Re: Here comes the Walmart of IT
That's the difference between "IT" - which covers exciting stuff like making sure the printers are full of toner, swapping backup tapes, resetting forgotten passwords: the stuff that gets automated away to nothing anyway as time goes on - and the actual computing industry. S3 stops me needing to run fsck or configure RAID arrays: it means when I write and deploy a web application I don't need to think about configuring storage hardware, it certainly doesn't replace the need to write the software in the first place!
Any job where the main requirement appears to be possession of opposable thumbs is likely to go that way, if it hasn't already, whether it's slicing up dead animal or sticking plastic packages in slots on electronic devices: if people to do the job cost much more than minimum wage, the job would be automated away entirely! Writing software, designing circuits or chips? That's another kettle of fish entirely (OK, there's software out there clearly written by people whose only qualification for the job was having digits to operate a keyboard with, but I like to think Darwin will take care of them eventually...)