Future prediction: 2 billion jobs to disappear by 2030?

[UniqueMixture]

Futurist Thomas Frey predicts that over 2 billion jobs will disappear by 2030, roughly 50% of all the jobs on the planet.

Industries that will go away (with some news jobs created):

The power industry (micro grids)
Automobile transportation (going driverless)
Education (OpenCourseware replacing teachers) Manufacturing (3D printers and bots taking over).

What do you guys think about this? What would be the impact on society? Can technology do more harm than good? Are there ways to advance in socially responsible way? Who gives a damn about those affected? Is this just a bunch of hype/hogwash?

Related notes: I'm not sure how microgrids work, but I have heard of a lot of research into WiTricity (wireless power distribution) and I wonder if this is based on that.

Here is a picture of a dress created using 3D printing technology:

 

[EvidenceOfRedemption]

Isn't gonna happen. We are never going to make every building out of the same material just so we can use 3-D printers instead of builders and traditional materials (which, by the way, are chosen for good reasons). This is the same flawed cart before the horse thinking behind every "futurist"prediction.

Here is a quote from his website... "If your next project is not aligned with the problems, needs, and desires of the future, the future is going to kill it." Although this is true, it's also pretty much common sense. The problem remains, what is the "problems, needs, and desires" of the future? I can guarantee you nobody is saying "these buildings take so long to build, if there was any way to build them faster we'd do it... even if it meant making the whole thing out of plastic".

There is already a word for this concept, it's called marketing, which is exactly what this guy is doing... he's selling what he claims is knowledge of the "problems, needs, and desires" of the future to start-up business people. What he's really doing is just taking a intriguing concept (which naturally appeals to the personalities of start-up business people) and creating a theory that makes it seem like a vital technology, just like he's making this so called knowledge seem vital. It's putting the cart before the horse, so neither is the case, not even close. Just some meta-irony for you.


Here's an example of reality vs this kind of "futurist" utopian fantasy. Everyone says "if I had a time machine I'd go back in time and buy Microsoft stock in the 1980s" but back then you wouldn't have recognized Microsoft from any other number of start up businesses. Essentially all these people are trying to do is capture today's Microsoft before it happens but they are wasting their time.

There is no magic formula, chance happens to everybody.

 

[Turtledove]

40 years ago, they said that technology will be doing the work for us and that we will become less active in the workplace since the machines do a lot of the work. That's not entirely true, it has just stressed us out more.

The point: some jobs but not all jobs that involves manual labor like construction. Besides, machines derp more than humans in my opinion.

 

[UniqueMixture]

How is this a utopian fantasy? I figure IF it were to pass it'd be cataclysmic

 

[MacGuffin]

I remember when computers were going to make offices mostly paperless and save trees.

Now, if there's an error on pg. 67 of a 212 page document, they throw the whole thing out and reprint it because it's so easy to print with computers.

 

[Lateralus]

I don't think he has accounted for peoples' resistance to change. I don't disagree that this will happen eventually, but 2030 is way too soon.

 

[RaptorWizard]

Here is a good video of the splendors of the future!

 

[Lark]

How is this a utopian fantasy? I figure IF it were to pass it'd be cataclysmic

There's a good dystopia written about this very thing, although following a revolt which results in all the tech being destroyed because of unemployment a group gathers around a machine which dispenses food or drink and one of them gets out a screwdriver and repairs it and while eating or drinking they realise that the anti-tech rioting is doomed to failure and the cycle will repeat itself. Its a pretty gloomy book, I read an extract in the Faber book of Utopias, which to honest is more about dystopic fiction and uses utopia or utopianism in a prejorative sense of the world.

 

[UniqueMixture]

I don't think it's so much technology that needs to be destroyed. More like our chimpanzee culture and the physical patterns associated with that.

 

[Tiltyred]

Computers have done away with at least half of all secretarial jobs, and I see even fewer to come in the future. That's a fact.