NEEDS PEOPLE

A see-saw look at the scarifying implications of automation. Will automation mean technological unemployment? Will it affect not only the blue collar but the white collar as well? Will there be hard times ahead for the old who must learn new skills and the young who don't have any? Will it be difficult creating those thousand upon thousand new jobs in the service sector to offset the loss of those millions of jobs in the industrial one? Yes. Yes. Yes. But, advises good natured Robert Cubbedge, a Newsweek business editor, if we all rally round the problem, tackle the transitional period ahead, get labor and management to cooperate, and government to direct, if not dictate, then the moon may come up over the mountain. Other odds and ends include the emotional hazards of push-button mechanization, shorter work weeks, leisure and the Protestant ethic. Could a computer assemble, nay write, a better book than this? Yes. And no buts about it.