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The Future of Work Is Uncertain, Schools Should Worry Now

posted by mrpg on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the robot-scare-fad dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Weep for the future?

Today's 6th graders will hit their prime working years in 2030.

By that time, the "robot apocalypse" could be fully upon us. Automation and artificial intelligence could have eliminated half the jobs in the United States economy.

Or, plenty of jobs could still exist, but today's students could be locked in a fierce competition for a few richly rewarded positions requiring advanced technical and interpersonal skills. Robots and algorithms would take care of what used to be solid working- and middle-class jobs. And the kids who didn't get that cutting-edge computer science course or life-changing middle school project? They'd be relegated to a series of dead-end positions, serving the elites who did.

Alternatively, maybe Bill Gates and Elon Musk and the other big names ringing the alarm are wrong. A decade from now, perhaps companies will still complain they can't find employees who can read an instruction manual and pass a drug test. Maybe workers will still be able to hold on to the American Dream, so long as they can adjust to incremental technological shifts in the workplace.

Which vision will prove correct?

30 years into the Information Revolution and schools are only just now realizing they should teach kids how to code...

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @08:11AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @08:11AM (#610183)

    Get over your irrational hero worship and recognize that RMS HAD NO LONG TERM PLAN for how his free software movement would affect the future. The upper crust tech moguls are billionaires now because they built their empires upon the slave labor of naive volunteers who were paid nothing for their work.

    GNU and Linux have not freed the downtrodden masses yearning for free software. The tech giants took free software and used it to enslave the masses. RMS convinced the downtrodden masses to contribute to the very software that would be used to enslave them.

    Every programmer who is starving today is starving because of the GNU Manifesto and RMS himself is to blame.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 15 2017, @09:11AM

    by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Friday December 15 2017, @09:11AM (#610203) Homepage
    At no point did the GPL prevent people making money from code, nor was that ever RMS's plan. Show me the clause in the GPL that you think means "you may not sell your software for profit".
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves