That young man with the waxed mustache and gallic countenance is my son Cole, age seven. We’ve been studying division, going on long walks with Sadie the dog, and thinking about walking together all the way across the USA, which would require by our calculation 138 days of walking with no days off. This has made Cole very sad because he’s done a further calculation and concluded that he is unlikely to have 138 consecutive days available until he’s well into his 20’s and by that time he figures I’ll be dead.
Kids have a thousand ways of breaking your heart.
Sentiment aside, Cole might well be correct. He’s a busy kid and I’m an older father. When he is 25 I’ll be 76. And while I don’t expect to be dead at that age, Cole quite pragmatically looks at my father — Grandpa Ray, who died at 70 — as a pretty good predictor. Cole actually thinks about this stuff.
And it has made me do some thinking, too, like what advice I can give Cole and his two brothers should I be unable to guide and protect them as long as I have been planning to?
Our society, culture, and economy have turned to quagmires all at the same time. Nothing is as it was nor is anything even like it appears to be, so how does a seven year-old prepare for the future? “What will you be when you grow up?” is a much harder question than it used to be.
There are near term and longer term implications to this question. In the near term how do we creatively respond to jobs going overseas? In the longer term what happens if Ray Kurzweil is correct and the Singularity rolls along in 2029 or so and humans suddenly become little more than parasites on a digital Earth?
The easy answer to this problem has been the same since the 1960s — become Paul McCartney. But how many Beatles can the world sustain?
My friend George Morton has a daughter (I know nothing about those — wrong datatype) facing the same quagmires as my sons, so here’s a synthesis of our thinking.
Remember the old Robin Williams joke about his son’s future: “Hello Mr. President” or “Do you want fries with that?” Career planning at this point probably requires a combination of serendipitous opportunity plus being curious. This in turn requires an educated mind that allows for serendipity to play a large role in discovering opportunities and staying just outside of your comfort zone.
We start with a Catch-22: You can’t get a job because no one will ever hire you. Now what are you going to do about it? The answer is of course everyone works for themselves, there are no employees, and everyone is just a subcontractor.
There are two times this really sucks — when you don’t have a job and when you see your current job going away. Many of us are in both situations nearly all the time. I know I am.
How do you educate yourself to deal with the changes in your business knowing that whatever you do is going to be replaced by a computer sometime in the future? First concentrate on the structural parts of any enterprise that are likely to never go away, computers or no: 1) finance; 2) marketing; 3) production or service.
The key change in any industry is the delivery method. Change the method of distribution and you change the business model. iTunes destroyed record stores, digital cameras destroyed Polaroid and Kodak; the list goes on. The key change was distribution.
Look, for example, at what’s happening to Electronic Arts (EA). It was pinball versus Pac Man, then PC’s with retail distribution, then Internet distribution, now smart phones. Every time the distribution system changed so did the price point, which is now down to 99 cents. EA still doesn’t know how to build Angry Birds. iTunes changed the distribution system for users and developers so now it doesn’t look good for EA at 99 cents.
Note on my EA crack from an EA employee — “Battlefield 3, an ‘old school game’ retailing at $60 just broke records and sold 5 million copies DAY ONE. FIFA 12 did 3.2 million end of September. There is plenty of life in the old dogs yet.” I’d note, however, that they are old dogs.
Change like this is rapidly coming to every industry. Talk to book editors, as I sometimes do, and hear the terror in their voices. What if books simply go away?
Getting, keeping or making that future job starts with understanding the distribution system and your place in that process. And to survive even mid-term the key is to position yourself as the linchpin. Your knowledge has to be critical to the success or failure of the process. That would seem to call for specialization but specialists often don’t see the ball even coming. You need a broader view.
But not an MBA. Those will go away. So will MD’s, CPA’s, and even CCIE’s, replaced with new acronyms for new certificates, so be ready to get a new label every few years.
Where you live counts as much as anything else, too, so position yourself in a city that has high serendipity. Any kid living with his parents in Palo Alto can get a job today simply because he already has a place to live. No skills required.
If you want to be in finance, going to Alabama is not going to help you develop the next big financial idea, but Boston, New York, London, Chicago will. If you want to play with new business opportunities in IT, you get the picture. So for an education; are you going to a school that helps you to develop serendipitous opportunities for your lifetime?
Go to a second or fourth grade teacher or even a high school guidance counselor with these ideas and they think you are crazy, but that’s part of the problem — the educational establishment is as reactive (and sometimes as reactionary) as any other government agency. They have no better ideas than we do what to do with our kids.
Jaron Lanier once told me that you can have enough money, enough power, but you can never have enough experience, so I plan to give my kids as much experience as they can handle, keeping in mind the fact that even post-Singularity it may still matter more who you know than what you know.
Live in the coolest place, I tell Cole and his brothers. Have the coolest friends. Do the coolest things. Learn from everything you do. Be open to new opportunities. And do something your father hasn’t yet figured how to do, which is every few years take off 138 days and just walk the Earth.
i think you’ve filled out the picture of what my father used to say “your time will be the time of the specialists”, he passed away in the 1992 your column reminds me of all the advice he gave me and wish i had for all for all those things that never came up.
138 days in a block is hard, but taken as a series of smaller chunks is doable, should be done. For twenty years I spent Dec 26th to 1st Jan (summer in Australia) following a marathon canoe race, first with one son, then the younger one. Men’s Secret Business.
MBAs going away? A thought-provoking scenario. However, as long as there are young people who are not sure about what profession, industry or administrative function (such as marketing or finance) they want to work in, there will be a steady demand for the MBA degree, which promise greater career flexibility (moving between different types of jobs) combined with a good income.
Perhaps in combination with something else more specialized and to the point, but I find it hard to see how MBAs are useful AT ALL. The more general parts of the degree come naturally with experience and the more technical aspects are often behind the true state-of-the-art. In a fast moving business culture my experience is that MBAs rarely catch up. Of course it might be a very valid opportunity for serendipity, helping network with other fast-trackers. Too bad that generally comes with student loans attached.
Except I’ve noticed that when you tell your bosses that X should be the strategy and its going to cost Y amount to do it. You’re frequently ignored. When they hire a consultant with a MBA to come in and who makes the same recommendations, suddenly its achievable. To quote one of your very early pieces, no one got fired for buying IBM. I think its the same effect. No one gets fired for hiring a consultant with an MBA.
They may not get fired for hiring an MBA, but they may go out of business.
I agree with Cringley, MBAs are pretty much worthless. They like generals, are always fighting the last war.
I notice you didn’t say anything about attorneys going away – that would have been radical and I would have loved to have seen those comments.
You know, for all the scorn we heap upon it, IBM has been even more successful than Apple at reinventing itself. And it’s run by MBAs (and lawyers). Just an observation.
Bob, an MBA from a decent school is part of the culling process. It gets you in the door. What happens once you get in the door is 90% up to you and 10% because of your MBA.
Nothing more, nothing less!
MBA’s might, and should, go away. Most of the economic wreckage around us is a direct result of their under skilled hands and over confident minds.
CPA’s, well that’s another thing. Something about death and taxes, we’ll always have with us, and that’s job security for the accountant.
Oh, and one other important point, even the impact of singularity cannot be predicted.
You once pointed out that visicalc, the original ‘killer app’ eliminated work that used to take legions of accountants to do, and that should have eliminated the demand for accountants, but instead, the demand for accountants only grew.
Accountants are like MBAs in that they often know the cost of something, but not its value. But it sees that they will always have a job.
I never met a good mechanic who went broke. Not an average mechanic or an overpriced mechanic, a good mechanic. Their shops are always busy. They don’t even advertise, they go by word of mouth.
I’m more basic when it comes to general advice. “Try to survive, try to take care of those you love.”
Good advice. I have friends that help people with computers at their homes and/or businesses. I have friends that just do odd jobs like carpentry. There will always be people that will not want to or be able to do things themselves.
However, I’ve always done these things and nearly everything myself. When I was still living at home, Mom’s car blew a head gasket after being ran low on water and she couldn’t afford to fix it. So I bought a book and the tools and parts I didn’t already have and I tore the heads off and replaced the gaskets. The BEST lesson you can teach them is to be able to read, comprehend, and DO ANYTHING! It starts early with bicycles and such. I once had a friend give me a bike that was a basket case and I cleaned it up, painted it, fixed the brakes, gears, etc. and sold him his bike back for $10.
