Streaming service subscriptions

From 2007 to 2022, global industrial robot installations and streaming service subscriptions rose together in what can only be described as a long, slow, coordinated pivot away from human labor and toward content about human labor. The r of 0.9747 spans 16 years, which is a long time for two such different things to maintain a relationship without ever discussing it. Robot installations grew from about 114,000 to 553,000 annually; streaming subscriptions went from essentially zero to over a billion globally. The robots, notably, do not subscribe.

Both trends are manifestations of the same two-decade technological and economic transformation: the automation of physical work and the digitization of leisure. Industrial robot adoption accelerated as labor costs rose in emerging markets and sensor/computing costs fell, particularly after 2012. Streaming subscriptions grew as broadband penetration reached critical mass and Netflix, then Amazon, then dozens of competitors, converted linear TV audiences. Both follow the same technology S-curve of adoption, beginning as niche innovations and becoming global infrastructure across the same fifteen-year window.

The same economic forces that remove humans from factory floors also create the leisure time — and anxiety — that streaming services monetize. Whether that is a virtuous cycle or an ironic one depends on whether you still have a job.