In the world’s largest ketchup processing plant, a robot fires a continuous stream of freshly picked tomatoes across the factory floor using compressed air. A plethora of cameras make minute observations of every tomato as it flies by, checking for ripeness and damage. As soon as a defective tomato is identified, another robot fires a precision blast of air at it, unerringly knocking it out of the stream and into a separate hopper. At the other end of the factory, the finished bottles of ketchup are packaged up and placed on pallets by autonomous forklift trucks, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

No humans are involved.

Every industry is affected by automation. It’s not just cars that are being made by robots now. Our power plants are becoming increasingly automated. Our food is grown and processed in automated farms, storage units, and factories. Buildings are prefabricated by machines. In the modern factory, smart machines talk to each other and notify their human masters when they need attention.

In this industrial revolution, most of the human workforce is simply no longer necessary, replaced by increasingly sophisticated robots, more advanced sensors, and a more robust Internet.

 …