Here's what I'm getting at: the idea that anything that brings about greater productivity and profit will inherently benefit workers is wrong, and that includes technology. Where productivity and profit margins grow, you find management tempted to try to wring out even more, usually by aiming the spear downward in some fashion. If it's not in outright layoffs, it's through new forms of labor discipline, which are conveniently omitted from techno-utopians' minds.

You are right that it does not inherently benefit workers. However the goal for most automation is not only profit in the areas of production but to lower worker injury. Most (MOST) automatted processes have to be designed from the very beginning, or it becomes VERY costly for a business to automate.

And in fact, with advances in technology come ever greater ways to enforce labor discipline. From the New Deal years to the Nixon era, when the work day ended that was it --work ended, shop talk was kept to a minimum, your private life began. From the Nixon years onward, there's been a relentless push by managers to use technology for controls upon workers' private lives: drug testing, background checks, psychometric tests, video surveillance, electronic health records, and now the use of smartphones to mandate that workers remain constantly on call.

What you have done is pointed out technology, but not necessarily automation, the two are related but not interchaingable. I also agree that these are horrendus violations but none of these have helped as much as automating the processes of car manufacturing to create safer areas for workers.

These are not inevitable advances in technology. Owners and managers invested great sums of money into new technologies specifically to knuckle down on the workforce under the rubric of human resources, without ever bothering to remunerate them for their loss of liberty, and now it's "normal" for people to get calls from their boss in the dead of night to urgently fix some problem.

I happen to be one of these people who get calls at night to urgently fix a problem. But if I were given the time and opportunity to automate things where I work, 99% of the tasks I get called about would disappear. I would live in a restful night, and my boss would be happier. But because it's not something that can be done in a week or even a few months, the automation of these processes will not happen, and I will remain restless.

Like I said I agree that with many technologies business owners see $$$ but what engineers and others see is of a much greater contribution to humanity.