In my opinion, the most important thing for them to learn is to survive regardless of what life throws at them. All they really need beyond that is a huge library. Mine’s about 1TB of ebooks and growing.
“The key word is survival on the new frontier.” – Donald Fagen
I agree with this advice – with a caveat. My mechanic is good, and busy, and about my age (The Cringe + a decade or so), and he can’t wait to retire. Why? Because all the computerization of cars is making it too hard to work on them. And forget retraining, the dirty secret is that the large auto manufs. DON’T WANT people like him taking away business from their dealerships, so they’re gradually making the capital cost of auto repair too high for the independent. I guess justice will eventually come when the Singularity takes over auto diagnosis and squeezes THEM out …
Being a mechanic is not the cats meow either. I have a friend that has his own shop. He is experienced, knowledgeable, honest and does a good work. He is barely making it. He has shown me advertisements of shops for rent. Used mechanics equipment is cheap – you can get stuff for a dime on the dollar. Dealerships are hurting too. Part of the reason for this was the cash for clunkers program – so there are a bunch of new cars that don’t need work at this point. The economy is the other reason. Oh, and I live in San Jose – a place where the economy is doing okay.
I think 75 is being overly pessimistic – advancing medical technology and taking care of yourself by doing things such as taking those walks should have you still typing columns well into your 80s (or even 90s, like Alistair Cooke.) When I last looked at my family tree, the traditional way for men to die in my family seemed to be falling off horses, so my longevity formula is to simply keep away from horses. With the employment issue, I think the society we live in can make decisions that will help keep most people in work if it chooses to. The outcome is substantially a reflection of values. Beyond that, we should seek to be curious, well rounded individuals with an ongoing capacity to learn and adapt.
Have you seen how hot Mrs. Cringe is? He’ll be lucky to make it to 65…;-)
My wife is 16 weeks pregnant. I’ll be 50 in three weeks’ time and it’s the first time for both of us. Funny thing is that earlier this year I outlived my dad who checked out when I was 10.
I hope Bob keeps going. I love reading this stuff.
I agree with the end of Bob’s article, but for different reasons and in some places in the world Bob’s advice is already heeded. Before Singularity happens, the breakdown of trust between people in the West will happen, and business as usual becomes at a point of a gun. (yes, even with CC-TV around) East Europe/Russia are good examples where trust is in the trash can. I’ve seen it when the cops shake-down business in Ukraine for money. Can Mexico’s lifestyle come to the US? Unfortunately the west needs a large shot of hope and moral cojones to combat cultural decay. In cultures where people do not trust each other at every level of society, who you know (and can trust) is more important than what you know, while having integrity and honesty could get you killed in your job or not a job at all.
This is a good follow up to your recent “Final Frontier” columns.
The advice our parents gave us clearly will not work for the next generation.
Thanks for raising the issue.
If you want a good job and don’t have the connections, then young people need to leave the US as the good jobs are getting scarce domestically. Move to East Asia, Latin America or the Middle East, and there are lots of opportunities for the enterprising and adventurous. I’ve done this and others I know have as well. The American dream now lives overseas, and today’s young people need to start realizing this before getting stuck in dead-end sales jobs paying a high tax rate with little or no services (except for a useless, bloated war budget).
I teach my children not to get a job. Jobs are for losers.
I’m reminded of an old almost-joke (“almost” because it is often true):
“I wish I’d listened to my Father when I was growing up.”
“Why? What did he say?”
“I don’t know. I never listened.”
Hopefully your boys will continue to listen. Mine does – but only if it suits him. He’s eleven and I struggle to know what to say sometimes.
I think Ford Prefect says this to Arthur Dent at some point
Rob, I think you are probably right. Though that might have been Arthur’s mother… ;-))
“Live in the coolest place, I tell Cole and his brothers. Have the coolest friends. Do the coolest things. Learn from everything you do.”
This sounds like pretty good advice whatever your age is.
When my first daughter was born I asked my wife what character trait we would wish for her. We eventually settled on confidence. The above also seems like a pretty good route to this, too.
The coolest place on earth is the south pole.
“Live in the coolest place,”? That could be wherever you are. Its what is between your ears that counts. But the rest is right on. Nice read.
READ!
Bob, your article definitely strikes me in my mortality. My advice, that I’m starting to give everyone I meet, is READ. Not the usual “brain candy” light reading but good, thick, (real paper) honest-to-God BOOKS. I’ve been involved in the computer field a long time, but my first love was medicine, and I read all sorts of crazy subjects starting at his age. I drove the librarians crazy checking out books on violins, anatomy, and navigation. So I recommend helping Cole to be curious about reading in diverse subjects: math , science, philosophy, history, (enter strange subject here), perhaps a foreign language? It will not make sense now, he will not like everything he reads, and much of it will be difficult and contradictory and hard. But this will prepare his mind to think, invent, and synthesize. As “Lazarus Long” stated, “…specialization is for insects.”
Jon,
I wholeheartely agree with you on exposure to a diverse subject range. And, while reading is quite important, other tools are important as well. Along that line of thought, I thought I’d introduce a 10 year old nephew – who has an interest and inate aptitude for math and numbers – to some videos on 4 dimensional space. My intention wasn’t to get him to understand it, but rather plant the seed in his brain to germinate over the next decade or so. If he understood 10, or even 5 percent that would be a bonus. But, when he encounters this in a HS class, he would have atleast been exposed to it and hopefully more easily able to understand it. That’s my thinking anyway.
– Blil
Yes, Bill, math can be fascinating! I remember a set of Time-Life books on various sciences and mathematical subjects. In one they described “topology” and “complex numbers”. Very strange stuff for a kid to learn about bottles that don’t have insides and paper with only one side! It helps to try to twist the brain around such subjects and eventually learn that that type of information can actually be useful (but can just be “fun” in the meantime).
yes, definitely, READ, but reading should be followed by DOing as much as possible. There’s big difference between reading and internalising advice like “measure twice and cut once” from one’s home renovation book, and discovering in practice there is also an unwritten subtext “don’t forget the width of the saw blade”, and “remember what side of the pencil mark is slop”, etc.
The intellect learns, quite rapidly, from other people’s experience, so in that lies the value of reading.
The emotions and the gut only learn from personal experience, and very slowly, at that, so in there lies the value of living in the coolest place, having the coolest friends, and doing the coolest things, and always being curious. There is always the danger though, of emotional damage, and one never knows where and whence it comes as each of us have our own emotional capacities and frailties.
I would recommend making a religion of decency and education (which includes reading and experenc) and all those things that are valued as both a means and an end (love and sex too) but above all a balanced sense of decency.
Also, you should be immersing children in language before the age of 12, and really as early as six or seven. By 10 to 12, music too. No matter how good they get at each, each is important for establishing future capacities for their brain, not to mention that music and language comes in handy when trying to woo women, later in life.
In the end, we are all looking for traction, not attraction.
So, when things got industrial, everyone moved to the city. It is happening now in China. Poor rural folks are moving to the industrial centers. The jobs may suck by US standards, but they beat the hell out of backbreaking field work and starving when a crop fails.
Are you saying move to the big city to learn finance, San Jose for startups, and the like. I would think the singularity, and high speed communications would make the move and where you live irrelevant.
That is, unless we are a nation of waiters waiting on other waiters. (The service economy.)
You make an interesting point about the diminished relevance of location, but in this case I think you are wrong. Being in the same place at the same time really matters to significant life relationships. Now I’m as virtual as the next guy (maybe more) and with the reach of this column and its continued existence since the dawn of digital time there are a lot of people I think I know fairly well even though we’ve never met. George Morton, mentioned in this column, is one of those. We’ve corresponded for years yet never met. And there are many others. But very few life (or career) changing relationships come about without being in the same room at the same time. Silicon Valley works the way it does in large part because of restaurants and laundromats, not technical resources. You’ll have a lot better chance running into your next startup partner waiting at a car wash in Mountain View than Memphis. VC Peter Thiel claims that a college degree isn’t worth the money, but four years in the dorm at Stanford or Harvard is probably worth twice what it costs. Sometimes what we’re buying isn’t the education — it’s the experience.
