Think about life a 150 years ago. People on earth wouldn’t have been able to imagine the things we take for granted now – mobile devices, the internet, professional services, massive healthcare systems, expensive degrees, etc. In fact, the sight of so many of us running around like ferrets working through “deadlines” on computers would have been right out of the weirdest science fiction movie.
Oh, wait. Science fiction movies didn’t exist 150 years ago.
It is so important to keep perspective that everything we take for granted today was invented by people like us – often within the last 100 years. And, since it is all invented, it matters that we think less like system optimizers and more like system creators. It is all well to game the system and succeed. But, what happens when the system itself is changing really quickly?
This idea is going to be even more important going forward because we might soon find ourselves at a point when most “traditional” jobs are obsolete. We’ll soon need to stop to think about what makes us as humans tick. What does the world look like when most of us don’t need to work to put food on the table? Will we be measuring unemployment the way we do today? Why do we measure unemployment in the first place? What would being employed even look like?
Some thinking is definitely in order.
A Learning a Day 