Isaac Asimov predicted the dockworkers strike

It was one of my favorites when I was younger. Will Smith fighting cool looking robots in the future? What’s not to love?

And as the last two decades have passed it has moved slowly, and then, all of a sudden, pretty quickly out of the realm of total Science Fiction and into a realm of… well, if not “truth,” then at least disturbingly accurate social commentary that would make Isaac Asimov’s mouth water.

After all, the movie, at its core, is about a man in a futuristic world who is fundamentally uncomfortable with the rate at which technology is advancing, and the unchecked trust that human beings are putting in the machines around them.

A guy who is painted as a radical, an outcast, a lunatic.

And, of course, who turns out to be correct.

There’s a line that sticks out in the movie, where the “bad guy” corporate robot overlord is talking down to Will Smith’s character, and he says:

“I suppose your father lost his job to a robot. I don’t know, maybe you would have simply banned the Internet to keep the libraries open.”

It’s a line meant to signify the greedy, corporate overlords who value technological advancement at all costs as a way to line their own pockets.

But why am I mentioning this 20 year old movie now?

Well, it’s because I saw this photo from the ongoing dockworkers strike…

See, right now, roughly 45,000 members of the International Longshoreman’s Association, or ILA, are striking at ports along the East and Gulf Coast to demand higher wages and slower implementation of technological advancement.

They want more money, and they want fewer machines threatening their job.

And the sign pictured above, “Machines Don’t Feed Families,” is meant to put a human face on the struggle.

Except, there’s just one problem…

Machines do feed families. Lots and lots and lots of families.

Now, of course, the dockworkers are talking about their own families, flesh and blood people who need to be taken care of, and those people are important.

But so is the progress of technology, which, over the last 50 years, has revolutionized the battles against disease, hunger, aging, and so much more.

And so, in a way, this dockworkers strike, much like I, Robot, is a metaphor for something much deeper — a struggle that I think will define our society over the next few decades.

What is the proper role of technology in society? And what checks will the government put on its advancement? What balances will we have to innovate to care for people who do lose their jobs to faster, safer, and more efficient machines?

There are a lot of questions to be answered and it will take a long time to answer them…

But I know this: technology will always be an interesting growth play in the stock market. Because, to borrow a quote from another sci-fi movie: “technology… finds a way.”

Even if the dockworkers, Isaac Asimov, and Will Smith might not like it.

To your prosperity,

Stephen Ground
Editor-in-Chief, ProsperityPub