Wired's perspective has always bugged me.

At a surface level, this is an article about how life's tasks change based on life. This has been true since the dawn of agriculture - as soon as someone started cultivating berries a gatherer "lost his job." Thing is, though, those people closest to the new job are also usually the ones closest to the dying job. Dogfighters didn't "lose their job" after WWI - they became crop dusters, barnstormers, mail deliverers and airline pilots.

Even in your day to day life change is constant and inevitable. You didn't "lose your job" as an Excel '97 user when Excel 2000 came out. You learned new job skills.

Wired is hardly the first outfit to point out that 'ZOMG there are no more telephone operators.' They are, however, the ones to consistently reframe things in terms of 'WHOA! FYOOOCHUR!' even when things are a lot more interesting if you go 'WHOA! PRESENT!'

I was heartened to read about Baxter. I own two Roombas (one that I purchased from Cory Doctorow) and dig 'em. At the same time their navigation is por shit and from an operational standpoint they aren't much more sophisticated than pool vacs (the primary reason iRobot bought Mint). Reading about an industrial robot that has integrated force feedback and situational awareness flags for workers sharing the shop floor is cool - you could do an entire article on the relationships between humans and robots and what they mean (shit - you could do a book on it)

At the same time, that useful and thought-provoking tidbit is buried in between pictures of Jimmy Fallon snuggling with something from a Bjork video.