Job loses to automation/digital disruption are spreading to services sector as well. In light of this, how should our education sector refocus their approaches in learning and development? We may be already lagging behind on this much needed refocus task.
http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/pm/job-losses-to-automation-to-increase-in-services-sector/9113482?section=business
While there have been optimistic predictions that new technology would increase prosperity and lower drudgery, very few of us are working the 15-hour work throughout the week In other words, the jobs themselves won’t entirely vanish; rather, they will be redefined. It’s likely they’ll lack the new skillsets required for the role and be out of a job anyway.
While there have been optimistic predictions that new technology would increase prosperity and lower drudgery, very few of us are working the 15-hour work throughout the week In other words, the jobs themselves won’t entirely vanish; rather, they will be redefined. It’s likely they’ll lack the new skillsets required for the role and be out of a job anyway.
I think digitization and automation are impacting, and will continue to impact, an increasingly wide spectrum of jobs, not limited to manufacturing and agriculture. They have majorly been impacting medicine, for example, the transportation industry, communications industry, retail, just about all aspects of the economy.
The problem I see is that we assume that with automation, jobs are lost, and people will sit by idle with nothing to do. But that's not the way humans function. The human condition is that people need to find something useful to do. If you aren't busy 24 hours a day, hunting for food, hauling water, and gethering firewood, it does NOT mean that you will sit around doing nothing. It means, instead, that you will have time to design that better shelter, central heating, indoor plumbing, automated transportation systems, communications systems, and so on, to improve quality of life.
There is no reason to believe that we have done all we can to improve quality of life, and that therefore, any new amount of automation will merely put people out of work. This is the underlying message I see in all such discussions. However I think it is flawed reasoning. If that taxi driver is put out of work by autonomous taxis, he will have the opportunity of doing something different, to enhance quality of life for everyone else. Just like that hunter/forager did, when he had time on his hands to build warmer homes for people.
It's also affecting higher education, as seen in the proliferation of online programs. While I don't think online programs typically provide the quality of education that residential programs do, many institutions generate as much if not more revenue through their online programs as they do their residential programs. Job candidates who are able to teach online courses are more likely to be hired than those who can only teach in the classroom.
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