Technology disruption is cyclical – every now and then we experience a revolution in the workforce and the way the economy works. During the industrial revolution, for instance, people were worried that they’d lose their jobs to automation. Some of them, unfortunately, did, while some others learned new skills that allowed them to continue working in a different field.
However, the speed of disruptions is higher these days. According to The Emerging Future, every 12 years, computers double their capabilities. Therefore in 50 years, our whole world may look completely different from what it looks like now. Let’s explore some of the ways that technology will disrupt our world in the next five decades.
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The Future of Work
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As we’ve said before, the speed of technology disruption is quite high, and this involves automation. Artificial intelligence (AI) is taking over most industries and automation is expanding at a faster rate. Therefore, we can expect that some of the current jobs we have today might no longer be useful in the future. In fact, there could be even more jobs that don’t even exist in today’s world.
In the future of work, jobs with repetitive activities might be replaced by robots. Additionally, professions like drivers or manufacturers may not exist in the future, or at least they won’t be performed by humans. The company Tesla is creating a significant number of automated vehicles, so maybe we don’t have to wait too long to start using automated vehicles on a massive scale.
What kind of jobs can we expect from the future of work? Tech jobs might potentially increase because the economy would be focused on technology. Besides, all jobs that require empathy, analytical thinking or moral reasoning will still be performed by humans.
Robot-Assisted Medical Operations
Tech experts are always saying that robots are more accurate, thus reducing human mistakes. There’s one sector in the economy that can’t accept human mistakes: medicine and healthcare. Patients’ lives depend on the doctors’ hands, and sometimes this is a huge responsibility that could be ruined by a simple error. But what if surgeries could be performed by robots?
We’re not saying that it’ll be an unassisted operation and that your life will depend on a robot. What experts are trying to build is a robot-assisted system that can perform manual tasks with human instruction. There will always be things a robot can’t spot that humans will. Therefore, doctors’ knowledge will always be necessary.
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Ingestible Robots
In science fiction movies, we’ve all seen humans handling technology using only their brains. This sounded crazy and impossible, until now. What the tech industry is trying to build is a product that can be controlled from the inside of our body without even having to use our hands. Brian Wong, CEO of KIIP, recently said in an interview for Tech Insider:
“Right now we kind of hold things and we wear things, and it’s kind of at our hands. But the whole point is getting it into our eyeballs, into our ears or into our stomach.”
Could you imagine making an appointment without having to move a finger or talking to anyone? It would be as simple as giving commands with our brains.
There’s an institution already working on this. The Massachusets Institute Of Technology (MIT) recently created an origami ingestible robot. The purpose of this robot is to perform certain tasks inside our body. For example, it could extract foreign objects from our body without needing any surgery.
Faster Transportation
Improving the transportation system is something that would drastically change the economy. Imagine sending a package from the United States to Germany in just 15 minutes. You may think that this would be something extremely expensive, but you would be wrong. These rocket machines would transport a huge number of packages or passengers per hour, reducing the costs of transportation.
Conclusión
The only constant in our life is that technology will always change, constantly transforming our lives. In the next 50 years, we will experience many changes involving the way we work, the way we learn, and even the way we move from one place to another.
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