The Human as a commodity

The Industrial Revolution
Charles Dickens "Hard Times"

I was reading through Charles Dickens description of the Industrial Revolution in his work "Hard Times" when I came across an interesting but incomplete idea.

Dickens speaks of humans being and how in these huge factory situations become a commodity.  Interesting Idea, but has its holes.  Although there was a time where it seemed that machinery would lead all human involvement to be simpler and simpler in creating a robotic role, that only covers part of the story.  In truth computers have led to more and more specialized tasks and areas of work.  And as for all those tasks where humans were used doing menial tasks, they have completely been replaced by their robotic colleagues.