"[I]n an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it."
Herbert A. Simon
Simon is a fantastic author that everyone alive today would to well to read. He gets misrepresented by Karp in his manifesto:
"He envisioned that by the 1980s humans would be essentially relegated to kinetic tasks, confined for the most part to labor that required movement in the physical world."
Hm, doesn't sound like Simon. Let's see Karp's notes on that source:
"He envisioned that: See Simon, New Science of Management Decision, 38 (arguing that “men will retain their greatest comparative advantage in jobs that require flexible manipulation of those parts of the environment that are relatively rough—some forms of manual work, control of some kinds of machinery”)."
Ok. Seems to support Karp's interpretation. But let's follow Karp's recommendation than and see the source:
"I have done some armchair analysis of what this proposition means for predictions of the occupational profile twenty years hence. I do not have time to report this analysis in detail here, but I can summarize my conclusions briefly. Technologically, as I have argued earlier, machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work that a man can do. Economically, men will retain their greatest comparative advantage in jobs that require flexible manipulation of those parts of the environment that are relatively rough—some forms of manual work, control of some kinds of machinery (e.g., operating earth-moving equipment), some kinds of non programmed problem solving, and some kinds of service activities where face-to-face human interaction is of the essence. Man will be somewhat less involved in performing the day-to-day work of the organization, and somewhat more involved in maintaining the system that performs the work."
A much more nuanced and qualified take. Published in 1977, I would say that in may ways work and organizations in developed economies largely evolved like he foresaw given how the service sector came to dominate the economy and so much human effort now goes into software development, configuration and supervision instead of pushing paper with their hands into and from drawers as it was done in the 1970s.