Very soon very few of us will have a job. My book - You Don't Need a Job - explains why and what to do about this. Some have thought that I have been an alarmist. If you think that you are safe and don't have to get ready for a new world, have aread of this article in today's TechCrunch.
Here is the best descriprion I have yet seen by Jon Evans on the forces in play:
"Let’s take a specific example: Google’s self-driving cars. What happens when they finally make their way onto American highways en masse? (Which, to be fair, Kurzweilpredicted for 2019 back in 1999.) What happens if and when it turns out that they’re much safer than human drivers? Insurance costs will make human driving very expensive, and fewer vehicles will be sold–partly because cars will last longer, partly because fractional ownership of a pool of self-driving vehicles will make more economic sense than having your own.
Improved safety, lower insurance overheads, more efficiency–that’s all great, right? Sure! Of course it is! …Unless you’re one of the more than 2 million truck and taxi drivers out of work.
Self-driving cars are a striking example of software eating jobs, but far from the only one. Almost every job, in every field, probably including yours, will increasingly be threatened by obsolescence and/or automation. That’s a simple and inevitable corollary of software eating the world and the concomitant increasing rate of change. As that rate accelerates, technology will soon start destroying jobs faster than it creates them…if it isn’t already.
Think it can’t happen to you? Already “many of the jobs being displaced are high-skill and high-wage; the downside of technology isn’t limited to menial workers,” warns Krugman. The Economistconcurs. Krugman goes on to add: “Still, can innovation and progress really hurt large numbers of workers, maybe even workers in general? I often encounter assertions that this can’t happen. But the truth is that it can, and serious economists have been aware of this possibility for almost two centuries.”
Mead argues in The Blue Elites Are Wrong that the information revolution is like the industrial revolution, and will lead to “empowering ordinary people.” Which, again, is true–eventually. Whether you believe that new and better jobs will be created, or whether you’re willing to think a little biggerand imagine that we’ve finally begun the slow evolution towards a post-scarcity society built around reputation economies rather than “jobs” as we understand them, almost all of these new disruptive technologies will ultimately be good for everyone. I’m no Luddite.
But in the interim, until we retool our societies around these new technologies and new economic realities, the next few decades will be extremely difficult for many people who have grown accustomed to thinking of themselves as middle class. Not everyone can become a computer programmer, genetic counselor, or startup CEO; a whole lot of Mead’s “ordinary people” will be stripped of their jobs and left behind in debt, poverty, and despair. No wonder the rich and skilled are doing their level best to entrench themselves at the top of our soon-to-be-rapidly-narrowing economic pyramid.
I’ve tried to make a point here by citing sources across America’s traditional and tedious left/right divide. This is bigger than that. (To the rest of the world: I’m sorry for fixating on the USA here. I’m not even American myself. But it’s almost certainly going to happen here first. Watch carefully.) If left-versus-right is the only lens through which you can view the world, then you really need to start thinking outside the box in which you have jailed yourself. Because everything will soon be changing, faster and faster, and I assure you that the future will be weirder than we imagine now–and you’ll need a flexible mind if you hope to prosper and thrive."
So what to do? Please give my short book a whirl - I have done my best to offer you up a hopeful and a pragmatic alternative.
