McKinsey's Disruptive Technologies Report

The McKinsey Global Institute recently issued its report on disruptive technologies that will transform life, business and the global economy. Among these technologies - mobile internet, automation of knowledge work, the Internet of things, cloud computing, 3D printing (my vote for most disruptive technology), advanced genomics and so on. Many of these technologies will indeed make life and business better - they could truly revolutionize medicine, manufacturing, safety and provision of services, among other things. All this should be welcomed, but there is a price to be paid, mostly at the lower end of the labor spectrum.   I have long been critical of people who moan about the loss of "good jobs" when they themselves have failed to keep their skills sharp or changed with changing demand. But as technology scales, and even lower level knowledge work becomes automated (ie, more voice recognition hell, but perhaps somewhat improved), how are we as a country to deal with those whose intellectual skills and ability just aren't up to (an ever-accelerating) speed?  We have always had room in the economy for drawers of water and hewers of wood; those jobs were replaced by lower-tech service jobs. What happens when those lower-tech service jobs become automated? What do we do then? Mc Kinsey recognizes this -"It is not surprising that new technologies make certain forms of human labor unnecessary or economically uncompetitive...this has been a repeated phenomenon since the Industrial Revolution". True, but in each of those previous instances the new positions that were created required skills that the masses could adapt to quickly. Now, the greater and greater need for brainpower is leaving a greater and greater percentage of the population unable (regardless of their motivation) to find work. McKinsey's answer is an evasion of sorts - "Business leaders and policy makers will need to find ways to realize the benefits of these technologies while creating new, innovative ways of working and providing new skills to the workforce". Even leaving aside our perpetual "crisis" in education, this last statement seems lacking. What seems more likely is an increased division and distance between manual labor (to the extent not replaced by robotics) and intellectual labor, with the latter category getting more and more concentrated at the top. I don't want to sound negative in light of the many amazing benefits we will reap as a society from all these technologies; I just want to make sure that as technology inexorably marches forward, we can have a sustained and inclusive (OMG, did I actually say that) economy along with it.