CONTENTS Technology and Industry Making Things Distributing Goods Selling and Buying Farming and Food Drilling Digging and Mining Feel the Power Energy Efficiency Smart Buildings Mass Communication Get Moving Future Fantastic Tech Timeline Glossary Learning More Index and About the Author 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 31 32
TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRY Technology is an important part of industry Tech innovations today such as robots satellites and artificial intelligence are as big as changes that happened during the Industrial Revolution that began around 200 years ago In the Industrial Revolution machines were invented that could do the work of ten people even 100 New changes today many using computers help people do new kinds of work and share it around the world Tech changes also mean that robots and other machines can now take over more and more work done by humans The technology industry is a fast-growing one in North America There are over 492,000 technology companies in the United States and about 71,000 in Canada A whopping seven million people in the United States and about 864,000 people in Canada are employed in jobs that use or deal with technology That is 4 percent of all jobs in the United States and 5 6 percent in Canada Among those tech workers are people working in offices in factories and in the field They have all kinds of industrial machines to help People have always been concerned about using robots and tech to replace human workers Some workers worry that robots and other machines will take their jobs Others worry about robots becoming smarter than humans However some very dangerous jobs such as mining deep underground or defusing bombs are best done by machines Sending people to Mars is too In hot and dangerous factories workers can use remote controlled robotic arms called waldoes 4 TECH AND THE WORKFORCE ROBOT CHALLENGES
dangerous at the moment so the Curiosity rover is exploring the planet’s surface Also technology can do work that is boring and tiring A robot is more likely to be something like a forklift with a camera and a computer than the fancy androids in science fiction movies Industrial robots are made to do a few tasks not to be people The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov imagined Three Laws of Robotics These laws said a robot could not harm a human must follow orders and must protect itself That would be a good start for any future tech Mechanical arms make the same movements over and over to do the simplest jobs on assembly lines 5
