Earlier this week, Pete Cashmore, the founder of Mashable, published his top 10 trends for 2012. And while Cashmore's list is characteristically prescient, it misses one trend which I suspect will increasingly shape our attitude toward technology over the next year. So let me add an 11th trend of 2012: Next year, we will become increasingly preoccupied with the relationship between new digital technologies and employment. 2012 will be the year that it finally dawns on us that more digital technology might mean fewer regular jobs and that robots could be replacing human beings as the critical labor constituency of our "new economy."
Cashmore's own Mashable website gave us a sneak preview of this revolution in August when it reported on the decision of Foxconn, Apple's Chinese manufacturer, to replace a large part of its workforce with one million robots. And in 2012, I predict, these kinds of strategic investments in artificial intelligence -- from consumer products like Apple's Siri and Google's self-driving car to automated industrial factories -- will become ever more commonplace. Read More
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