Doug misses something there re china – in china they knew that was coming, they saw what happened to Sao Paulo – so there are rules in place regarding residency. If you live in a big city – you can stay… if you go to a big university (of which there are many shiny new ones cropping up very very quickly) you’re in a big city – but if you dont get a job within weeks of graduation you’re going back to the village. Many of the smaller companies dont provide ‘residency’ rights either – so what happens is the kids who’re born in Beijing and get degrees there can take chances on what sort of work they want to do – but the kids from the sticks are taking govt jobs (or govt coop jobs) or work in very very large companies with decreased pay.
What surprises me is how so many people I know who have the right to go live and work in dynamic environments will drop down into suburbia in some flat horrible swath of the overheated south central US and tell themselves it doesnt get any better than this.
I would have agreed with you pre-web and pre-social, but kids today are spending a lot of time with cyber friends. The Jobs and Wozniak of tomorrow might not meet physically until they’ve already got a working model of whatever they’re going to create.
Paul Graham (paulgraham.com) just wrote an essay, “Why Startup Hubs Work,” on this very subject. The chance meetings and overall support structure of a place like Silicon Valley does have a positive effect on innovation. OTOH, I think Charlie may also be right. Today’s generation is getting immersed in a very different social context; their brains are literally getting wired differently by exposure to computers early and often. It will be interesting to see what ultimately develops as far as interaction and collaboration goes.
Learn what your strengths and weaknesses are. Learn how to be good at something. Learn how to be good at something else. Value, support, and pursue love in your life.
your son is really growing up! what a cool kid. hope you, Mrs C and all the boys are well. best, Suzanne McCleary
So, Bob, where do you reckon the coolest place is going to be by the time your son is ready to fly the nest, and how are you preparing him for it?
We’re planning to leave the country for a year or so. I have two films to shoot in 2012 and the second one will be mainly outside the USA. That may be our excuse to show the boys what the outside world is like.
My freshman roommate in college, Bob Scranton, was the son of a famous archeologist and grew up spending summers in Greece. While Bob didn’t seem to pick up much of an appreciation for archeology he became extremely comfortable in that other culture, which I admired. I want that for my kids.
The question is where to go? Given the entire world, where should I take my kids for a year to give them their best experience? I’m not sure it matters a lot, though I know from personal experience that Lugano beats the crap out of Lagos, but I’d be interested in reader answers to this question.
Bob,
I think one of those places is Taiwan. Of the three options: down, same, and better – Taiwan shows China the best of those options – the only Chinese democracy.
I plan on taking my young children there. Join us?
-Richard
Robert,
I think it’d be worth it to spend some time, outside the tourist zone in developing countries in Asia, Africa, Central and South America. The reason? The vast difference in culture between anywhere in the US and there. Best way to find your path is to know where you’ve been.
I’m a Geography major (concentrated in cultural and economic geography). I lived four years in Korea. I think it is a great argument to live in Taiwan or Japan or Korea.
I don’t like Confucianism , but it’s important to be familiar with it. Now’s the age to immerse your son in a foreign language. He’ll pick it up quickly. One year, okay, two years and they’ll be fluent in it.
Another alternative is to go to latin based place – either learning Spanish, Portugese or Italian or French. If you know one of those first three, its easy to learn the others. Ideally, Italian as it is really vulgar latin, and the foundation of the others. In European terms, think of Italian as the ultimate root language and English as the ultimate branch language.
By the way, in East Asia, Chinese is the root language. They say the easiest way to learn Korean is to know how to read chinese characters.
Again, that’s an argument for living in Taiwan. In many ways it has some of the most advanced civic systems in the world. Not perfect, but progressive. It has a warm climate – similar to florida, but the entire island is really just a big, massive mountain that rises starkly out of the sea. Look at a physical geography map of the Island’s east coast,. it plunges rapidly from 16,000 feet into the ocean.
You could go to Shanghai, Hong Kong or Singapore too. Japan I still think, is a very interesting place. India also, is an interesting place, but not yet, cool (except for pseudo hippies – as it was for Jobs).
Arabia you could be cool in 50 years, UAE or Oman or some similar gulf locations offer some prospects. In a few years, Tunisia could become the cool place — as it has a great location and climate.
If you have the chance, though, immerse your son in another language as soon as possible. Two years in a foreign country now is worth a fortune and a half later on in life.
The hardest language to learn is Korean from English, and vice versa. I tutored a girl in Korea at age 10 who was fluent in English, who only spent a year and a half in San Diego – during her kindergarten years and half of first grade. After that, her parents kept her involved in English as much as possible, and Harry Potter did the rest, until I came along.
Long term, California is probably still the coolest place.
Beijing or Taiwan. Someplace that has a youthful mentality and hope – the next frontier is hope. Chinese is a difficult language to learn though. Since it’s a tonal language the areas of the brain normally activated by music are brought into play.
https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/features/2004/dispatches_from_hong_kong/mind_your_hais_and_your_dous.html
Be curious. Keep your eyes open. Things you don’t expect to happen will become commonplace.
The “digital cameras killed Kodak” type of thing will start to happen overnight. And then more often than that as already-sophisticated technologies join up with others, moving everything to a new level. What were previously manufacturing companies will become publishers, as their products become virtual, running on powerful, connected, mobile platforms.
Kurzweil’s more distant predictions are a bit far out, but, so far, he’s been rock solid with his account of exponential technology change.
This is the most exciting time ever to be alive.
If we can all avoid killing each other.
The mechanics, electricians and plumbers will only have local competition. The Internet gets faster and cheaper every year and the other people you talk about will be competing against people all over the planet. The same thing for manufacturing jobs.
Th future is that you either need to learn how to fix things or find a place with a low cost of living and good internet connections.
FYI, on the broken theme in Firefox thing … after checking on three PCs and one Mac with different browsers, it looks to me like it’s a combination of Firefox 7.01 and the addon AdBlock Plus 1.3.10.
Hmm.
Thanks! I have that combo of Firefox and AdBlock and I had to turn off blocking to get the page to display correctly.
Here’s how to fix it for users of AdBlock plus :
* Click on the “ABP” red stop sign, which is usually to the right of the address bar. This will open a pane at the bottom of the browser, showing the things that were blocked.
* Scroll through the list of “blockable items” until you get to “https://cringely.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/themes/simpleX_ads/css/default.css”
* Right click on this item, and choose “add exception rule for item”.
* Choose “custom”, and change the text field to be “https://cringely.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/themes/simpleX_ads/*” (i.e. replace the last “ccs/default.css” bit with “*”).
* click “add filter”
* Now refresh/F5 the page, and it should load fine.
Here’s how to fix it if you are cringely.com’s webmaster:
* rename the “https://cringely.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/themes/simpleX_ads/” directory to something else, such as “https://cringely.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/themes/simpleX_mod/”.
* That will stop adblock plus from blocking this directory, and your site will no longer look broken.
Thanks, Nick. I just clicked on my ABP icon dropdown and I could disable blocking on this domain.
I realize the conundrum here:
1. I want to read what Bob writes.
2. Bob wants/needs to make money on what he writes.
3. He rents his blog space for ads to make money.
4. If people like me try to block his ads from being seen/clicked, then I am working against both my interest (“I want my Bob Cringe-ly”) and his (he wants/needs the click-throughs).
5. So it would appear that selling ads offers the win-win, everybody-gets-what-they-want solution.
6. Except I hate ads and most everything about the advertising culture. I would gladly pay to subscribe to Bob’s blog (I go back to the frog and the pulpit), but I don’t have that option.
7. So I use Adblock. And I have no doubt that people like Bob hate Adblock. It’s in his financial interests to not only hate it, but to block it.
8. I’m not saying he (or his webmaster) have done anything intentionally, I’m just sayin’ that: a) they could easily have; and b) it’s understandable if they did.
9. But then I wonder if Bob himself uses Adblock or something like it himself, and for his boys?
And so it goes.
Bob, you sound just like a concerned parent. Well, you are. I remember telling my daughter, who is five years older than her brother, and my son to study hard in school and it will pay off. It worked for my daughter as she was able to get a good job before the recession really hit but it didn’t pan out for my son even though he has a masters degree. He has a job but, as a parent, I feel like I let him down.
