Norbert Wiener
He wrote to the union first
Before automation landed
Wiener's 1949 letter to Walter Reuther of the UAW; The Human Use of Human Beings, 1950
Is there a move to make before a technology reaches you? What the man who built it did first.
What actually happened?
Cybernetics was published in 1948, and Wiener was the person who put machine control into the world. The next year he did something nobody was doing: he wrote to Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers, saying automation would displace assembly-line workers on a large scale, that he was unwilling for this to happen with no preparation, and that the union should get involved early. In 1950 he turned the same worry into a book.
The people who see it coming usually aren't hit yet
The year Wiener wrote, automation wasn't deployed and nobody had lost a job. Precisely because it hadn't landed, there was time to arrange something. Once it lands you only get to react; there is no room left to prepare.
The stretch while you still have work and haven't been cut is the only window you get to plan in.
Find people in the same position before you find answers
He didn't start by writing a survival guide for workers. He went to the people who were already organised. One person carrying this kind of shock has almost no leverage; tens of thousands do. Making contact comes before working it out.
Finding people in your field already dealing with it beats sitting alone devising a strategy.
The people pushing it and the people hit by it aren't two groups
He was both the inventor and the person raising the alarm, and in him those didn't conflict. The tool you use every day — the better you get with it, the sooner you can see which tasks it will take. Those are exactly the ones to prepare for.
The work you're saving yourself with it is work somebody else still eats from.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: something is spreading through your field, it hasn't reached your income yet, and you plan to wait and see.
Ask first: which task of mine can it already do? Who in my field have I actually talked to about it?
Where it goes wrong: reading it as a call to oppose things early — he went to the union to move the preparation forward, not to block automation; and this isn't personal heroism. His first move was to find people already organised.
Lines to keep
Once it lands you only get to react. There is no room to plan.
Finding people in the same position comes before working it out.
The work you save with it is work somebody else eats from.