The Banks Of Today, As Predicted In 1969

By on August 8, 2011 in News 3

“The system could eventually make cash entirely redundant.” A prescient episode of the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World from 1969 looks at the novel arrival of computers to the world of banking. The outlook is more complex than mere rose-colored techno-utopianism.

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  • Mr Willow

    “What will happen to the clerks. . . they simply won’t be needed.”

    And people wonder why there is a massive job shortage. Machines and computers have taken most of the jobs people once performed. Employers don’t need pesky workers with their ‘rights’ and ‘salaries’ to worry about when a machine could do the job just as well, or a computer could do it faster or more accurately. 

    I use to think that retro-futurism, where ‘in the future’ we would have robots running all the factories and managing the menial tasks too boring or tedious for humans to feel fulfilled doing would be glorious, because then there would be no reason for the majority of us to hold a job, in the traditional sense anyway. However, as technology progresses, noöne seems to be taking notice of the transition and expects everything to continue as normal—with everyone, or nearly everyone, holding and keeping a job, earning money, to buy things that people used to make but now are products of microchips and machinery, feeding the economy, continuing the cycle—but with bulging populations and an increase in mechanization of the workforce this cannot be. I kind of get tired of repeating ‘capitalism is bad’, but the direction factories, banking, and the like (Japan has begun introducing robotic teachers and receptionists after all) are heading, capitalism in unsustainable. People cannot work if the position they are to fill is taken over by a machine or computer, and therefore cannot gain wealth because they cannot receive a salary. The alternative, of course, is scary, so noöne wants to discuss it, but with unemployment increasing and no end in sight to this depression (especially with the current tone of the administration), social programs need to have a greater influence in the the way the country and economy is structured.

    On a separate note, I really like shows like this (as well as the ostensibly contradictory term ‘retro-futurism’), shows that offered actual information, even if it is mere speculation upon the future. What happened to them? Most shows are simply redundancies of other shows, spin-offs and derivations. It’s sad, really.

  • Anonymous

    Co-signed. Don’t worry you are not alone in your warranted skepticism of capitalism. I think millions of people are there as well. I just read a bit of “Capital and it’s Discontents” today and your post above reminded of the David Harvey bit, where he laid out how capitalism functions to perpetuate itself. excellent post. ty!

  • Anon

    with electronic currency the effects of inflation has been undermined because now people just carry around plastic and doesn’t notice how much more cash they would have to carry with them to buy the things of today compared to the past. $19.00 for a coat in an upscale clothing store, that must have been a serious understatement