I am weary of “everything coolest” for kids. A few close, cool friends from cool families flew high and crashed. And a few odd ducks prospered, still peaking in their 50’s. The gist of my fear is that if you start at the very top, there is nowhere to go but down. Unless you have the personality for it, it is a lot of pressure to keep up the cool.
Give them space, interesting environment, sprinkling of boredom, and let their imagination loose. Let them learn how to define what cool is. If they can do that, they’ll be ok, whatever happens, as they carry the spark inside them.
I take exception to the gentle person who thinks of field labor (or farm labor) as back-breaking. I recall hearing an inmate of Cook County Correctional discussing working on a farm program run by the prison system.
The interveiwer said, “Working on a farm? That’s HARD work!”
The inmate replied, “It’s not hard. There’s a lot of it but it’s not hard.”
Remember that someone has to do it or you don’t get to eat.
http://m.youtube.com/#/profile?user=vogel5290&v=sU0MfbCkhA0&view=videos
Life is the journey
Sounds a lot like Joseph Campbell’s “Follow your bliss” — so long as it’s cool to others is a Cringely subtext, but if it’s really cool to you, then you’ll attract others.
Also the theory of having to go to a physical location for a “hub of excellence” as in Cringely’s financial example is against the grain of all the Internet technologies that have “democratized” or “commoditized” things like customer support, IT, filling out tax returns, diagnosing X-rays, etc.
Yes there will always be people who physically congregate around any particular topic, but it is actually more possible to work remotely now than ever before in human history. You may need to physically sync-up at a conference or event, but Bob is underestimating the power of the web.
Yup! Daughter is eleven and I’m trying to instill in her a sense of curiosity, guide her creative spirit to new areas (welding coming up) and showing her how much fun life can be, regardless if things are working out or everything’s up in the air. Am also working on the ‘who you know’ parts. I’ve been extremely lucky in life with most of the friends I’ve chosen.
Distribution models change, but what stays the same?
People always need to eat, sleep, and live somewhere. They need social interactions. They will need tools to do whatever it is they do. They need to learn.
If you can teach your kids how to learn (as others have said above), and keep in mind what people need and want, you can probably always find some way to rise above the average.
The sag in the economy and elsewhere is indicative of these systems needing to change. They are based in part on false premises. So it might require moving somewhere else, and it might not. It just depends on what the people around you want and what you want.
jck said jobs are for losers. Perhaps he meant something else, but I’m going to try to teach my young kids that “getting a job” is not something they should aspire to as a long-term goal, only as a stepping stone. Much better to create something yourself, and potentially employ others in the process.
Agree with you on most thing, but MDs will go away….really???? Who wants their surgery done by Joe, the DDSTGM technician who got his degree at the local 6 month tech school? Or even by Dan the Nurse/Physicians Assistant? I don’t think even the boldest insurance companies can pay enough money to get those guys licensed for MD services. The Doctor’s lobby will start an all out war.
Some people aren’t understanding the premise. In the post-singularity world, it costs a few dollars to build and program a robot. The robot has immediate access to the cloud. MDs disappear because this cheap robot is about a billion times smarter, more experienced, and steadier than an unaltered human ever will be. You don’t have software programmers; the computers are smarter. You don’t have chefs. The computers are smarter and more creative. You don’t have human musicians. You don’t have human physicists.
There are a few possibilities:
1) Humans accept technological upgrades so that they become a billion times smarter. In which case, it doesn’t really matter what advice you give to your kid. In about 30 years they’re going to be able to access all the advice any father ever gave any kid in about a millisecond.
2a) Humans are left behind by the AIs and ignored. In that case, life after the singularity is about the same as now. You want a broad general knowledge, and you want to specialize in something that you enjoy. A broad general knowledge helps you figure out what you need to learn to solve a particular problem. Having lots of specialists is how an economy makes money.
2b) Humans are left behind by the AIs, but as pampered pets. In that case, your kid doesn’t need any advice. The AIs will not only create the entertainment for your kid, but they’ll also tell your kid which entertainment your kid should partake in at the moment.
2c) Humans are left behind by the AIs, and the AIs take an active dislike to them. In that case, you probably want to teach your kid how to live in a cave and grow fungus.
The following comments are only my opinions, for which I offer no apologies. However, differing viewpoints are welcome.
Concerning the US economy, we had a monopoly on manufacturing and technology after WWII because the economies of other Western nations were destroyed by the war. Then the Marshall Plan, sponsored by the US, gradually eliminated our superiority over these other Western nations. Then our technology was accessed by the Asian nations and was exploited using their masses of low-cost labor. Therefore, the US was left without these two powerful monopolies. In addition, we have been unable to compete successfully with low-cost labor. Even our own companies stabbed the US people in the heart by moving their manufacturing plants or service centers to low-cost nations.
I think a better solution would have been for large US companies to lobby Congress for fair trade tariffs, taking into account the respective rights and resources of all nations. Then the low-cost nations could have gradually increased their wages while the US could have gradually reduced their tariffs. Unfortunately, many people in Congress and many leaders of large US companies seem not to care about the welfare of the US people.
As for ordinary people improving their economic standing, here is one method. They can first gain personal empowerment and then use their natural talents to provide whatever is desired by the marketplace. I believe there was a certain person who claimed to have written an ebook about such a program. Modesty prevents me from mentioning any names.
“What if books simply go away?”
ummm, didn’t they do that already,
Great article, although you miss the point on books.
With the change in distribution of music, video, gaming . . . how many more jobs have been created? Music hasn’t gone away, nor has video, nor has gaming. Many more methods of distribution and the democratization of development that new technologies have birthed means more people can get in on creation. Thirty-five years ago, you had three outlets for television scripts, production, film, makeup, lighting, sound.
Now, dozens? And Google TV is starting 100 new channels for original content?
Books? Maybe printed books are going away, but not “books” themselves. The same way albums have gone away (and come back), but “albums” haven’t.
(By the way, I’m a book editor. I worked last year on over 100 books at various stages of production. All were published primarily as bound books.)
The accessibility of self-publishing means that many, many more books — in whatever form — are being produced than 10 years ago. Self-publishers who want quality will still use editors. And editors need to find a way to make themselves available to many new people to stay in business, or to accommodate changes with their existing publishers who want to move toward new modes of distribution.
I’m definitely sending a copy of this article to my sons, though. Very poignant piece for a man with sons, facing mortality.
Thanks.
Let’s talk about books, then. I wrote my first book in 1980. It was bought by a very senior editor at a major New York publisher, took more than a year to be published after I finished writing, and had only modest success. But it started my career in a new direction. I remember trying to deliver the manuscript in an electronic form and though they tried they simply couldn’t do it. So a human retyped my 96,000 words into their system. The advance I received on that book was $40,000 ($104,443 in 2010 according to an inflation calculator).
In today’s terms that whole experience was bizarre. Books today either pay $10K advances or millions with the perception being that blockbusters (the millions) make most of the profit. My editor back in 1980, Bob Loomis, still works today and is still my friend, and he still does just a few books per year, not 100+. The process has changed though Bob, in his 80’s, hasn’t had to. He is the exception.
I’m working on a new book. Actually I am working on about SIX new books. My editor is Parampreet Singh and instead of me working for him he works for me, though he’s every bit as sharp as any editor I had in New York, and I’ve had some of the best. Our advances for these projects so far comprise nothing, zero, zilch. We’ll be pushing out electronic and printed versions of all titles, distributing on all platforms and manufacturing to order at prices running from $0.99 to $7.49.
If one title catches the attention of someone in New York then we’ll do a traditional publishing deal and make more money, but this system isn’t simply a new way of selling books to Simon & Schuster. It has to make money on its own. And that’s what I meant about book editors being frightened if THE BOOK PROCESS THEY KNOW AND LOVE goes away, taking with it the $100 author lunches.
People will still read, but what they read will change somewhat and how that book gets to them will change a LOT.
All well and good, but most publishing these days is not coming from New York, and most readers find that the big houses have among the shoddiest production values of all. Sure it’s nice to have that name on a spine, if you can live the rest of your life with that lack of quality control.
