If your old enough you might remember how different life was before the internet. It was practically a different world. Think of how many people were impacted negatively in the growing pains of that progress. If history teaches us anything it is that it repeats, and if we want to avoid becoming a victim of progress we must focus on increasing the skills of ourselves and the next generation.
Whatever the cause, the quality of our education is declining. This makes it hard for businesses to find workers with the skills that are required to step up to new rolls in developing and maintaining automation. On top of that we are in the brink of the Augmented Age which is throwing a learning curve to students while adapting to Artificial Intelligence.
This announcedmovement toward progress will inevitably hurt people in our economy by replacing some major roles humans play in the workforce today. Take driving for example. Elon Musk owner of Tesla Motors has announced that self driving cars can roll out in as early as two years! Think of how many people in our economy rely on this skill to acquire a living wage. Once this form of automation gains steam, driving could go the way of the horse and buggy. If driving is your best or only skill then you will quickly hit poverty.
In fact up to 80% of the roles humans have today could be replaced by automation. So what do we do? We work on continually building our skills. We move to the next step in everything we do. If you use Microsoft Excel, then you need to learn Visual Basics and write macros. If you operate or set up a machine for manufacturing, then you need to learn how to write the programs and read the G-code for that machine. Even if you have a WordPress account to make a website for you, you need to learn the HTML-code.
Not only must we do this for ourselves but we must have patience with the adaptation of our children and young coworkers who are stuck between old education and new. Parents and companies must step up and fill the gaps left behind in our education system and evolving technology by implementing training for performance. This will ensure that people with dedication will have access to a living wage. We need to focus on education which is still not jeopardized by the Augmented Age (yet). Focusing on fields that will add value to others like nursing, or teaching will make us masters over machines. I think we can all agree that it is far more desirable to work like the master over the machine.
-Brandon