The prospect of your job being automated is increasing. The convergence of neuroscience, computing, biology and engineering has already made robotic prosthetics a reality and everyone carries a small thinking machine so that they can remember phone numbers, birthdays etc (media device/phone).
We are certainly choosing a future in which we don’t work. We haven’t addressed the consequences in a thoughtful way evidenced by the unchanged platitudes by politicians, ongoing agglomeration of industry and commerce (get big to survive) with its attendant pyramid of wages (little at the bottom, inconceivable wealth at the top) and public education systems still modelled on the factory.
If you’re in school maybe you won’t have a job when you get out. Conjecture by scientists has produced a report, ‘The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to automation’, which projects the likelihood of jobs being computerised. If you’re a recreational therapist you’re probably ok. If you’re pressing buttons on a machine or stacking shelves, things aren’t so bright.
The appendix lists 700 jobs and their probability of computerisation. or go to the BBC lookup facility here: Will a robot take your job?
Will new jobs be created? Sure. But there is clearly a fast divergence between the what people want and the supply of human jobs because at the moment popular culture eschews doing chores or even “work” but demands convenience. Unwittingly we are choosing a future without people …
Of course in 20 years when an android looks like a person, that won’t matter. Terminator anyone?
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