To gauge the future of books, their content, and their delivery by the current market for $100 lunches is a very East Coast/West Coast-centric approach, and is akin to saying that there’s no good or profitable live theatre going on in this country because Superman is an overblown and overbudgeted bit of claptrap that put up way too much money for a negligible artistic (and perhaps monetary) return.
Now that’s just crazy.
I just looked at the New York Times hardcover fiction best-sellers and of the first 10, nine were published in New York with Tyndale Press being the only exception. The non-fiction list top 10 are ALL from New York publishers. Yes, there are book publishers all over the place, but New York publishers continue to dominate. That’s why all the doctors have their offices in the same building.
And no doubt the top-grossing plays in the country are on Broadway. In 20 or so theatres, largely pandering to the most common tastes. So what?
What about the very active theatre communities in Seattle, Chicago, Louisville, Minneapolis, Albuquerque, etc.?
I work for 20+ publishers, all of whom are active, respected, and put out high-quality, academic tomes. None are in New York.
Indie music? Indie films? There’s a vast universe for creators out there that didn’t exist before, because of changes in technology.
You’re looking at essentially self-publishing and -distributing and -marketing your next book — using a new paradigm. Do you think you’re putting anyone out of work by doing so? More likely you’ll be employing some people along the way who would have been cut out of the monopolistic approach favored earlier.
One thing I rarely hear mentioned is languages. The United States is perhaps the only developed country in the world where one can be considered educated and speak nothing more than the language one was were born with. In most of the rest of the world it is assumed that an educated person would know at least 2 or 3 languages. English may seem sufficient because it is so universal, but there will be vast cultural barriers to those who are limited to just English.
I enjoyed your post today, because I am often wondering what the future holds for my mini-lads, but I am very hopeful in our kids. I reckon they’re smarter than us – much smarter – and they’re going to sort things out. You inspired me to do an Asian-influenced blog post on the topic – thanks for that.
Cheers
Andrea
I thought I saw “singularity” in the title… is there much room for humans after a transition period? I guess we’d be handy to have around to dig dirt in hard to reach places.
Bob,
Seeing things as “going away” is an early sign of becoming elderly I suppose. As we move into the future the things that have real intrinsic value remain relatively consistent but the forms and methods they use will change. As a simple common example, music hasn’t changed in real intrinsic value but the form of transport and play has gone through many changes and the commercial landscape of the music world has been heavily impacted.
Career advice? If you are going into the music business, become a musician if you can and much of the advice of the last generation will still apply. In other performing arts, much the same thing. As for digital multimedia itself, all bets are off.
What I’m trying to point out is that the four Fs of life haven’t changed that much since we lived in primitive huts but the forms, actions and methods have changed dramatically and will continue to change. With the introduction of Hypercard in 1987, Hypertext in 1990 and the first browser Lynx in 1992 I could see the writing on the wall that we were about to enter the era of the “middle machines”.
For the first couple of years, commercial web servers were starting to appear sourcing a single companies products. It wasn’t until about 1995 that the first product orient “middle machines” started showing up. Amazon and Digikey were a couple of the early ones. A “middle machine” is a special type of server that doesn’t provide information from only one source. An on-line store that represents and supports purchase transactions between consumers and producers is a “middle machine” (i.e. the machine equivalent of a “middle man”).
To my way of thinking there are many more middle machine types that will be created and we have barely scratched the surface. Middle machines have the potential to greatly effect the means of delivery. Both goods and services.
Just today I was involved with a discussion with the cost complications of Just In Time (JIT) production of a low volume (8 products per year $150K each) at the company were I’m contracting. I thought that If I only had the right middle ware and some warehouse space…….
In the context of giving one advice about preparing for the job market of the future, it isn’t easy to project possibilities within today’s terms. Perhaps I’m just one of those eternal optimists and see positive potential in technology. To me the future looks very positive.
To the young I’d just say, keep and open mind, explore the cutting edge and create, create, create…. By the way, the world is hungry for designs.
Oh, and the four Fs: Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing and a ………Reproduction.
You may have overlooked one thing Bobo. We humans are going to merge with the machines. We’re going to go transhuman. So we will be no more obsolete than the technology we currently incorporate into our bodies.
……..and that includes our brains. I expect the phenomena of “voting democrat” to completely dissappear on day +2 of the singularity.
so which is it.. getting smarter or voting republican?
sorry.. couldn’t help it. You ( and now I ) deserve worse for bringing politics into it.
Voting republican will dissappear on singularity +5.
Everyone will be libertarian on singularity + 100.
….notice how long it takes to become that advanced and cooperative / non-coercive. The soft slavery of the left will be gone. So will the lunatic MMGW recycled child stories Al-Gore-ithm’s.
Hi Bob,
One of your best posts for a long time. There is wisdom in what you say.
I have an MBA that was paid for by the company I worked for at the time – boy, times have changed… but I still say I leant more from my father than anywhere else in my life. My father was honest, hard-working, modest and very smart, and probably a better person than I will ever be.
He used to say: “It’s better to be wise than clever.”
Thanks
Griff
Yes, I still haven’t learned to type yet…
Griff
I think that Kurt Vonnegut did well with his prediction in Player Piano. You’ll need a PhD to sell real estate (look at the current title inflation), if you don’t have a PhD you’ll be part of the Reeks or Wrecks.
As a, (sometimes), feeling too old to keep up and too young to retire software engineer, forced to assist the globalization of system delivery, combined with one political party’s penchant to spread FUD, it has been difficult to find believable optimism for the future.
Recently an email from my local library announced I could pick up the just published hardback book of two Rutgers scholars Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais – “Millennial Momentum”.
This book would seem to be the GUT (grand unified theory) of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, wherein the authors present a well reasoned, optimistic future based on a believable explanation of the present (baby boomers, genX, and your son – one of our millennial saviors of the human race and hopefully, my retirement).
(Nearly simultaneous with starting that book, the digital media library sent an email that another of my reservations is available to download and read – “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”. Now that I understand what is going on around me, it is time to understand what is going on inside me)
Wars and technology have thrown a wrench into the prospective future of nearly every generation – at least in this country, though I suspect going much further back than that.
Perhaps the most effective method to secure one’s future is to study the past.
Everything that is old becomes new again. History repeats itself. We are doomed to repeat the past. These sayings exist for a reason.
I think the phrase is “he who does not know history is doomed to repeat it”. In other words history repeats itself for those who refuse to learn from the past.
I was watching Jacob Bronowski’s “Ascent of Man” series again. The mentions “the warrior” (the visual shows an armored horseman galloping in slow motion) and says something like “it’s all very spectacular, but the whirlwind is hollow. The warrior cannot exist without the craftsman and the farmer. The destroyer cannot exist without the builder. All warriors are fundamentally parasitic.” And it’s true.
Funny thoughts!
My friend had a father (well I suppose all friends do!) who took him out of school for a whole year to travel the world. They took a school syllabus with them (compliments of school) and they both learned more than school could teach in the same year! Can’t find 100+ free days? Linear thinking!
Funny you would think computers important (linear again!). Live somewhere where there’s no internet (or none that’s reliable) and life goes on but without computers.(One atomic war would do away with computers!)
As you sort of said, self-employment is way to go. As someone else said, a good mechanic is never without well paid work. However, good plumbers and electricians are better off!
My father paid for me to go to private school but it was my parents who educated me. Do the same for your sons (as you do), send them to free state school, forget university, and invest what you save in a supermarket or pharmacy – those places always have endless customers! (The only things people certainly need are food, health and shelter – everything else is an unnecessar luxury, much though we want more.)
People need homes(shelter). Teach your sons to renovate buildings and they’ll only need you to fund one building to start with – its sale will fund profit and the next. After 10 they’ll be millionaires (or incompetent!).
Employed professions stink – companies pay little to over-enrich only the most senior managers (who’s incompetence is always richly rewarded) and shareholders. Invention is sometimes approved but innovation not (try changing a paradigm!!!) – endless frustration for those with ability. Anyway, why work where one daily fears redundancy (the outcome of senior management incompetence)?
The few McCartneys are self-employed innovators (e.g. Last Poets, Antony Santos) or true artists (e.g. Louis Armstrong, Sinatra, Bob Marley) – there’s always room for more but few can make the mark and those that can probably will, so no need to worry if you have a son with such ability.
