3 June

When ATMs were introduced, there was fear they’d make bank tellers redundant. Like the fear right now that AI will replace humans in their jobs. It wasn’t true. Automation rarely replaces human jobs, there are too many complex choke points in the workflows that need human input. Something else destroyed being a bank teller, as a job. The iPhone. It reinvented banking itself. The birth of mobile, online banking. Disruption doesn’t work by automating the current way we do things. It works by changing the entire culture. Similarly, EVs aren’t just much better cars. They’re reinventing what cars and driving actually mean, the entire culture. Technologies change societies, not people interacting only with other people, talking and debating. Because technologies *are* also people, they’re our social relations woven into material form. Only that stops us fighting and ‘debating’ (i.e. fighting for status). Engineers create civilisation.