What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?
At this point, it would need to be something AI / robots won’t possibly be able to do better, faster, cheaper in the near term. This leaves jobs for which one’s humanity is a central part of the job. Unfortunately, I suck at many aspects of being a human. Maybe I’ll become a robot and beat them at their own game.
List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.
Well, I just read Shoji Morimoto’s Rental Person Who Does Nothing, about a job of the same name, and that sounds like a sweet gig. Sorcerer sounds like an exciting career path. Finally, cowbell and tambourine guy sounds great for someone who has no musical talent but who would like to be in a rock-n-roll band.
To recap: 1.) Rental Person Who Does Nothing; 2.) Sorcerer; 3.) Cowbell / Tambourine artist in a rock-n-roll band.
Nurse. I think it takes a tremendous level of humility and compassion. Also, I suspect it may be among the last handful of human jobs (as we know them now) to still exist once AI-robots start doing pretty much all productive tasks better, faster, and more efficiently than humans. I think long after our doctors are machines, we will have human nurses.
Kipling called prostitution
The world's oldest profession.
Now, I'm pretty sure that it
Will be the last, as well:
The last professional endeavor --
The last profitable activity --
That humans do better than
Machines.
Whores will be the last holdouts
To shift from being workers
To being Artists of Humanity. . .
Or - maybe - they will be
The first in that, as well.
Technology has changed everything, for good and for ill. It’s the source of our vast growth in productivity, but also at the heart of our modern crises (e.g. I’m almost certain that no caveman ever experienced “imposter syndrome.” But like other crises of modernity, I suspect that technological dependence and an ever-continuing trend toward ultra-specialization are its cause.)
I count myself fortunate to be of an age to (probably) miss the (rapidly approaching) day when machines and artificial intelligence do all “productive tasks” better, faster, and with far less energy consumption than a human being. I don’t think most of humanity will be prepared for that day, and it will – in all likelihood – go down catastrophically. [I think we’re seeing the cracks in the dam already.]
I spend more and more time with the only technology-proof sector of which I’m aware: building a more capable human being.
I believe if every person spent some time learning skills like primitive living (sustainable wilderness survival skills) or unarmed martial arts (that train against armed opponents) society would be much better off. I pick these two as examples of skill sets that give practitioners a deep confidence in themselves [not in themselves + technologies that they can’t build, can’t fix, and which they don’t really understand.] I suspect that the core self-empowerment that would result would ease away much of the general shittiness of character we are increasingly prone to see in the world, shittiness that — like all shittiness — is ultimately rooted in fear.
What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?
1.) Teaching English as a Second / Other / Foreign Language
2.) Grand Emperor of the Spiral Arm
[Takes a deep breath…] policeman, food service worker, writer, editor, inspector, martial arts instructor, yoga instructor, laborer, project manager [/ cat-wrangler,] content developer… Those are the ones that spring to mind anyway.
Poet, Philosopher, Philosopher-Poet.
“What do you want to BE when you grow up?”
They ask you when you’re just a little pup.
So, what part of what I must BE,
is different from the me you see?
Dad thought, “the part that they’ll pay you for.”
Like an allowance for finishing a chore?
“Yes, young man, but you can safely assume,
no one else will pay you to clean your room.”
Kids don’t think of being gainfully employed.
Which seems to make grownups quite annoyed.
At five, I wanted to be a cowboy.
“Son, there’s no jobs in that line of employ.”
That’s OK, then I’ll be an Indian.
“You’d have to be born that way, my friend.”
I wasn’t born a doctor, but you said that’s OK.
“That’s not the same, son, what can I say?”
I know what then, Dad, I’ll be the Batman!
“Come on, son, that’s not a feasible plan.”
You’re thinking Superman, Batman has no powers.
“Bruce Wayne by day, Batman at night, where’s the sleeping hours.”
You have a point there, you’ve got me stumped.
Thinking myself prematurely defunct.
I’ve been reading World War Z because I had heard it’s an interesting book and because it went on sale–presumably in anticipation of the movie that comes out next week that shares a name (but probably little else besides Zombies) with the novel. I don’t usually read zombie or vampire literature because there’s so much of it and rarely does it offer anything new or intriguing. (Once one’s read Bramstoker and Matheson, what more is there to be said on the undead.) Brooks’ book is an exception. Told as a series of oral histories collected by a UN employee who serves as a quasi-protagonist–but not necessarily a central character–of the book, World War Z chronicles the human dimension of the Zombie War.
The book tells a series of personal vignettes from the earliest sign of the pandemic through the cleanup afterward. One of the issues that is discussed is the mismatch between the skill sets the survivors had and the skill sets that were needed to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. In one of the interviews, a bureaucrat discusses the need for job retraining because they had all these information age analysts, managers, coordinators, etc. but few people who knew how to make new things, grow food, or repair damaged infrastructure. They had all these mid-level white-collar people and they needed blue collars.
This got me thinking. To be honest, I haven’t had a job that would be useful in a post-apocalyptic wasteland since I was a 22-year-old infantry-trained law enforcement officer. Everything since then has involved life in a cubicle or small office uncovering, creating, evaluating, analyzing, describing, modifying, and disseminating information. Then there has been writing, which I love, but which isn’t exactly going to pull humanity back from extinction. (Let’s not kid ourselves that “reading is fundamental” when society has to be rebuilt from the ground up–fed, clothed, etc.)
This isn’t to say that I would be altogether useless in a post-Zombie Apocalypse world. I lived years 0 through 18 on a working farm. That was a long time ago, but I’m sure I could remember something about how to engage in activities that are actually directly related to keeping people alive (as opposed to keeping them informed.)
So will you be useful post zombie apocalypse? What would you be interested in doing if your current Dilbert-esque work life became irrelevant?
Tiger Riding for Beginners 