Now and in the future, with software, robotic automation, and even more so AI, jobs are actually disappearing for the first time ("software is eating the world" so to speak).
Examples from the era of the steam engine and the advent of electricity when faced with what's possible with advanced technology like AI, modern automation and 21st century internet and software are not really applicable.
That said, it's not that mankind cannot manage this. But it cannot manage it in the ways it had in the past -- this will only lead to the marginalization of large parts of society. It can only manage it with political action: 4 and 3 day work weeks being mandatory, universal income schemes and other such measures.
Even right now, when software is eating the world, unemployment in the US is low and decreasing. The disaster is a bit like that my new diet, it always is happening soon :)
That's less like actual history, and more like a retelling of it as some inevitable repeated story.
If by people, you mean the ones whose jobs/skills became deprecated, then yes, they didn't know where new jobs will come from, and tons of them didn't get new jobs anyway.
But the industrialists in general knew they will have needs for tons of workers in the new factories -- and in fact the government then (in England, etc) passed laws that made sure they "encouraged" (forced) millions of farmers and such to urbanize and become factory workers.
The difference is that now we know of no such need.
>Even right now, when software is eating the world, unemployment in the US is low and decreasing.
Mostly by cheating: counting tons of low quality, low pay, part time (not as a choice) jobs, not counting people who have worked in the past X months, not counting tons of people outside certain narrow criteria that still don't translate to actual jobs, etc :)
E.g.:
The unemployment rate dropped because people unable to find jobs ceased looking and are no longer counted as being in the labor force. If you are unemployed but not considered part of the labor force, you are not included when unemployment is measured. The BLS says that in May there were 1.7 million Americans who “wanted and were available for work,” but “were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.” In other words, the unemployment rate is a useless measure of unemployment, just as the consumer price index no longer measures inflation. What were once useful statistical measures have been converted into good news propaganda.
You have to (1) demonstrate that you understand how this very counterintuitive historical fact happened and (2) give a plausible theory for why it's different now, for me to even begin taking talk like this seriously.