Means

If you consider the library a miniature society, in additon to increasing the unemployment rate, the application of technology has other profound effects that may skip your eyes.

To begin with, rather than having a dozen of semi-skilled clerks and librarians, it now needs only one sophisticated computer technician. Magnifying into the scale of a society, a few highly skilled jobs remain – and their pay may actually increase as we are more dependent on these people. On the other hand, manual and semi-skilled positions have the highest risk of being replaced by technology.

(Paradoxically, unpleasant jobs with the least demand on skill tend to remain. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough post of this kind to meet the need of the whole working class.)

The result is obvious: Although the productivity of the society as a whole increases (and so does the average GDP per capita), the productivity is concentrated on a few people who control the resources (land or wealth in any other form) and those who could master sophisticated technology (for example, complicated mathematics that is involved in the construction of collateralized debt oligations). For the rest of the working class, their contribution to the overall productivity is trivial, and many a time they could not even find the appropriate means (I mean a job) to make use of their ability to exchange for their own bread and butter.