Teach your sons to work together. It’s safer to work with family and successful cultures (asian immigrants, Indian, Chinese, etc) do so as a norm.
I fully agree with teaching your kids to experience life in the coolest way. In addition to that I would teach frugality and humbleness. I can not express how difficult and heart wrenching that can be sometimes (as any of you with children understand). We always want the best for our kids and many times we can afford the best. But it may not be in the child’s best interests to get the newest/best when less will suffice. Kids constantly compare themselves to one another, and the kid that gets all the newest/coolest stuff always appears to have the greener pasture family. Disappointing a child’s short term wants to achieve a larger character quality goal… it never feels good. Especially when one has the financial means to pretty much get whatever they would want. Not being able to afford something doesn’t make it any less difficult either.
And being and older father myself, I’ve had to deal with three kids crying themselves to sleep when they encountered the average life span and started doing math and asking questions. I now work to live rather than live to work.
My son in law, who works for EA, says your comments about his firm are misinformed.
He says, “Cringely should just look at his iPhone Stocks app. The links to Forbes, Motley Fool and FT analysts would bring him up to date in minutes.
Plus, Battlefield 3, an ‘old school game’ retailing at $60 just broke records and sold 5 million copies DAY ONE. FIFA 12 did 3.2 million end of September. There is plenty of life in the old dogs yet.”
That’s great, I stand corrected. I don’t think (EA founder) Tripp Hawkins sees it that way, but then maybe he’s taking a longer-term view.
This is why I regard the future with an element of dread. Even if some or all of civilization avoids the “grim meathook future,” the cute, shiny iFuture seems like it will be increasingly a future only for bubbly, gregarious social butterflies who want to constantly interact with a large network of like people. The rest of us appear destined to become second-class (or third-class, given that we’re probably second-class already) citizens.
And I write this as a young, self-employed professional in a creative field, mind you. I’m not some old fuddy-duddy who spent 25 years filling out forms and now doesn’t understand why a good steady job is going away.
Even so, it seems plain that a future in which success depends on social charisma, constant reinvention and serendipity is just not going to offer a solution for most people. Which doesn’t mean that we won’t get such a future, anyway, but that it’s going to make life worse rather than better for many of us. The majority of people aren’t going to have the inclination, the ability or very likely the opportunity to become fashion designers, celebrity chefs or serial entrepreneurs.
And even for those of us who can manage a self-directed creative career, better hope we aren’t born introverts.
Perhaps the rest of you should just eat us. I hope that I taste good.
Look at the history of talent vers. being in the right place at the right time by reading “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell
Second, to know what will be “hot” in the next 10-20 years, look at the wiki list of emerging technologies at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies.
Third, pick a field that is talent instead of capital intensive to remove major success barriers.
Last, get you child into the graduate school doing the leading research in the chosen area.
This won’t save all the children in the future, but will save yours.
I’m constantly amazed how even very intelligent people fail to see that liberating humans from enforced servitude is a fantastic thing. Being liberated from what today is a form of slavery, working, doesn’t have to mean that you become obsolete – it just means you suddenly have the chance to choose exactly what you want to do, and a chance to never be forced to do things that bore you.
I sincerely hope Cole and his generation will have the option to just not think too much about “what he’s going to be when he grows up” – instead, he should be thinking about what he enjoys doing and what he doesn’t enjoy doing, while enjoying a life that’s wholly supported by machine labor and automation.
Most people would still choose to find a way to contribute. The big difference would be that they wouldn’t have to find a specific job on pain of death (and if you think it’s not on pain of death, try giving up an income completely today) – they would have the option of working, and if they decided that no, this month they’ll just spend on the beach, they could, no questions asked.
Technological progress is the only thing that has ever meaningfully increased the standard of living of mankind. More tech, greater standard. Enough tech: total freedom for all humans. The only reason automation has become a problem is because our current system that’s money-based cannot handle real efficency, and it absolutely must have scarcity – if no actual scarcity exists, it has to be created and stat. I for one can’t wait until we alter society into a form that embraces real efficiency, where we can all live well and be truly free.
Immutable rules of the real world:
The singularity is impossible.
Progress causes specialization.
Progress is not always continuous; there are phase changes such as the industrial revolution.
We are not as smart as we think we are.
Progress in all fields has been the result of very few individuals, probably less than 1%.
We can barely manage our current status as a species.
Even without an Astrophysical event, we are not sure of surviving in comfort for very long.
Smart people should focus on avoiding a possible behavioral catastrophe and surviving a possible Astrophysical event.
Population levels will drop soon, maybe in 50 years; high population levels are not a long term problem.
Being cool usually means following some trends, and these are usually artificial. Teach your kids to think for themselves, not to follow trends.
I like this column because it is about me and it tells things that are true. I really do want to walk across America. I think it would be fun! I think my dad thinks I am fun, courageous, smart and cool. I love my dad!
We feel the same way about your dad!
You’re a pretty smart kid Cole !
You should take that walk across the country with your dad.
The main face of the cards is young and trendy women. As long as you like the bag, as long as you worship trends.
Hey Cole – we like your Dad too – he is a good guy!
Let us know about your walk, the planning and so fourth – you have a large fan base that will track your progress.
Bob, I get the “right place at the right time” stuff – but “The five year party” has shown me that the US Education system is in the toilet. Combine that story with Friedman’s “The World is Flat” and you will see why the third world is handily passing us by.
All the stuff that rubbed off of the likes of Hewlett and Packard are long just diminishing vapors. Our education system is turning out excellent “test passers” who do not excel at the basics of logic. My AuPair was shocked to see what our children are studying in 6th grade – it’s not good.
I hate to channel Steve Jobs for a moment, but the sun has set on Silicon Valley, and America for that matter. China is about to send a woman to space, and they have an ambitious plan to land men on the moon. India turns out PHDs in math and science faster than we can H1B them into the country, and what new things have we done?
Retired the shuttle (which was 20 years past it’s retirement date.)
Collapsed the financial system (thanks Ronald R.)
Dumbed down the public education system (all children left behind.)
And commercialized higher learning.
All ingredients for the collapse of Rome.
So what are the coolest places? You can’t live in NYC or SF without a relatively high paying job.
Stefan, love your advice about the coolest places to visit in NYC on SNL.
I’m not very worried about the Singularity. I expect I (and most of the people I care about) will be in a homeless internment camp long before then.
As an older parent, too, but also returning to my career as a painter after decades in design and media, my daughter knows me only in this renewed, uncomputerized, artist role. She is being educated by her public school ostensibly for what the world will be like 10 years from now, when, of course, no one has any idea what that means. The educational emphasis is of course on math and science, but we are fortunate in that her school is very actively encouraging creative, tactile, sensory skills. She is intuitively arriving at perpectival drawing and realistic, executable architecture, from where I don’t know. So, If one is concerned with preparing their kids for specific occupations, that’s easy. But recognizing their proclivities and developing passions, and following their lead into the discipline and training of those proclivities is far more challenging and will very likely make a happier adult out of them. Trust, then, that getting a job and an income will work itself out, but make a happy adult with no doubt about their true and higher purpose in the world.
Do seek out Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk on education, it’s marvelous and funny.
[…] https://www.cringely.com/2011/10/how-to-get-a-job-after-the-singularity-comes/ […]
When my Son (13) asked me what he should do when he grew up I told him to go with his strengths (Math, Science) and his passion (whatever those will be) and to be flexible. He wants to be an actuary, I’m telling him he’ll probably have at least 3 different ‘careers’ in his lifetime and to be flexible and open to change. A degree in math or physics is about as much direction as I can give him on education though.
I failed my kids – I couldn’t keep being curious cool, so now that are surrounded by things they don’t understand and no motivation to find out. I see it in all their friends as well – no passion; such a waste of potential.
Hope your kids hear what you are saying!
Is Herman Cain right? Should we simply work hard so all of us can be in the top 1%?
Or how about the seeming Plan B here: Hang out where everything is happening with the happening people and wait for the inevitable reward.
Or not?
Is there a place for 300+ million linchpins, just in this country?
With seven billion of us around, various kinds of machines doing “human” work, and everyone everywhere in the world becoming more educated and connected, aren’t we all redundant?
Aren’t all of us becoming a commodity?
Maybe a nuisance? Superfluous? Irrelevant?
