The technology storm
According to a new industry report, by 2020 as many as 80% manual labor jobs will be replaced by robots and 60% of the office jobs will also change by software automation. Technology will impact every society, every business and transform the way people live and work. Soon many current jobs will disappear when others will grow fast and there will be many new jobs emerge, that do not even exist today. All of these jobs will require knowledge and skills in science and technology.
In the next decade, technology will drive everything, change everything with new products and new ways of working. To survive everybody must learn these technologies and adjust to changes. Of course, how fast things change will depend on the industry itself. For example, manufacturing has been changing quickly in the past few years and automation and robots are being used to replace millions of labor workers. News and Entertainment industry (i.e., Newspaper, Magazine, TV, Movies, Video, Music etc.) are also changing as the number of users of paper books, published newspapers are decreasing rapidly when the use of e-books, multimedia, facebooks, Twitters are increasing. Many TV channels are being replaced by streaming technology over the Internet. Banking, financial and investment companies are using Big data analytics and Artificial Intelligence machines to conduct business and trades instead of human resulting in thousands of business people are now unemployed. Mobile technology and cloud computing technology are already impacting the way people who work in offices as companies begin to lay off workers. Soon 3D printing and advanced materials will change more things in the construction industry, anything that can be built will be “printed” by 3D machines.
An economist lamented: “We are in the middle of a huge technology storm but nobody knows when it will end, as we see no end in sight.This storm will destroy many economies, as unemployment and poverty are reaching a certain level, chaotic will happen and topple everything, change everything and we all will face an uncertain future and nobody knows what will happen next. ” Of course, change will not wait for anyone. If you do not change, you will be left behind and eliminated. If a company does not change, it will not survive as competitors will seize the opportunity. Out of 500 largest company in the world in the 20thcentury, only 167 are still operating. If traditional public schools do not change, they will be replaced by private schools, online schools, or Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Without a proper education for its citizens, a country cannot defend itself or survive in this globally competitive environment. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is already here, it is happening everywhere and every government must actively take actions to retraining and prepare their people so everyone can benefit from these changes.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
