We live in a period of unprecedented technological change – from Uber drivers’ new ways of working to fields that are in the near future likely to be worked even more by robots, the digital economy is more physical than ever. So what is government’s role in smoothing a huge transition, catalysing it and also protecting workforces from potentially unintended consequences?
It is an easy, if slightly lazy, trope to suggest that just because every previous industrial revolution has created jobs rather than destroyed them, so too will this fourth one. While it is likely to be true in the medium to long term, it may be a bumpy process in the immediate future. The path to tread surely sits somewhere between resisting the calls of a new generation of Luddites who want to see robots taxed and letting ‘progress’ run riot. To take a totally laissez faire approach risks fuelling a bubble that might not do the economy much good, while also storing up problems for the future that will only have to be fixed anyway once the dust has settled.
