It’s funny how you drop into habits or patterns of behaviour and then only on reflection do you realise what has happened.
For a long time now I’ve listened to books when I walk and drive and walk the dog but I also continue to read old fashioned analogue style books (one of my favourite things to do) and always run at least two books at a time, one audio and one analogue.
I’ve fallen into a pattern though of reading and listening to the same style of book at the same time for a period until I get board or exhaust the subject matter at that stage.
Sometimes this will be an exploration into fiction and new fiction, much of the time it will be an exploration into non-fiction.
This semester I’m on economics.
This was almost by chance, but I was given a book by one of my friends on recommendation called Angrynomics which is the junction between modern politics, what is going wrong in the world and why people are disenfranchised and how it is effecting the economic model.
It is completely fascinating and quite frighteningly accurate.
The second book is The-100-Year-Life which Kevin Holleron, my financial advisor left by accident (probably) when he attended one of our education events and I decided to put it on audiobook and give it a go.
The consideration of future economics is probably way beyond the stunted brain of a local tooth carpenter, but it is quite fascinating to wonder where we are going next.
My daughter has just started studying Biochemistry (think biotech) at the University of Birmingham but now she’s locked down at home doing all her lectures online, she’s just starting to work at the practice doing anything that’s needed to help get us through this period (thanks Alex for that recommendation) and so even more sharply focused is wondering what she will do for work and what it will look like and how I’m able to help her get there.
The most fascinating thing about The-100-Year-Life is that the life expectancy of people like Grace is shooting through the roof (if you believe what they say and that is not confirmed by the UK office of statistics that this covers every demographic).
It’s likely that Grace will live into her 90’s or beyond and the same for Rosie and probably even more for Callum who is 6 years behind her.
It’s even more likely that this will happen if they move out of the UK (that’s a staggering thought isn’t it).
And so, the study into economics in this semester is driven not only by my own interest to find out about new things but also in a selfish interest to protect my children.
Technology will hollow out the middle of the workforce so the most basic manual labour tasks will still be carried out by some humans for some time and the most advanced and creative tasks will also, for some time at least, still be carried out by humans but the middle bit won’t.
First this will start by the devaluation of people in the middle bit until the jobs get less and less well paid and easier and easier to do by the robots.
You might think that this is a dream, but it really isn’t, all you have to do is look at a video of the Amazon warehouse and what the robots do there.
Suddenly within the next few years driverless cars will first appear and then driven cars will disappear quite quickly after that.
Imagine you owned a Taxi company and for a one off hit you could invest entirely in driverless cars, that’s not going to go down well with your taxi drivers.
Imagine you were Eddie Stobart.
Imagine you were British Airways!
And so large chunks of the population will lose their jobs because the jobs will disappear, and economics will change again.
With a world that changes so fast it’s impossible to look into the future to any great degree (it was never possible anyway) but if I were 20 I would be anticipating the fact that I will have multiple careers through my life, part of my life will be spent retraining as one career starts to run out and I jump to the next.
I’ve watched clever people do this for long enough, medical professionals who jumped into technology or senior management or business as the work that they did changed and altered.
It’s not necessarily a new thing, it will just become more common.
Soon enough my interest in economics will wane and I’ll get into a new subject for a new semester (possibly in nanotechnology or cryptocurrency) but it won’t change the fact that 5 years from now things will be very different again.
Blog Post Number - 2564
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