of lace more efficient, saw his entire factory and its equipment torched in broad daylight.

One final story from the past may show us a path forward. It happened on November 29, 1814. It was on this date that The Times of London was first printed using steam powered printing presses. The pressmen vowed vengeance upon the machine’s inventor and destruction to the machine itself. However, they were told that if they refrained from violence, they would all be kept on at full pay until similar jobs could be found for them elsewhere. This seemed fair to the pressmen, and the march of progress continued.