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Not long ago, schoolchildren chose what they wanted to be when they grew up, and later selected the best college they could gain admission to, spent years gaining proficiency in their fields, and joined a company that had a need for their skills. Careers lasted lifetimes.
Now, by my estimates, the half-life of a career is about 10 years. I [Vivek Wadhwa] expect that it will decrease, within a decade, to five years. Advancing technologies will cause so much disruption to almost every industry that entire professions will disappear. And then, in about 15–20 years from now, we will be facing a jobless future, in which most jobs are done by machines and the cost of basic necessities such as food, energy and health care is negligible — just as the costs of cellphone communications and information are today. We will be entering an era of abundance in which we no longer have to work to have our basic needs met. And we will gain the freedom to pursue creative endeavors and do the things that we really like.
I am not kidding. Change is happening so fast that our children may not even need to learn how to drive. By the late 2020s, self-driving cars will have proven to be so much safer than human-driven ones that we will be debating whether humans should be banned from public roads; and clean energies such as solar and wind will be able to provide for 100 percent of the planet's energy needs and cost a fraction of what fossil fuel– and nuclear-based generation does today.
In other words, every industry is disruptible by technology. Presumably, banking and punditry are forever?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by khallow on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:47AM
People really have no idea just how bad things have gotten in the last 60 years. It's something you have to visualize because most humans can't intuitively grasp raw numbers at that scale.
Let us keep in mind that 95% of the world's population doesn't live in the US and two thirds of the world's population has seen a considerable increase [voxeu.org] in their wealth (with a decline in global wealth inequality as a direct result). We should be asking why the US isn't fully sharing in this boon rather than hand-wringing over a modest stagnation that didn't happen outside of the US and a few other developed world countries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:51PM
You mean to say there are things outside of the US? I was told there were dragons there...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @04:02PM
Please provide citations not backed by a think tank.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 30 2015, @10:40PM
Please provide citations not backed by a think tank.
I don't feel like it. The flimsy basis of your rejection doesn't indicate to me that there's much to be gained from searching for more evidence.