Just posted …. the nicely-edited transcript of the Cornell RoundTable on Employment and Technology that I was part of last month in New York City.  It’s a very interesting – but very quick and tightly focused – read. Pages 1 through 13 will keep you entranced over a cup of coffee.

  The astonishingly wide diversity of opinions (on what is now the commonplace assumption that technology is causing a massive “gutting” of the employment pool) was a surprise to most who attended.

   We’ve just come to accept that jobs of all kinds are being eliminated by new technologies, IT advance, etc. and that there are no realistic strategies to shape that seemingly-inevitable trajectory.

 As Harry Katz, Dean of Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, says in his introduction:

   “This round table brought together 40 of America’s leading economists, policy makers, engineers, academics, corporate executives, social scientists, philanthropists, journalists and statisticians. (see list.)

  It was a day full of agreement, fervently diverse opinions and insights – notably that most participants had never before discussed these issues with such a varied group of stakeholders and that the country’s best hope for reaping widespread gains from technological progress rests on continuing and expanding such discourse.”