MAGYAR NEMZETI BANK
3.4 What does the future hold? 3.4.1 TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES
McAfee (2014) discuss the reasons for this in detail. They argue that technological change will be acceleraIt is difficult to say what the situation of employees ted by innovation brought about by the development will be like in the coming years and decades. Nevert- of computers, digital transformation, and people’s heless, an attempt can be made here at outlining the extended social networks. As we know, according to labour market of the future based on current labour Moore’s law, computers double their computing market trends and the technological changes which capacity approximately every 18 months. Given the are foreseen. exponential behaviour captured by this empirical The key development concerning the future will be observation, computing capacity is considered to be acceleration in the speed of technological change. That growing at a constant rate. Equally important is the development, which has in fact already started, is extraordinary proportions that the digital transformasupported by a large body of direct and indirect eviden- tion has reached in recent years. Not only books and ce. The indirect evidence is that key technological old databases have been converted into digital formats; changes over the past more than 200 years (steam for example, all of Google’s search records and real engine, electricity) took place in a way that for roughly time operating data of aircraft engines are also digital. two decades after the fundamental inventions there A large proportion of humanity can access a vast was no substantial increase in productivity, for reasons amount of information on the internet, and use it that are not attributable to the technology concerned. independently or in collaboration with others to develOn the one hand, radically new technologies are rather op new products, production process and organisatiosimple when they appear in the market, and need a nal arrangements. This can boost the number of number of additional innovations on a smaller scale in innovations, which, combined with increasingly faster order to work (Perez, 2004). On the other hand, firms computers, would bring more and more aspects of life are resistant to radical changes. In order for innovation within the focus of robotisation. to make an actual impact on productivity, work proces- While we also think that historical experience and ses must be reorganised so that the new technology recent technological changes all point to the probabilcan evolve to its full potential. This was also a drag on ity that productivity will accelerate (which is why we productivity at the initial stage of great innovations. At will discuss the labour market effects of ICT penetratthe dawn of the era of electric motors, for instance, the ing all aspects of life), some researchers have a differinnovation consisted in merely replacing old steam ent vision of the future. Gordon (2016) argues that an engines with the new motors. However, in order for ageing society, decelerating global trade, rising electric motors to make firms more productive, firms inequality, high debt levels and the decreasing needed to be reorganised completely. While steam efficiency of research and development all suggest engines were used, all machines were linked to a single that the high level of productivity seen in the 20th large axis driven by the steam engine of the firm. In the century cannot be repeated. first decades of using electric motors, steam engines were replaced without reorganising the work processes. All of the machines remained crammed into a 3.4.2 EFFECTS ON THE LABOUR MARKET single room. Not only was this approach followed by The effects of the technological explosion on the old firms: new entrants simply copied the organisatiolabour market are impossible to estimate. Until nal structure of established businesses. The real boost recently, robots could only replace humans for specifin productivity came when managers realised the need ic, repetitive routine task; however, that has changed to place machines according to the path followed by in the past few years. The computing capacity of the product within the factory. This organisational computers has increased to an extent that has reform led to a meaningful increase in productivity enabled them to carry out, in whole or in part, work (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014). processes that do not qualify as routine tasks. There is also direct evidence that ICT will increasingly Machines have (partly) become capable of driving spread in virtually all parts of life. Brynjolfsson and cars or doing the company accounts, and Amazon, for 54
GROWTH REPORT • 2017
