The advent of the new millennium has seen an unprecedented rise in the reliance on technology in everyday life and the workplace has been no exception. It is hard to imagine any business (however big or small) that does not use a computer or a computerised machine at some level and certain analysts have argued that this has had an adverse effect on the workforce overall.

Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor with MIT, has done extensive study into the problem and has concluded that using technology essentially favours on the top 1% of the workforce while taking away opportunities for those further down the ladder. This would appear to have some credence as the use of sophisticated machines generally replaces ordinary workers – you don’t need to pay a machine a wage, after all. Furthermore, employment grew by around 20% overall during the 1980s and 1990s as technology was creeping into the workplace but still needed a human touch to make it work; since it has been more self aware and does not need as much human intervention, employment has fallen 1% overall in the last 11 years.

In fact, many analysts are predicting that it is not just the ordinary worker that will find themselves out of a job because of a machine but that top level executives will as well. SmartPlanet Editor-in-Chief Larry Dignan argued that it is just ‘business culture’ that is keeping these executives in their positions however a decade or so done the line will see their duties and positions becoming more automated and computerized.