It's the same old story. You hear politicians say the same things. "We need jobs, America needs jobs". I hear people like my mother, product of the Baby Boomer generation see their world view of being company men and women inexplicably wither away. As now it is expected in the modern workforce that you should only expect to be there 5 years, and even then, noting is guaranteed to you. We've seen the death kneel of protectionist economics, and now we're in the information age where full economic competition is at full scale.
But one thing that politicians will never tell you. Automation is at full force. EVERYTING either will be automated very soon. Think lasers doing majority of surgeries is absurd? Think again? Think self-driving cars is a pipe dream? Think again. Think robots are too dumb to learn? Think again. The world becoming a knowledge and technical economy isn't a matter of it, it's a matter of "when".
But does this mean that we no longer have jobs? On the contrary? As we depend more of automation solutions, we also need more and more people to maintain this complexity. Just think what is needed for a kiosk. You need a motherboard, chips, the glass for the touch screen, the power strips, the platform to hold the kiosk, custom software, etc. And no only that you need a way of managing each one of these transactions some type of way. So we take jobs away but we create them. But one may be saying...
"Well this is a job only for technical people"
And that is the basis for me writing this. How do we usher a technical society? See the world has been technical forever. But society hasn't become technical with it. People who program computers, build robots, and engage other things related to tech are considered "techies". But how do we make everyone a techie? Well the first thing is we start with education.
There was a time, when the average person who was not an elite in society couldn't even read. Now we expect everyone to know how to read. There was a time when not everyone could use a computer. Now everyone can use a computer. And there will be a time where anyone can program a computer, where anybody can build a robot, and where anybody can manage automation.
2 ways this happen is with further simplification through abstraction. As we start to create better expert systems and fix more bugs. We can learn to hide more complexity from these systems, and allow the average person to work with them. Today, even us software engineers have interfaces and APIs which allow us to build solutions even if we don't have expert functional knowledge. I can certainly seeing this being further simplified for the "average" worker.
I do think the average technical knowledge of a human is likely to come up. But the way we get there is the biggest challenge, because it's all political. See we have an education problem in society today, and the people who get the worst of it is the poor and minority groups. If there is any group that needs a renaissance in education it is these groups. Which is why I am definitely look at a way to somehow teach the disadvantage youth a technical education, that is fun, and inexpensive. We are living in the information age, but it is crucial that we empower the poor with knowledge and information. And this is where I think we need the market to find the solution.
In the future I will talk about what I feel are "must learn" subjects for children in school. And maybe some of the challenges kids can encounter when learning them, and how we come up with solutions.