Debate report: Technology causes unemployment

Student and ID: Godwin Olowookere(3917143)

Unit: Engineering and the Community 1103
Workshop Instructor: Lutfar Khan
Date: 23 April 2012

Summary: In the debate I elaborated on how technology creates employment and the opposition elaborated on how technology cause’s unemployment.

I personally believe that technology creates employment based on the investment of innovations. Australia and U.S jobs have always come from innovations, without technology innovations there wouldn’t be employment generated today, because in the 21st century, technology is what creates employments. According to Kauffman foundation they stated that nearly all net jobs creation in our economy comes from innovative technology like start up firms that are less than five years old. This means that older, larger firms tend to create employment. Also the Department of commerce foundation stated that technology embraces employment which leads to higher wages. A statistics shows that the American economy employment wages increased nearly two and a half times faster than the international average wages between the years of 1990 and 2007. A new study by IDC shows that global spending on information technology created 7.1 million new jobs and 100,000 new businesses will be a success over the next four years. This research predicted that in 2007 Microsoft-related activities were responsible for 14.7 million jobs from an IT industry total of 35.2 million people which provided with 52 percent of employment globally in 2007 and it also provided $514 billion in tax revenue worldwide. Microsoft is a considerable factor of the IT industry. It creates products that are run by technology through the employment of 14.7 workers globally. This showed that technology is the key component for economic based on the contribution made by the Microsoft technology which embraces employment.
Likewise on the other side, the opposition said that technology causes unemployment. They said that technology causes unemployment because it place workers from work.