“My father had worked for the same firm for twelve years. They fired him. They replaced him with a tiny gadget, this big, that does everything my father does, only it does it much better. The depressiong thing is, my mother ran out and bought one.” — Woody Allen

+ Machines have been replacing humans in the workforce for a long time. We’ve often associated the computerized workforce with routine manufacturing jobs. But robots have gotten a lot more talented. From Quartz: Almost half the jobs Americans thought were safe will soon be done by robots. (So I guess I’m not paranoid for thinking my Roomba is planning to launch a curated news service.)

+ WSJ: Robots may revolutionize China’s electronics manufacturing.

+ At least humans still have a role in content creation. Everyone thought a computer was behind a popular Twitter spambot account known as Horse ebooks. Well, it turns out the account was run by a 29 year-old human named Jacob Bakkila who explained: “The idea was to perform as a machine.” So we’ve finally found a growth area in the future economy: Humans impersonating machines impersonating humans.