The Best Film Archives's video: Man vs Machine Will Machines Take Our Jobs Educational Film 1936

● Please SUPPORT my work on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2LT6opZ ● Visit my 2ND CHANNEL: https://bit.ly/2ILbyX8 ►Facebook: https://bit.ly/2INA7yt ►Twitter: https://bit.ly/2Lz57nY ►Google+: https://bit.ly/2IPz7dl ✚ Watch my "Old America" PLAYLIST: https://bit.ly/2rOHzmy This 1936 short video – originally titled as "Men and Machines" – is a dramatized educational film sponsored by the American National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). It features the preeminent American radio and television broadcaster, author and world traveler Lowell Thomas. The film takes the point of view that mechanization of the workplace, in which workers are replaced by machines, is actually a good thing for both labor and business. It argues that the introduction of labor-saving machines results in cost savings and more leisure time for employees. The concluding narration accompanies a montage of consumer goods and reminds viewers that "we Americans are sitting on top of the world." The film was distributed in a multimedia package as part of the "Business Facts Program" for employers. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND / CONTEXT Mechanization is the process of changing from working largely or exclusively by hand or with animals to doing that work with machinery. In modern usage, such as in engineering or economics, mechanization implies machinery more complex than hand tools and would not include simple devices such as an un-geared horse or donkey mill. After electrification, when most small machinery was no longer hand powered, mechanization was synonymous with motorized machines. The 20th century: By the second half of the 20th century, enormous increases in worker productivity – fostered by mechanization and the factory system – had yielded unprecedentedly high standards of living in industrialized nations. The main advance in the factory system in the latter part of the century was that of automation, in which machines were integrated into systems governed by automatic controls, thereby eliminating the need for manual labor while attaining greater consistency and quality in the finished product. Factory production became increasingly globalized, with parts for products originating in different countries and being shipped to their point of assembly. As labor costs in the developed countries continued to rise, many companies in labor-intensive industries relocated their factories to developing nations, where both overhead and labor were cheaper. The future: Over the past few years, it has become conventional wisdom that dramatic advances in robotics and artificial intelligence have put us on the path to a jobless future. We are living in the midst of a "second machine age," in which routine work of all kinds – in manufacturing, sales, bookkeeping, food prep – is being automated at a steady clip, and even complex analytical jobs will be superseded before long. A widely cited 2013 study by researchers at the University of Oxford, for instance, found that nearly half of all jobs in the US were at risk of being fully automated over the next 20 years. The endgame, we are told, is inevitable: The robots are on the march, and human labor is in retreat. This anxiety about automation is understandable in light of the hair-raising progress that tech companies have made lately in robotics and artificial intelligence. And the notion that we are on the verge of a radical leap forward in the scale and scope of automation certainly jibes with the pervasive feeling in Silicon Valley that we are living in a time of unprecedented, accelerating innovation. Some tech leaders, including Tesla’s Elon Musk, are so sure this jobless future is imminent that they are busy contemplating how to build a social safety net for a world with less work. Hence the sudden enthusiasm in Silicon Valley for a so-called universal basic income, a stipend that would be paid automatically to every citizen, so that people can have something to live on after their jobs are gone. Others believe that robots probably will take away our jobs in the future but that is really no big deal. It’s happened before. Machines have taken over human jobs many times. For instance, the percentage of U.S. adults working in agriculture today is a fraction of what it was a hundred or so years ago, thanks to the invention of sophisticated farming machinery. Luckily, there is a flipside to this equation: technological advancements have also created jobs. The overwhelming percentage of Americans employed in information technology today, for example, all have jobs that didn’t exist 100 years ago. Man vs. Machine | Will Machines Take Our Jobs | Educational Film | 1936 TBFA_0156 NOTE: THE VIDEO REPRESENTS HISTORY. SINCE IT WAS PRODUCED DECADES AGO, IT HAS HISTORICAL VALUES AND CAN BE CONSIDERED AS A VALUABLE HISTORICAL DOCUMENT. THE VIDEO HAS BEEN UPLOADED WITH EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. ITS TOPIC IS REPRESENTED WITHIN HISTORICAL CONTEXT.