Become a plumber!
Rewarding, necessary, well-paid, and can’t be done overseas.
Bingo. No chance of a new distribution model for water.
The singularity isn’t coming. Anybody who’s looked at the history of machine intelligence can see that. After 30 years of work, basic building blocks like text and speech recognition are, well… not so simple yet. Kurzweil is a phony who markets books. Someday all the baloney geniuses will realize it’s not about cpu cycles. The brain works differently.
The cool place for kids growing up will be China and Singapore. Following the “cool” kids here is just a dead end — TV culture, consumerism. They can’t outsource home improvement and infrastructure repair. Most everything else is headed out. Teach the kids mandarin while they can still absorb languages.
You’re right that the brain works differently and it (may) not be about cycles. However, the essence of Kurzweil’s idea is that technology has been improving and will continue to do so. Soon the only way for tools to be any more improved will for the tools to solve problems on their own. That will take intelligence: weak AI or strong.
Speech recognition was harder than we thought? So what? It’s just another problem that can be solved. Brains and computers are different? So what? Just make computers that work like brains. We always find a way.
The only thing Kurzweil may be wrong about is the timing. His only requirement for being a singulatarian was to understand that relentless innovation, no matter how varied, is converging on one path and is accelerating. This will have major implications for the future of humanity.
Just for marketing or not, the future will be more than just having neater toys lying around.
How about settling for frequent walks around the block with your kid?.. you old fart!….
Just saw you on the PBS Steve Jobs special that aired tonight, and said to the family when you appeared on the screen “Oh, he’s cool.”. I used to religiously read your rants in the 80’s as I enjoyed your humorous and relevant perspectives. So after the PBS show aired, I googled you On my iPhone and read the first entry about Singularity. “Oh, wow’ … You are still rantIng very relevant perspectives quite well, even if the humor is a lot more difficult to ferret out in these rapidly changing times. So I wish serendipity downloads boatloads of humor your way again, even if the incidents are not one’s you wish to share over these digital devices, as I believe that humor keeps us healthy, happy and nurtures longevity. I wish to hear your rants for quite some time to come, and I suspect your family does too. Cheers!
I used to read every single post at “I, Cringely” on PBS as well, did so for years, and what I learned was enormously helpful, both in my work and in my general understanding and appreciation of the generation in which we both grew up.
For those who might think the author’s sense of humor seems tempered these days, he’s had a hell of a time, enough to test the strongest of us. I am reminded of the proverb that says, the reason the earth was made round was so we would not see too far down the path.
I wish the author and his family well, and will look forward to whatever happens with the Steve Jobs interview.
Perhaps a bit off the techno topic but…. You did mention MDs
What do you envision will replace physicians, aside from certain robotic assisted/conducted surgeries? Hype aside, surely not your local pharmacist or Nurse Practitioner.
One only has to look at the outstanding job (I mean it) the fast food, junk food, meat and dairy industry are doing marketing crap to our young and not so young population. They put the tobacco industry to shame.
Judging by what our kids look like now I am certain know there is long term job security in most parts of the medical profession ( primary care, chronic disease management/treatment to name a few). Don’t hold your breath on a miracle pill, changing your genes or other forms of magical thinking doing the trick.
As a handsome (so I’m told), youthful looking and fit hemi-centurion physician and MMA practitioner who can more than roll with competitors half my age people either look at me as if I’m from another Universe (an evil one) or give me a weary look of resignation when I respond to their questions as to how I stay fit and healthy. Answer (diet wise)- strict as possible vegetarian diet. No, I’m sorry but that means no dairy or your favorite meat you think is OK. Hell, I can’t even convince my wife the nurse that a daily Big n Tasty doesn’t count as a healthy food choice. I guess I won’t make it as a salesman.
Best wishes.
“hemicenturion”…not sure what you mean. All I can find is “Crysler Centurion with a Hemi engine” or a “professional Roman officer with something hemispherical about him”.
maybe he meant demi-centurion.
Yes, as a couple of others have said, 50 is probably correct, especially since he is a physician and a martial arts practitioner. But in that case, I’d say 50 is a bit young to boast about one’s youthful appearance.
True. 50 is young. You know Steve Jobs always had an intuition he would die young. And at 56, I think he did, sadly. So I wonder if there is something to this “intuition” / “psychic ability” thing after all. Most of us analytic types suppress it.
Ronc,
How did you get your picture in the little box?
I’ll accept Tim’s correction.
http://en.gravatar.com/
It’s already happening. MDs used to be called “Doctor” or “Physician”. Now insurance companies have stolen their patients and return them back at 50 cents on the dollar. In order to reflect the change in status, MDs who see patients on behalf of the insurance carriers are called “Providers”. It’s a subtle but important distinction. In many areas areas of the country, the insurance companies have a stranglehold as to whether or not a doctor may practice in that area. In addition, the lobbyists of insurance companies have convinced the US govt to make it illegal for the doctors themselves to have a lobby, and in most cases the AMA sells out their own members and sides with the insurace companies almost 90% of the time. If you really want to understand healthcare in the US, look at the money flow of the insurance carriers. They have bought off every member of Congress.
This is Obamacare for you. It’s seriously unconstitutional and needs to change big time. But it doesn’t change the fact that skills of someone graduating from Med School will always be in demand. I don’t foresee the health / obesity epidemic changing overnight.
In times of change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
ERIC HOFFER
Following up on Hoffer’s observation, I note what Dr. Anthony Fauci said for NPR’s This I Believe series:
I have three guiding principles that anchor my life, and I think about them every day.
First, I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Knowledge goes hand-in-hand with truth — something I learned with a bit of tough love from my Jesuit education first at Regis High School in New York City and then at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass. I consider myself a perpetual student. You seek and learn every day: from an experiment in the lab, from reading a scientific journal, from taking care of a patient. Because of this, I rarely get bored.
Maybe he meant demi centenarian (50 yrs old)
I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge he meant demi centenarian (50 yrs old)
The singularity has already hit in more ways than people know. I’m 56,and started freelancing in graphic & web design 5 years ago (I had over 20 years in the advertising business).
I lost any desire to report to anyone years ago. What I’ve found is that personalization and personal contact are keys to my business growth. I get a TON of work sitting in bars & cafes talking to people & telling them what I do. It seems everyone needs graphics or web services at some level. The hardest part (they say), is getting someone reliable. This is key.
Everyone is tired of the overseas outsourcing game. If you can give good, reliable, and fast service, you’ll succeed. I’m as busy as I can stand.
[…] Cringe takes the above line of thought a big step further in his next post. Siri would be a major disrupting force in the TV market because it would give Apple control over how content is distributed. Like how the Ipad changed how music is distributed. He writes The key change in any industry is the delivery method. Change the method of distribution and you change the business model. iTunes destroyed record stores, digital cameras destroyed Polaroid and Kodak; the list goes on. The key change was distribution. […]
To the faithful readers of this blog, since there isn’t any word from Bob, here’s what he decided to do with the Steve Jobs interview:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/11/lost-steve-jobs-headed-to-big-screen.html
Quote from the La Times article:
The movie, “Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview,” is from a conversation Jobs conducted with Robert Cringely for the author and producer’s 1996 miniseries “Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires” about the origins of the personal computer industry and the emergence of Silicon Valley as a technology hub.”
Awesome article.
Where you live counts as much as anything else, too, so position yourself in a city that has high serendipity. Any kid living with his parents in Palo Alto can get a job today simply because he already has a place to live. No skills required.
In support of the above, I’d add…buy as little stuff as possible, and consider never buying real estate. The immobility resulting from of owning property is rarely mentioned, but it’s an albatross around so many people’s necks today.
138 days walking? For a kid (or Forrest Gump), great, sounds fine. But if I had that much time I would read. 138 books, or more? Now that’s a dream I can get behind.
I grew up reading Arthur c Clarke. Like many sic-fi authors of that very positive time ( late 70’s early 80’s ) the role of technology was expand opportunity but above all reduce or free humanity from the need to work as hard.
A theme taken up with great effect by Iain m bank’s Culture series .
We have certainly seem the huge strides in manufacturing, logistics and agriculture vastly increasing the output in those fields . It certainly expanded on that.
