This article was first published in 2002, as part of Dictum Publishing’s Leadership Session feedback.
A Brief History of Humanity
The simplest summary of the broad sweep of human history is this uncomplicated thought: Let something else do the work. From the earliest hunter-gatherers, whoused sticks, rocks, flint and fire, through farmers who tamed animals and water to add extra strength to human muscles, to the Industrial era, where peoples muscles were replaced by machines, internal combustion engines and smoke-drenched factories, humankind has been on a quest to let something else do the work. These first 3 epochs of human history (subsistence, agrarian, industrial), spanning more than 10,000 years, brought us to the point in history when we only get physically tired for fun.
Having reached this point, we turned our quest to let something do the work, to the next most obvious human function: thinking. For the last 50 years, the information era has been in full swing. The theme of this era has been allowing machines to do more andmore of our thinking for us. The logical conclusion of this trend is that in a decade or so, we will only do thinking for fun.Any functions that are based on routinely applying set rules to given situations, however complex, will be the first to be completely replaced by computers. This will affect everyone from the accountant (the most obvious place to start), through lawyers and teachers, all the way to doctors (especially the GP).
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According to 
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Sept. 18 /PRNewswire/ (
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