Replacing people
Automation is taking over in many areas of commerce simply because it's expected to be cheaper. People cost too much for the bean counters to justify, and the bean counters don't care about unexpected consequences unless they result in liability.
I've been trying to book a hotel room in Europe from the UK. One major hotel chain (Marriot) doesn't publish a phone number for my hotel of choice, and the hotel doesn't answer emails. Apparently you can only book via an online portal without being able to query anything. Another hotel responds to all emails with a boiler plate message from a noreply account pointing one to irrelevant FAQs on its web site.
The dystopian future is not robots taking over a la Terminator - it's already with us and it's never again being able to get a personal response from a human being. Oh brave new world...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
