[ChuckMcM]

As someone who runs a search engine (Blekko.com) I can tell you that Google and their AdSense program has created way more than 100,000 jobs. I see their web sites all the time, a small bit of cruft or copied content and eleventy-billion ads.

That is a way of saying what economists have said for years, which is that advancements and disruptions create a net pool of more opportunities rather than reduce the total. The proof of that is that the number of jobs that are available in the country continues to rise even as its population goes up.

"I think there's reason to be concerned about how non-information folks are going to be making money in the next fifty years. After all, how much of the economy can be producing hamburgers, entertainment and technology?"

They will become literate, or become supported by someone who is. One of the interesting things you notice reading about the transition to the 'manufacturing age' between the 19th and 20th century was that working people who were thrown out of work by technology their kids had grown up with, and their kids began supporting them with their employable skills. Its worthwhile to look at how the world reacted to those, just as sweeping in their own way, changes.

Elsewhere on HN this week the quote "Humans are a bottomless pit of wants" was shared, that is so true. As long as people want something, there will be a job which involves getting that for them.

[ippisl]

First, at the start of the industrial revolution, people who had to leave their home in the country and come to the city to look for work, had to work very long hours for subsistence pay.

This has only changed with the rise of the labor movement, and a general shift in democratic societies towards a welfare state.

So for a huge positive technological revolution, societal change is needed.

In fact, i think that today we have the right technologies to solve many of the world's problems, just the wrong politics and societal order(globally). Just look at education,healthcare,global hunger, the subprime crisis. The biggest barriers there are political, legal and societal.

And yes, "Humans are a bottomless pit of wants". But that didn't helped the loyal employee - the horse. After the industrial revolution they were left unemployed and sadly went to the glue factory.