I rise to us

“You will hear a lot in the coming years about technological unemployment. New discoveries of ways to save labor use exceed the rate at which we find new uses for labor. Soon we will reach a point, much sooner than we think, when economic needs will be met and we would rather devote our energy to non-economic purposes. ”

Robots that serve customers and make sushi: It’s just the beginning of everything we’ll still experience with the 4th Industrial Revolution. Impossible to talk about the future of work without talking about autonomous vehicles replacing drivers. But we don’t see that they can end up with at least 50 professions, according to futurist Thomas Frey. These include a driving school instructor, a traffic reporter, a radar installer, and a breathalyzer applicator. How not to be afraid of this?

But it is not today that technology is a work-destroying machine. Operational functions have been replaced by automation for many years. What remains? Identify and solve others’ problems with creativity and innovation.

If you want your professional asset to remain attractive, you need to understand the difference between transferable skills and technical skills. The latter are used to perform tasks and easily passed on to robots and artificial intelligence. The former are used to solve problems and can be applied in different contexts. I don’t see robots being creative, testing the frontier of science and connecting seemingly disconnected ideas.

Part of the future is foreseeable, some not. To stay connected to the future, I only see one option: use some of our time and money to invest our entire life in micro-education. And in pro bono or revenue-generating projects that increasingly develop transferable skills and our network of relationships. As Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn says, what counts today is the “I Rise to Us”. Alone we will not go far.

Finally, I dream of the day when we will really have more leisure. The opening article is from 1930. Written by John Maynard Keynes in Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren. Another Keynes hole.

Article originally published on GaúchaZH portal and Zero Hora newspaper.