In an essay, entitled “Making It in America,” in the latest issue of The Atlantic, the author Adam Davidson relates a joke from cotton country about just how much a modern textile mill has been automated: The average mill has only two employees today, “a man and a dog. The man is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to keep the man away from the machines.” 
 
 Davidson’s article is one of a number of pieces that have recently appeared making the point that the reason we have such stubbornly high unemployment and sagging middle-class incomes today is largely because of the big drop in demand because of the Great Recession, but it is also because of the quantum advances in both globalization and the information technology revolution, which are more rapidly than ever replacing labor with machines or foreign workers. 
 
 In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over. 
 
 Yes, new technology has been eating jobs forever, and always will. As they say, if horses could have voted, there never would have been cars. But there’s been an acceleration. As Davidson notes, “In the 10 years ending in 2009, [U.S.] factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs — about 6 million in total — disappeared.” 
 
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 And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Last April, Annie Lowrey of Slate wrote about a start-up called “E la Carte” that is out to shrink the need for waiters and waitresses: The company “has produced a kind of souped-up iPad that lets you order and pay right at your table. The brainchild of a bunch of M.I.T. engineers, the nifty invention, known as the Presto, might be found at a restaurant near you soon. ... You select what you want to eat and add items to a cart. Depending on the restaurant’s preferences, the console could show you nutritional information, ingredients lists and photographs. You can make special requests, like ‘dressing on the side’ or ‘quintuple bacon.’ When you’re done, the order zings over to the kitchen, and the Presto tells you how long it will take for your items to come out. ... Bored with your companions? Play games on the machine. When you’re through with your meal, you pay on the console, splitting the bill item by item if you wish and paying however you want. And you can have your receipt e-mailed to you. ... Each console goes for $100 per month. If a restaurant serves meals eight hours a day, seven days a week, it works out to 42 cents per hour per table — making the Presto cheaper than even the very cheapest waiter.” 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story ||||| A few years ago, I ate dinner with my parents and siblings at an oak-paneled, oh-so-snooty restaurant. We had finished dessert. The coffee was cold. We wanted to leave. We could not. The waiter, until that point obsequious, had never appeared with the bill. Twenty minutes passed, and Mr. Lowrey, a dad of the pragmatic, stern-but-fair variety, finally got fed up. He whipped out his BlackBerry and called the restaurant. A minute later, we had the check. 
 
 A Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup called E La Carte is hoping to ensure that no family has to endure such a nightmare again. It has produced a kind of souped-up iPad that lets you order and pay right at your table. The brainchild of a bunch of MIT engineers, the nifty invention, known as the Presto, might be found at a restaurant near you soon. 
 
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 It works like this. The company manufactures tablet computers with full-day battery lives and a credit-card reader attached. The interface is easy enough for a grade-schooler to use. You select what you want to eat and add items to a cart. Depending on the restaurant's preferences, the console could show you nutritional information, ingredients lists, and photographs. You can make special requests, like "dressing on the side" or "quintuple bacon." When you're done, the order zings over to the kitchen, and the Presto tells you how long it will take for your items to come out. Want a margarita in the meantime? Just add it on the console, and wait for the waiter to bring it. Bored with your companions? Play games on the machine. When you're through with your meal, you pay on the console, splitting the bill item by item if you wish and paying however you want. And you can have your receipt emailed to you. 
 
 The company is currently rolling the product out after two years of development, testing, fundraising, and manufacturing. So far, about 20 restaurants have signed up and many more nationally have expressed interest. "They're anything above McDonald's and below a fancy, white-tablecloth French restaurant," says co-founder Rajat Suri, who dropped out of a Ph.D. program at MIT to start the company. "Restaurants are in a competitive market, and they love to differentiate themselves. And people just get it." 
 
 The idea came to him after he and some friends struggled to settle the bill at a restaurant. "It's like a bad joke," he says. "How many MIT kids does it take to split a check?" He came up with the idea for a computerized table-by-table ordering system, and said goodbye to chemical engineering shortly after. 
 
 The company is selling its cost-savings and margin-boosters, not just its benefits for customers sick of waiting for the bill, to businesses. First and foremost: lower labor costs, though Suri stresses that the console is not designed to replace waiters. "You still need people to bring the food, to fill up the glasses, for customers to [interact with] if they want to make, like, a really complicated burger order. It's up to the restaurant to decide how to use it," he says. 
 
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 The Presto aspires to be the food-services version of the airline check-in kiosk or the ATM or the self-checkout at your local pharmacy. It makes a person's job a computer's job, and that cuts costs. Each console goes for $100 per month. If a restaurant serves meals eight hours a day, seven days a week, it works out to 42 cents per hour per table—making the Presto cheaper than even the very cheapest waiter. Moreover, no manager needs to train it, replace it if it quits, or offer it sick days. And it doesn't forget to take off the cheese, walk off for 20 minutes, or accidentally offend with small talk, either. 
 
 E La Carte also boasts that the consoles help with customer retention, keeping order histories for individual guests and letting them fill out surveys and request forms. Restaurants can use that information to follow up or offer discounted items. The company also says the consoles boost average check sizes by 10 to 12 percent, by making it easier to up-charge (want to add fries for $1?) and accommodate "impulse orders" (I want fries!). 
 
 But the company faces some serious challenges. The software is not particularly advanced, so E La Carte has competitors. The more-established Ziosk, from Dallas-based TableTop Media, offers a very similar product that has been in use in restaurants like Chili's and California Pizza Kitchen, for instance. The company recently won a spot in a Pepsi-sponsored incubator program , meaning a broader rollout might be on the horizon. It's also possible that big efficiency-focused chains, such as Olive Garden owner Darden Restaurants, might develop proprietary systems for themselves. 
 
 The existence of that competition raises a second concern. The tech is not too technical. The cost savings seem self-evident. Yet such systems are not in broad use. There are probably a few reasons why. First, labor costs are not 42 cents per table per hour, but they actually aren't much more than that. Many waiters earn as little as $2 or $3 an hour, making the rest of their living in tips. Second, installing the system means paying some up-front costs and taking on some serious risk. Many customers like being waited on in restaurants and pay to dine out in part for the experience of being coddled, cared for, and catered to by some beaming teenager wearing 48 pieces of flair. 
 
 Finally, there is the question of the tablet. E La Carte's is sturdy—designed to be manhandled, spilled on, dropped, and poked. But is it really baby-, margarita-, and idiot-proof? What happens if it looks dingy and old and clunky after a few months? What happens if the computer slows? What happens if someone comes along with an app that allows everyone to order right from their Droids or their iPhones?
– Once upon a time, an average worker with average skills could expect an average lifestyle in America—but not anymore. "Today, average is officially over," writes Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Average people can't expect the lifestyle they used to enjoy, because "employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation, and cheap genius." The chief culprits, of course, are globalization—which allows companies like Apple to produce iPods more efficiently overseas—and technology, which always has and always will eliminate jobs. Consider for instance this Slate piece about an iPad-like device that threatens to destroy even a usually reliable service position like waiters. So how can we respond to the trend? Bolster education. Whatever change comes, "one thing we know for sure," Friedman argues, is that "the best jobs will require workers to … make themselves above average."