From the introduction of the assembly line in the automobile industry in 1913 to Amazon reaching 200,000 robots working in its warehouses in 2020, the past century has seen an unprecedented level of technological progress in the workplace. Since the Industrial Revolution, the role of machines has been controversial, raising hope for progress as well as fear of change. However, despite its rapid pace, automation has not made human labour obsolete. An MIT study revealed that the employment-to-population ratio rose during the 20th century.
1913 Henry Ford installed the first moving assembly line, revolutionising the manufacturing process.
1920 Czech author Karel Capek used the term robot in his play R.U.R.
1926 A general strike in the UK, protesting wage reductions and poor working conditions, lasted for nine days.
1927 Fritz Langs film Metropolis included the character of Maria, one of the first robots depicted in cinema.
1930 The phrase technological unemployment appeared in a book by economist J.M Keynes.
1946 ENIAC, the first electronic general purpose computer, was switched on to calculate artillery firing tables.
1948 William Grey Walter built the first autonomous robots, pioneering the field of cybernetics.
1950 Alan Turing devised a way to measure the intelligence of a machine.
1959 John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky founded the MIT AI Lab.
1961 Unimate, the first industrial robot, began work on the General Motors assembly line.
1961 IBM introduced the electric typewriter, improving typists speed and productivity.
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1964 IBM launched the System/360 family of mainframe computer systems.
1967 Military strategist Herman Kahn warned of technologys potential to enable authoritarian surveillance.
1968 The film 2001: A Space Odyssey imagined a sentiment machine with intelligence that matched that of humans.
1970 SRI Internationals Shakey became the first mobile robot controlled by AI (connected to it using a radio link).
1972 Tokyos Waesda University developed Wabot-1, the first full-scale humanoid robot.
1981 The Japanese government set aside $850m for a project to develop a fifth-generation computer.
1989 UK computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.
1996 Honda launched the P2 humanoid robot.
1997 IBMs Deep Blue defeated world chess champion, Garry Kasparov.
2003 Skype was founded by Niklas Zennstrm and Janus Friis and developed in Estonia.
2005 A Stanford robot drove autonomously for 131 miles along an unrehearsed desert trial.
2007 Apple launched the first iPhone, creating the mobile internet as we know it today.
2009 Google started testing robot cars on roads.
2010 Facebook began using facial recognition to help tag photos.
2011 IBMs Watson defeated TV game show Jeopardy!s two greatest champions.
2011 Apples virtual assistant, Siri, appears in the iphone 4S.
2012 Rethink Robotics unveiled Baxter, its collaborative robot designed to work alongside humans.
2013 The Slack collaboration tool was launched.
2016 Google DeepMinds AlphaGo algorithm beats world Go champion Lee Sedol.
2018 Thousands of Google staff across the world staged walkouts targeting workplace culture.
2020 Amazon reportedly had 200,000 robots in operation in its US warehouses.
2020 The Covid-19 pandemic forced millions of people to start working remotely.
2022 The shared workplace model will run out of steam due to the pandemic.
2025 Remote work will become commonplace, one of the lasting legacies of Covid-19.
2030 Despite widespread anxiety, the Future of Work (FoW) will not lead to mass unemployment.
This is an edited extract from the The Future of Work Thematic Research report produced by GlobalData Thematic Research.
GlobalData is this websites parent business intelligence company.
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