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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...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @12:18PM
I don't have an answer to your points - working only on free-as-in-freedom software does screw the software developer's chances of making a great living.
However, I have a counter point: everyone that isn't a software developer. Why can't you play Atari, Intellivision, Nintendo 64, or Sega games on a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360? Because Sony and Microsoft say so. Why can't your television service DVR stream Kodi content from your own media server (even if that Kodi content is a family home movie and completely legal)? Because Comcast and Verizon say so. Why can't your AT&T phone transfer to the Sprint network? Because AT&T says so. Why can't you put a newer version of Android with the latest security fixes on many older Android devices or for that matter on iPhones that no longer get hardware support? Because the Android vendors often lock down the boot loader and Apple always locks it down. Why can't you use Facebook without them bombarding you with ads and using clickbait tactics to try to addict you to the site? Because you have no control over what they do, and that's how they maximize profits.
So proprietary software makes developers rich, and more importantly makes the employers of developers rich. But it screws consumers with locked devices, unwanted features that only benefit the vendors, and planned obsolescence that increases consumer costs and wastes perfectly fine devices.
And to be clear, I'm not advocating socialism here. Lowering consumer costs and giving them more freedom to use things they bought is still completely compatible with capitalism.