How Technology Has Changed Our Lives.
{draw:rect} MODERN AGE (1950-1985) After the Second World War Americans began to prosper, millions of people were changing. The troops that were returning from war some 12 million served during the war years were going back in the workforce. Most of these men were mere children when they signed on, some from rural America that never returned to work the earth. Farming technology was being made to counter act this problem. So much so that at the turn of the twentieth century 50 percent of the workforce was on farms that provided the nation’s food. By the end of the 1950’s only 7 percent of the workforce was working the nation’s farms. Hourly wages for selected industries, United States, 1950 1901 ............................................ $ 0.23 1918 ............................................ .53 1935 ............................................ .58 1950 ............................................ 1.59 SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey Manufacturing. (Bureau of Labor Statistics) Yale Brozen writes “Fear of automation can be traced to four sources.” One is based on the assumption that there is a fixed amount of goods. The second source of fear springs from the idea that automation or cybernation is something more than the latest stage in the long evolution of technology. The third source of fear lies in the fact that we are much more aware of the people displaced by automation and concerned about them than we are of the other unemployed. Even while we reduce the amount of manpower needed to do a fixed amount of work does that fixed amount of work remain the same? As we all know this is not the case. As we free up manpower from one aspect we find new and productive uses for that manpower. His words speak the truth then as they do today. “It saves lives through the aid it gives doctors. By controlling traffic signals in response to traffic flows
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