"History repeats itself until it doesn't. Sometimes it really is different. A few centuries ago, almost all of the jobs involved physical labor. Making stuff meant humans actually making it with their hands and basic tools. Now, almost no jobs involve that. What we consider physical labor today is mostly people operating machines that can do the work of hundreds of people. The few remaining cases where humans are still doing the actual work (not just operating machines that are doing the work) will vanish as robotics continually improve. So humans moved from using our physical strength to do labor to doing mental labor. Knowing what lever to pull, what button to push, using our judgment to tell the machines what to do. When to start, when to stop, whether to do this or that. When necessary we'd make new machines for new tasks. What's now on the horizon is the automation of these brain tasks. We'll no longer need humans to tell the machines what to do. Cars can drive themselves...." - Eric P