But now we have a world ( at least in west ) where people have that free time but usually involuntarily and usually with a huge amount of stress and anguish .
I keep on thinking there must be a good reason for this state of affairs. I know rising consumption and inequality of wealth play a large factor. But is there a magic way that we can all benefit from automation and reduced hours and spend that time being happy, creative and sharing with those around us?
I think the next revolution will not be technology based but around folk understanding what truly makes them happy and living a life around that.
Teach your sons right from wrong, and to protect women and those too weak to protect themselves. (Putting women and the weak together may not be PC but it’s been culturally correct for a couple of thousand years.) Teach your sons to shoot – even if you have to learn first yourself. Teach them “to ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth.”
That sounds very much like something Robert Heinlein would have said, FWIW. 🙂
Or John Wayne.
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Dear Bob,
I think you are missing the boat here by over-thinking the problem. Cole is 7 and has 11 more years until he goes to college to get training for his first of three (3) careers (I’m on my second and reaching for No. 3). You cannot possibly predict what he will want to be for his first, second or third career. He might even change his mind in college and change his major field of study too. My son wants to be a high school teacher, but now he is doing student teaching and he’s finding out he may not like to be a teacher. My daughter wants to be a doctor, but she is taking organic chemistry. Suddenly other fields of study look better.
Your best idea is to have Cole look as high as he wants to look. Shooting for being a doctor is good. Shooting for Wall Street is probably better. Engineering, science, technology – probably not so good. By the time he is 21 and graduating, all of that will be done in China and India if the present trends hold true. If he still wants to do that sort of thing (some kids do – I was one years ago), then teach him to be flexible enough to take a one-way ticket to India and live in Bangalore like the natives live. Freeing him of the idea that he needs a 3 bedroom-2 bath house in the suburbs with a decent school nearby on order to live a good life will probably keep him employed for the rest of his life.
In the mean time, there is more you can do. Teach him how to be a man and the best way to teach him is to show him by your example. A man apologizes if he is wrong – the size of the man is determined by the size of his apology and when he gives it. That’s why G.W. Bush will never be a man in my eyes – he never apologized for the mess he left he made of this country. A man tackles the jobs put before him without whining. This weekend I will be disassembling the family refrigerator to replace a bad condenser fan – not because I am an appliance repairman but because it’s a job that has to be done so I am doing it. I’ll also be replacing the brake rotors on my Honda CRV for the same reason. If Cole learns that dad does this stuff because it’s really not all that hard when you get up and do it, he’ll be on the road to success. Real men fix problems – they don’t make them. Finally, you have to teach him not to let someone else’s idea of right and wrong stop him from doing what has to be done. It took two years, but my daughter finally learned to run stop signs when no one else is at the intersection. Again, a man knows when to break the rules and when he has to follow them —but he does not stop questioning the rules.
Finally, enjoy your son while he is still at home and grow up with him. No better program exists than scouting. The road to Eagle Scout taught my son valuable skills about being a boy and a man, like leadership, regret, planning, who is a friend, and preparation. My daughter learned those same things at Girl Scouts. I’ll plan on meeting both you and Cole at the Philmont Scout Ranch on top of Mt Baldy when I will be at Philmont with my grandson. If you can’t do scouting, then go on adventures with Cole. Camping in the national parks or out in the desert, do the great American driving vacation with just the boys, seeing what can be seen from hiking to the tops of local mountains because you need to know – all these things are things you can do now and they make great memories.
Pretty soon, Cole will be gone off to life and you’ll be old. It would be best to start now on his training to be a man. The rest will follow soon enough. Good luck and have fun along the way.
Perhaps, your son Cole will inherit the skill to produce entertaining and thought provoking reading material. There should always be a place for talented and creative authors in this world…
Don’t walk, ride. People routinely bicycle across the US in 2-3 months – a summer vacation. See . Father-son groups are common.
Write. People need stories almost as much as they need bread. At work, exposition is power. The more things change, the more people seek guidance. When a decision is reached, it’s the writeup that determines what the decision was.
Bob, I hope you aren’t encouraging your son to over-analyze, because it only leads to baseless anxiety, and then a prescription a few years down the road. Stop telling him about Singularities and get him out there playing baseball with his friends.
Since we can’t predict the future (nor can Kurzweil), all we can do is learn, be flexible, and do our best at whatever we do. So far, the universe has always tended to reward people who follow those three principles. Even if we are all replaced by robots, I don’t see those principles ceasing to work.
And if it really comes to that, and we *are* all replaced by robots, the future is probably in entertainment. Computers can do anything but that. Our droids will go to work for us and we’ll do nothing but make entertainment and watch other people’s entertainment.
Realistically, I don’t think we’re capable of achieving that convenient of a future, but it’s certainly nothing to fear. Just let kids be kids so they can discover what they love doing, through play, and the rest will work out. But yes, encouraging them to learn Mandarin might be a good idea too.
Another old Dad here (54): My almost 7 year old had an assignment to write what he wanted to be when he grows up… he wrote that he wanted to be a Dad, to take care of his kids …. I’m tearing up as I write this. Maybe I’m not doing the Dad job *all* wrong the second time around (34 year old daughter who writes *very* nice things for Father’s day & other occasions, maybe got one or two things right the first time).
Any way, I want to make sure he *reads*, and can do math, and knows science, and as much other stuff a possible. And like a prior post suggests, try to help him not to be afraid to do things himself.
I recall Heinlein via Lazarus Long “… specialization is for insects.”
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The next generation of kids will see their parents as gadget loving couch potatoes and rebel by going back to books, vinyl records, dressing decently, and shunning technology. The blessed uploading into the computer will be the rapture that never happened but some will still insist it is coming when finances require additional “contributions” to keep things going. Looking beyond Leonard Cohens vision of the future I see a future that does not include technology. This will be the begining of the age of telepathy where technology will be rendered “useless” for communication. Woot!
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Hey Bob,
It’s been awhile since I’ve left anything even remotely insightful on your blog. I apologize for this. I’ve been pretty busy over the last couple of years, but I try to read your blog as regularly as possible.
I have to say that I’ve thought quite a bit about this subject. My daughter turned one earlier this year, and I’ve wondered about it. Even though I don’t work as a contractor anymore, I think I still practice looking at the wider outlook, which has saved my life more often than not.
Disruptive change is everywhere. We don’t think about work the same way we used to. In fact, with the way the system is moving, I almost wonder if it makes sense to even ask if anyone will have jobs in 20 years or so. Honestly, I think this whole idea of having a job to begin with is on it’s way out. Results oriented workplaces, and Bring your own device employers are just the beginning. I really think there’s a future in crowdsourcing, but I’m sorry to say that I don’t think there’s much of a present there yet.
Going forward, I think the key is educating our children to be iconoclasts. Teaching them pretty much from birth not to be afraid of change. Fear of change is the only thing that keeps American developers from reaching their full potential, in my opinion.
Providing them (our children) with a framework to adapt, and grow in a world that’s constantly changing around them at an ever faster pace. We want to teach them to be cantankerous problem solvers that see untapped inefficiencies wherever they go, and to make a living by intentionally going out of their way to make a difference. This is natural because children instinctively do this well.
As of now, I believe that it’s safe to say that if there is a high priced service of any kind out there, it will at some point be replaced by a less expensive product that does more with less.
It’s safe to say that there are entire industries this will affect, and that there will always be opportunities for quirky free thinkers that can save people money, and drive the cost of doing business down. It’s also safe to say that the cost of doing business will never be zero. Therefore, there will always be jobs for people smart enough to do them… even if the word job doesn’t make any sense in describing the context.
I really enjoyed your post this time, Bob.
Thanks
Sam
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Why visitors still use to read news papers when in
this technological world everything is existing on
net?
I really do believe that women should be allowed to run the world for a change. Maybe once, just once, we could get away from all the corporate louses trying to prevent the little guy from adapting and further developing his or her HUMAN brain. Maybe we would have another chance at NOT spending all the money we do on countless wars, because I really don’t think we as a species have come far enough to qualify for inflicting our cultures on other solar systems. We need to STOP KILLING EACH OTHER! Otherwise we remain tech savvy chimps. And that’s what I truly believe. I see men running EVERYTHING. That’s not a democratic society. Resistance is futile? Better do a little more research, Mr. K.
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